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Curious question to non-US; are primaries a requirement for your party candidates, or are they chosen by the party?
I ask because I know in some countries, there's a lot of parties and I can't imagine it's written in law that every single one must hold a primary...
This is going to massively depend on which country you live in, but frequently neither.
Parties can pick who they like, but they often allow politicians and party members to vote as part of internal selection process.
In the UK only weirdos and political extremists are party members, and the Tory party tends to spend a lot of effort trying to stop their members from having a vote.
So of the last four prime ministers.
Sunak didn't have a vote (lost to truss before that).
Truss won an internal vote.
Johnson won an internal vote.
May was uncontested.
And this is only the internal vote. All of them became prime minister without an election. Generally you vote for a party (some pedant will claim you vote for MPs, but they do what the party says) and then the leader can change while they're in power.
Fun fact: the Tories actually experimented with open primaries in some constituencies. I don't expect that to last though
Interesting, and I was aware of it somewhat thanks to John Oliver (lol) but it's good to hear explained. Iirc, you've got like, four viable party options at least. Good you have a little clarification!
I asked since having Harris more or less pre-chosen reminded me of that.
In the UK, generally chosen by party membership. There's been some experiments with open primaries, but nothing really substantial.
It's probably worth mentioning that, because the timings of our elections are generally left to the whim of the Prime Minister, candidates are normally elected by the party way in advance so they're ready just in case anything happens. Our election cycles also usually last only six weeks, which isn't enough time to run an internal election and then campaign.
Well, in Sweden the party often chooses but you can also vote for a particular person if you'd like. It's not mandatory though. This is for all levels, country wide, county and municipal.
In Germany, the president is elected by a group of politicians and public figures, not the public. But the president's duties are mostly ceremonial.
The chancellor, who is head of government, is elected by the members of parlament, right after the parlamentary elections.
It's kind of a public election, because the party with the most seats in parlament gets to pick one of their members for chancellor, and that choice is made public before the elections. They announce a "chancellor candidate" well in advance.
In no election does the public get to vote on any candidates before the actual election. They're put up by the parties in any way they choose.