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Electability and Party Power Across Party Lines

  • Seth Masket EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: February 28, 2025
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Abstract

This article describes efforts to understand how partisan actors respond to electoral losses differently across party lines, leading to different decisions for future nomination contests. I further focus on the events of the spring and summer of 2024, in which both parties were offered compelling reasons to reject their expected presidential nominee (a criminal conviction and a poor debate performance) but only the Democrats followed that path, while Republicans reaffirmed their support for a damaged candidate. These events demonstrate the relative power the two party organizations have but also their overall orientations toward elections and electability.


Corresponding author: Seth Masket, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA, E-mail:

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Published Online: 2025-02-28

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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