by Eric Wood
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Before a candidate ever appears on a general election ballot, each party has to choose its own nominee - and the process for doing that varies more from state to state than most people realize, split mainly between primaries and the much rarer caucuses.
Primaries: voting, more or less like a normal election
A primary election works similarly to a general election: voters go to a polling place or vote by mail, and cast a ballot for their preferred candidate within a set voting window, with results reported and delegates allocated based on the vote count. States differ on who’s allowed to participate: a “closed” primary limits participation to voters registered with that specific party, an “open” primary lets any registered voter participate in either party’s primary regardless of their own registration, and various hybrid systems fall somewhere between those two.
Caucuses: a different kind of process entirely
A caucus is a local meeting, not a private ballot - party members gather in person at a set time, often organize by physically grouping with supporters of their preferred candidate in the room, and sometimes go through multiple rounds of discussion and realignment before a final count. Caucuses require a much larger time commitment than simply voting, which generally means lower turnout than a comparable primary would draw. Most states have shifted away from caucuses toward primaries over time, in part because of exactly that turnout and accessibility gap.
Worth knowing
Primaries and caucuses determine convention delegates, not the nomination directly - the actual nominee is formally chosen at each party’s national convention, where delegates won through the primary and caucus process cast the deciding votes. In almost every modern election the delegate math is settled well before the convention itself, but the convention remains the formal, technically decisive step.
Why it still matters
The order in which states hold their primaries and caucuses shapes the entire nominating race disproportionately - early states like Iowa and New Hampshire have historically received outsized candidate attention and media coverage precisely because they vote first, which is itself a regular subject of debate within both major parties over whether that order should change.
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