Primary election

A primary election is an election that narrows the field of candidates before an election for office. Primary elections are one means by which a political party or a political alliance nominates candidates for an upcoming general election or by-election.

Primaries are common in the United States, where their origins are traced to the progressive movement to take the power of candidate nomination from party leaders to the people.

Other methods of selecting candidates include caucuses, conventions, and nomination meetings. Historically, Canadian political parties chose their candidates through nominating conventions held by constituency riding associations. Canadian party leaders are elected at leadership conventions, although some parties have abandoned this practice in favor of one member, one vote systems.

Types

General

Where primary elections are organized by parties, not the administration, two types of primaries can generally be distinguished:

Primary (film)

Primary is a 1960 Direct Cinema documentary film about the 1960 Wisconsin Primary election between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey for the United States Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States.

Produced by Robert Drew, shot by Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles, and edited by D. A. Pennebaker, the film was a breakthrough in documentary film style. Most importantly, through the use of mobile cameras and lighter sound equipment, the filmmakers were able to follow the candidates as they wound their way through cheering crowds, cram with them into crowded hotel rooms, and to hover around their faces as they awaited polling results. This resulted in a greater intimacy than was possible with the older, more classical techniques of documentary filmmaking; and it established what has since become the standard style of video reporting.

In 1990, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film's importance in the evolution of documentary filmmaking was explored in the film Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment.