Preselection

Preselection is the process by which a candidate is selected, usually by a political party, to contest an election for political office. It is also referred to as candidate selection. It is a fundamental function of political parties. The preselection process may involve the party's executive or leader selecting a candidate or be some contested process. In countries that adopt Westminster-style responsible government, preselection is also the first step on the path to a position in the executive. The selected candidate is commonly referred to as the party's endorsed candidate.

Deselection or disendorsement is the opposite procedure, when the political party withdraws its support from one of its elected office-holders. The party may then select a replacement candidate at the subsequent election, or it may decide (or be compelled by the electoral timetable) to forgo contesting that seat (for example, the Liberal Party of Australia after Pauline Hanson was disendorsed just before the 1996 House of Representatives election, and likewise the Labour candidate for Moray, Stuart Maclennan, just before the 2010 UK general election). The deselected representative is usually free to still contest the election as an Independent or as a representative of another party, though they are usually at high risk of being unseated.

Reselection is the procedure of requiring candidates to repeat the preselection process to retain the party's support.

An example of a preselection procedure that gains extensive media coverage is the selection of candidates for President of the United States, referred to by one observer as "the wildest democratic political bazaar in the world". These are generally known as presidential primaries, but are actually a combination of primary elections, in which voters in a jurisdiction select candidates, and caucuses, in which candidates are selected by a narrower (but still potentially large) group of party members.

In other countries, a wide variety of preselection systems exist, though the majority involve members of a political party or party executive playing a role in selecting candidates to compete in elections.

In politics, the preselection process is the process by which candidates who are members of a political party are selected by that party to contest an election for political office. It is a fundamental function of political parties, affecting 'representation, party cohesion, legislative behaviour and democratic stability.' In countries that adopt Westminster-style responsible government, preselection is also the first step on the path to a position in the executive.

In Australia, the term has been in common usage since the 1920s to describe the selection of candidates by political parties for public office. One usage of the term is in describing elected public officeholders in Westminster type party systems as being selected by the voters after being preselected by their parties. It derives from Australian Labor Party preselection practices that were widely used by that party before 1955. These involved a two step process of a preselection ballot or plebiscite of party members and affiliated trade unionists in the electorate being contested, and endorsement, which was normally a formality, by the state executive. The ALP, as well as in some states the Liberal Party, now uses a system in which votes in the plebiscite are combined with votes from delegates selected by the party organisation.

Preselection can occur in a wide variety of ways, but four main variables characterise the range of systems: