Tantamount to election
"Tantamount to election" is a phrase to describe the situation in which one political party so dominates the demographics of an election district that the primary election or nomination within that party is the only election that matters.[1]
The phrase originated in the American Solid South when and where the Republican Party was so weak or nonexistent that the general elections were mere formalities, the election having effectively been decided within the Democratic Party of the time and place.[2] For example, after a stiff challenge by Republican-Populist nominee John N. Pharr in Louisiana's 1896 gubernatorial election, the triumphant Democrats rewrote the state constitution "to disenfranchise blacks, Republicans, and white Populists, [so that] the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election."[3]
The phrase "tantamount to election" may, however, be employed to describe an electoral situation in an overwhelmingly Republican area where candidates of the Democratic Party are up against very steep odds[4]—or any electoral situation wherein dominance by one party renders candidates of other parties irrelevant.[5]
Notes
- ^ Political scientist Larry Sabato, e.g., uses the phrase "tantamount to election" in describing how "not a single Virginia Democrat nominated for statewide office in the primary was defeated in the general election for more than threescore years after the primary’s inception in 1905" (Sabato, quoted by Kenneth R. Plum, The changing of power in the Commonwealth, Reston Connection, 2003 April 30 [accessed 2009 December 28]).
- ^ Jackson Baker, Jamieson, only GOP hopeful, out of race for 89, Memphis Flyer Newsweekly (Contemporary Media, Inc.), 2003 November 6 (accessed 2009 December 28). See also White primaries.
- ^ Biosketch of William Wright Heard on the Louisiana Secretary of State site (accessed 2009 December 28).
- ^ An early instance was James A. Garfield's election to the U.S. House of Representatives from a district so Republican that the Republican nomination was considered "tantamount to election" (quoted from the Garfield biosketch on the Ohio Supreme Court site).
- ^ The phrase "tantamount to election" appears in scores of Wikipedia articles. A few examples: Solid South, ticket (election), Democrat Robert S. Calvert, Republican Pete Hoekstra. See also Larry Sabato, The Democratic Party Primary in Virginia: Tantamount to Election No Longer (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), ISBN 0813907268 and ISBN 978-0813907260.
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