Academics and political practitioners alike have long concerned themselves with the representativeness of primary electorates. Hoping to moderate the ideological extremity of primary voters, state parties have increasingly adopted more open primary eligibility rules. This article explores the extent to which open and modified‐open primaries actually attract a more representative electorate than their closed counterparts. Using state‐level exit poll data from 1988 through 2000, we compare the ideological, age, and income representation of primary electorates with general election voters. We find that open primaries result in the ideological convergence of the parties’ primary electorates, although the extent of this convergence is contingent upon the candidate choices within individual election years. Notably, open primaries are responsible for the inclusion of younger participants in both parties’ primaries. While reformed primary structure may weaken party control over the nomination process, it clearly results in more moderate and more representative primary electorates.

In this quasi-experimental design, I examine the impact of a political engagement program on students, looking at traditional measures of internal efficacy, as well as other areas of political engagement including levels of political knowledge, the development of political skills, and interest in media coverage of politics.

No two terms of legal science have rendered better service than "law" and "fact." They are basic assumptions; irreducible minimums and the most comprehensive maximums at the same instant. They readily accommodate themselves to any meaning we desire to give them.. .. What judge has not found refuge in them? The man who could succeed in defining them would be a public enemy. They may torture the souls of language mechanicians who insist that all words and phrases must have a fixed content, but they and their flexibility are essential to the science which has to do with the control of men through the power to pass judgment on their conduct. Leon Green 1 We acknowledge that there are more verbal formulas for the scope of appellate review. .. than there are distinctions actually capable of being drawn in the practice of appellate review. But even if, as we have sometimes heretically suggested, there are operationally only two degrees of review, plenary (that is, no deference given to the tribunal being reviewed) and deferential, that distinction at least is a feasible, intelligible, and important one.

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