Sore Loser Laws in Presidential and Congressional Elections

Abstract

Sore loser laws – which restrict candidates who lose primaries from running in general elections – are a virtually ubiquitous feature of American politics, but are almost never studied seriously by political scientists or election law scholars. In this chapter, we build on our earlier studies of sore loser laws in two new ways. First, we expand on our findings on the polarizing influence of sore loser laws as applied to congressional and state legislative candidates by looking at the actual incidence of sore loser candidates where they were permitted by law. Second, we survey the state-by-state application of sore loser laws to presidential candidates.

Keywords: sore loser laws, primary elections, polarization, presidential sore loser laws, political parties