The primary system was introduced at the beginning of the century by Progressive reformers in an attempt to weaken the power of party leaders by taking candidate nominations out of their hands. Primary elections are used to select each party's candidates for the general election. At the Presidential level, primary elections are indirect, they are used to select state delegates to the national nomination conventions, at which the major party presidential candidates are chosen. In some states, only registered members of the party may vote in a primary election (a closed primary), whereas other states allow all registered voters to decide on the day of the primary in which party's primary they will participate (open primary), thus, allowing for cross over voting. The other mode of selecting a party's candidates is caucuses, which are nominating processes that begin with precinct level meetings throughout the state. Once again, the state decides whether or not the caucus is an open or closed one. In caucuses delegates are elected to statewide conventions at which delegates to the national party are chosen. In some states that delegates are proportioned according to the vote, for example New York, whereas in others there are winner take all contests such as in California. "A crucial question for serious presidential candidates is not whether they should go into the primaries, instead, it is which particular ones they should enter." Thus, it is important for the candidates to perform well during the earlier primaries and caucuses such as New Hampshire and Iowa since it secures better media coverage for subsequent races. It is also important for candidates to tailor their messages depending of the state that they are campaigning in since focusing on more liberal issues in states that have open primaries may increase the number of crossover voting. Other considerations include the size of the state since the larger states have more delegates apportioned to them, thus allowing the candidate to achieve far greater gains by campaigning longer in larger states than they would in smaller states. And finally, the geographical region is also significant since most Southern, Western and Southwestern states are have strong conservative values whereas the North East states tend to be more liberal, the Midwest is divided evenly between the two parties . This, too, requires the candidate to tailor his message so to appeal to the broadest base of voters. Thus, for a candidate to be competitive in the primaries or caucuses, he needs to a head start in New Hampshire, requires an extended campaigning interval in larger states and needs to tailor his message based on whether or not the state holds open primaries and on the geographical location of the state.

examining these factors, it is easy to comprehend why the McCain crusade failed to win the majority of primaries and secure the required number of delegates.

By making the presidential campaign too much about himself and about George W. Bush's crude efforts to crush him, especially in the month since his dramatic launch out of New Hampshire, McCain has lost a golden opportunity to plug into something that, as he says in his stump speech, is greater than his own self-interest.

This, too, causes him to relinquish votes to Bush since the negative campaigns not only persuaded voters to support Bush on election day but also, by his own fault, lowered McCain's personality to a squabbling child rather than a man who had been tough enough to withstand the conditions at Hanoi Hilton for nearly five and half years.

the larger the number of primaries on any given day, the greater the number of voters, and the larger the geographical spread, the less impression management candidate are able to do and the more the media take over. In this respect, Super Tuesday and any other front loading of the process increases the media's influence.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Franklin Roosevelt, South Carolina, John McCain, Clinton McCain, Hampshire McCain, Democrats Bush, House McCain, Greenfield CNN, Jones University, York California, republican party, south carolina, negative ads, campaign finance reform, campaign finance, negative ad, mccain's campaign, finance reform, pat robertson, republican vote, soft money, voter alert phone, issue campaign reform, catholic voter alert, capture republican vote,
Approximate Word count = 3627
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)