General Overall Patterns

Figure 3.1 plots the total number of CSM observations across the entire state of Pennsylvania by each of the four different CSMs from 1800 to 1906. The lowess lines are fitted for each CSM in order to make it easier to grasp the long-term trends. Simple annual counts are used instead of relative ratios because the mass meeting—the form used in the early nineteenth century—is not included in the dataset and there are lots of missing data across years.

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The uniform delegate system is plotted with a green short-dash line. This is the CSM that spread first, and it remained dominant until after the Civil War. The number of counties using the system increased until 1850 and then reached a peak during the 1850s. It started declining around the mid-1860s. A large part of the increase in uniform delegate system

observations over the first 50 years of the period studied here probably reflects the increasingly constant printing of party activities in local newspapers and the improvement in the survival rate of newspaper copies over time more than gradual switches from the mass meeting system to other CSMs. The graded delegate system, plotted with a blue dash-dot line, started picking up impetus around 1830, jumped up in popularity during the late 1860s and the early 1870s, and caught up with the uniform system by the mid-1870s. More than 45 county parties used the graded system at its peak, and the system remained the leading CSM until the early 1900s. The drop in its count after the mid-1890s may have partially reflected the rapid commercialization and depoliticization of newspapers toward the turn of the century, which led to less and less printing of party activities. The Clarion County system, plotted with a pink thin-dash line, remained an extreme minority CSM throughout the nineteenth century. It first appeared in the 1840s, picked up a short momentum during the 1880s, but never reached the count of 10 county parties per year, and settled at the level of five or fewer county parties for the rest of the period. In stark contrast is the development of the direct primary system, which is plotted with a red solid line. It spread slowly before the Civil War, jumped up during the latter half of the 1860s, stagnated for a while at around fifteen county parties for approximately fifteen years, and then picked up momentum in the late 1880s. It surpassed the uniform delegate system in the early 1890s, and then caught up with the graded system in the early 1900s, when it claimed almost 40

county parties.

Breaking these counts down by party reveals the distinct trajectories that each party followed, especially for the direct primary. In Figure 3.2, the top and bottom panels show the patterns of Democrats and non-Democrats, respectively. Overall, non-Democrats provided fewer observations during the first half of the nineteenth century compared to Democrats. This may have been caused by the fact that non-Democrats were constituted by sequences of different parties that were “not Democrats.” Although they overlapped in human resources and organizational infrastructure to a certain degree in each county, the repeated coming and going must have hindered development of steady party organizations. As for the uniform delegate system, Democrats hit the ceiling at around twenty counties in 1840, while non-Democrats took more than 15 years longer to reach their peak at the same level. A resurgence of the uniform delegate system, which the Democrats experienced in 1890, merits attention. The early 1890s is the time when the Republican Party cemented its position as a dominant party in Pennsylvania, and the Democrats lost their foothold by taking the blame for the severe economic depression. The uniform delegate system might have been considered good for the Democratic county organizations where the party became very weak.

As for the graded delegate system, both parties followed similar patterns, picking up rapidly after 1870. The difference is the height of the ceilings they hit in the early 1890s, respectively. The Democrats adopted the graded delegate system at a slightly higher level than the Republicans, uniformly across more than 20 counties. The rate of adoption of the direct primary is where the two parties show the greatest difference. While the Democrats adopted the direct primary in fewer than 5 counties until the mid-1880s, the Republicans adopted it en masse in the late 1860s. More than 10 Republican county organizations held onto the direct primary for two decades, after which more and more counties joined, one after another, until the count passed 25 in 1902. With the Republicans, the direct primary surpassed the graded system temporarily as early as in the late 1860s, lagged a little behind it for two decades from the mid-1870s to the mid-1890s, and then clearly beat it after the mid-1890s. Historically, in Pennsylvania, the direct primary was first used among the Democrats, but the Republicans were its main promoters after the Civil War. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have adapted to the changing times by making greater use of the graded delegate system.

We now further break down the data by region. Interestingly, the differences between different regions seem starker than between parties. Figure 3.3 shows the map of Pennsylvania and the division of four regions: West, Central, Northeast, and Southeast. Figure 3.4 shows four

panels of CSM trends by region and party. In the West, Democrats and non-Democrats shared a pattern in which the direct primary became the leading CSM in the post-Civil War period. Compared to the Democrats, the non-Democrats stand out for their rapid increase in the number of counties using the direct primary, which reached a high of 10 in the 1890s. There seem to be two breakthrough points for the Republican practice of the direct primary, one at 1866 and the other at 1892. The use of the uniform delegate system in the West remained at the lowest level across regions for both parties. The West is almost the only region where Republicans tried the Clarion County system at all.

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In the Central region, the graded delegate system dominated among Democrats after the mid-1850s. The graded system spread in the Central region after 1870 and became dominant after 1880 among Republicans. Only in 2 counties at most did the Democrats adopt the direct primary at one time, while Republicans stagnated at around two counties until they reached the peak of 6 counties in the mid-1890s.

to the end. The Democrats had a long history of steady practice of the uniform delegate system since 1830, while the Republicans exhibited the same pattern at a slightly lower level by 1850. While both the graded delegate system and the direct primary continued to pick up counties toward the end of the observed period, the Democrats turned out to be more cautious in adopting the direct primary. The Republicans showed breakthrough points for increased use of the direct primary, similar to those of their counterparts in the West, at 1870 and 1890.

The last region, the Southeast, shows distinct patterns for each party. The Democrats decreased in their use of the uniform delegate system after 1880, and the graded system picked up momentum in the late 1870s. Their use of the direct primary is not much more widespread than in the Central region. The non-Democrats developed party organizations early in this region. The uniform delegate system, which was constantly used in about six counties, remained the top CSM until its use dramatically dropped after 1890. The graded delegate system increased its share constantly from 1850, and became the leading CSM by the end of the nineteenth century. The direct primary was applied in only one or two counties at a time by the Republicans, which was the lowest rate across the four regions. Given the fact that the state developed from east to west and the population density in the Southeast remained more than three times higher than the population density in all other regions through the nineteenth century, this finding defies the often-cited pattern that the direct primary spread to heavily-populated urban areas first. The

Southeast is the only region where Democrats used the direct primary at a higher rate than the Republicans.

Figure 3.5 shows maps for each party by decade from the 1840s to the 1890s, with counties shown in color where the direct primary was used at least for one year during the decade. With Democrats, the system started out in the West and gradually spread east, but the largest cluster was at the southwest corner of the state, which remained the Democratic stronghold throughout the century. Figure 3.6 contains maps colored in gradations, based on the degree of non-Democratic vote share. The ratio was created by taking an average of the two-party vote share in the presidential and gubernatorial elections over the decade. The bluish categories represent counties where the Democrats were the majority party (vote share above .50, .55, and .60, respectively from lightest to darkest blue), and the reddish categories represent counties where the non-Democrats (or Republicans) held majority status (vote share above .50, .55, and .60, respectively from lightest to darkest red, which are expressed in terms of the non-Democratic vote share in the legend list). Many of the colored direct primary counties for the Democrats in Figure 3.5 overlap with those counties in blue in Figure 3.6, especially at the southwest corner, until most of the region turned Republican in 1890s. It gives the impression that, for the Democratic Party, being the leading party in the county may have been a prerequisite for the adoption of the direct primary.

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The non-Democrats in Figure 3.5 started adopting the direct primary in the West and the Northeast in the 1850s. The system spread mainly in the West with more and more counties becoming majority Republican. The system also spread to some predominantly Republican counties in the Northeast and to Lancaster in the Southeast, which retained a non-Democratic majority throughout the century. The regional pattern is striking for the Republicans: party organizations in the West were clearly the leading force in adopting the direct primary. Some tendency for the majority party to adopt the system was observed for the Republican Party as well.

So far, we have looked at the annual counts of CSM observations and decade-by-decade regional patterns. We next look into the transition patterns between the CSMs (i.e., how each party organization moved from one CSM to another over the years).