Since some years the democratization of parties’ internal life is spreading in several democracies. Among them, France and Italy have recently realized an impressive advancement. With the 2012 presidential election in France and 2013 parliamentary election in Italy approaching, leftist coalitions in both countries have launched open primary elections to select their chief-executive candidates. It is well known that those nominations have been gained by François Hollande and Pier Luigi Bersani. In this paper, we focus on the eventual occurrence of two consequences brought about by the French and Italian primaries. First, we research whether the levels of turnout and the competitiveness featured by the primaries are related with the following results of the presidential/parliamentary elections. Second, we use the same independent variables – turnout and competitiveness – to examine the conceivable effects on the parties’ enrollment in the year following the primary elections. We will gather all the needed data referring to the same administrative levels: the French départements and the Italian province. By so doing, we are able to reach the number of cases – 95 for France and 110 for Italy – required to implement an effective comparison.
