Primary elections in Spain, an overview of the performance of Spanish political parties

During the last decade, studies on primaries have attracted the attention of a growing number of researchers, mainly but not exclusively, from Political Science, due to the fact that primaries for the selection of leaders and candidates have gained popularity and prominence, raising in Europe and among developed democracies. Some of these investigations have dealt the subject from a comparative point of view, identifying and analyzing the consequences of the democratization experienced by political parties (Kenig, Rahat and Hazan, 2015; Sandri, Seddone and Venturino, 2015; Cross et al., 2016; Sandri and Seddone, 2021), there are even those who have focused exclusively on the study of open primaries, pointing to them as a possible new international standard (Lefebvre and Treille, 2019). For the Spanish case, there are some seminal studies (Barberá, Lisi and Rodríguez Teruel, 2015; Astudillo and Detterbeck, 2020), but many of the questions that can offer us a complete vision of the phenomenon have not yet been answered. Are there differences in participation between the selection of leaders versus that of candidates? And between games? At what levels, local, regional or national is where they are most celebrated? To what extent has selection by primaries become widespread? Does the fact that the people in charge present themselves to these processes influence participation? How many are the outsiders who end up winning the election? what is the level of competitiveness? Is there a gender gap? Are they really participatory processes or do they simply serve to legitimize strategic decisions? How has the digitalization of the parties affected the primary processes? These issues are addressed through the exploitation of an original and own database on all the selection processes of candidates and leaders in Spain from 1991 to 2022. With data that collects the more than 300 primary processes covering more than 30 years. In short, the research tries to cover the gaps detected in the literature and draw new perspectives of research in the primary processes with an empirical basis.