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Abstract
Research about congressional elections has almost exclusively focused on congressional general elections. The purpose of this thesis is to begin to address the gap in the literature by analyzing trends related to congressional primaries. The empirical analysis relies on an original dataset that comprises all Democratic and Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives from 2000 to 2010. The first half of the empirical analysis considers the factors that influence the emergence of different types of candidates in primaries. The second half discusses the variables that play a part in the outcome of congressional primaries. After estimating several statistical models, I demonstrate the importance of incumbency and district partisanship in the dynamics of primaries. The thesis serves as a launching-off point for a broader research agenda related to primary elections and the impact of actions taken by members of Congress.