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Aleadership election is a political contest held in various countries by which the members of apolitical party determine who will be theleader of their party.
Generally, any political party can determine its own rules governing how and when a leadership election is to be held for that party. In theUnited Kingdom, for example:
Leadership elections are generally caused by the death or resignation of the incumbent (that is, the person already holding the post), although there are also formal and informal methods to remove a party's leader and thus trigger an election contest to find a replacement. There is, however, no common procedure whereby the main parties choose their leader.[1]
A leadership election may be required at intervals set by party rules, or it may be held in response to a certain proportion of those eligible to vote expressing a lack of confidence in the current leadership. In the UK Conservative Party, for example, "a leadership election can be triggered by a vote of no confidence by Conservative MPs in their current leader".[2]
Strictly speaking, a leadership election is a completely internal affair. An intra-party election held to select its candidates for external offices, such as apresident,governor,prime minister or member of a legislature is called aprimary election.
Leadership elections have great importance inparliamentary systems, where the chief executive (e.g.: aprime minister) derives their mandate from a parliamentary majority and the party's internal leaders holdfrontbench positions within the parliament, if not outright serving in a ministerial post – whether as prime minister in the case of the leading government party, or another ministerial post for junior coalition partners. For that reason, most parliamentary systems do not hold dedicated prime ministerial primaries at all, but simply select their internal leader as their candidate for prime minister.
However, leadership elections are often similar to primary elections in that in the vast majority of instances, a party's leader will becomeprime minister (in a federal election) orpremier/chief minister/first minister (in a province, state, territory, or other first-level administrative subdivision) should their party enter government with the most seats. Thus, a leadership election is also often considered to be one for the party's de facto candidate for prime minister or premier/chief minister/first minister, just as a primary is one for a party's candidate for president.
Anelectoral alliance, which is composed of multiple parties each with its own separate leader and organs, may also hold a common Prime Ministerial primary as in the2021 Hungarian opposition primary, or a single party may wish to retain its leader but select someone else as its Prime Ministerial candidate,as the Portuguese Socialist Party has done in 2014.
Inpresidential andsemi-presidential systems, the chief executive (thePresident) can only be removed by animpeachment procedure, which can only be initiated in specific situations and by a special procedure (typically involving a legislativesupermajority, an investigation by aconstitutional court, or both), and removal entails either asnap election or automatic succession to office by aVice president. As a result, leadership elections are largely background events, as the ruling party's policies are determined by the President, not by the party's internal leader. However, some systems allow one person to serve as both the President and the leader of the ruling party simultaneously, or even mandate it (such as theDemocratic Progressive Party in Taiwan).
However, this is not entirely comparable to the parliamentary situation, as themajority andminority leaders of political parties in presidential systems are not the chief executive of their country (as aprime minister would be), but are rather officers of the legislative branch of their country, a position similar to thefloor leader (which similarly is a post subservient to theprime minister) of a political party in a parliamentary system which likewise doesn't hold mass enfranchised elections for such a post.
In theAnglosphere, Political parties inCanada (Conservative,Liberal,New Democratic and theGreen party) and in theUnited Kingdom (Labour,Conservative,Liberal Democrats andGreen party) hold leadership elections where members of the party vote for the Leader.
InAustralia, the Liberal and Green party don't let members vote in leadership election, Labor last held a membership vote on the leadership in 2013. InNew Zealand, the National and Green party don't let members vote in leadership election, Labour last held a membership vote on the leadership in 2014.
