Replication Data for: Why Local Party Leaders Don't Support Nominating Centrists

Would giving party leaders more influence in primary elections in the U.S. decrease elite polarization? Some scholars have argued that political party leaders tend to support centrist candidates in the hopes of winning general elections. In contrast, we argue that many *local* party leaders---especially Republicans---may not believe that centrists perform better in elections and therefore may not support nominating them. We test this argument with an original survey of 1,118 county-level party leaders. In experiments, we find that local party leaders most prefer nominating candidates who are similar to typical co-partisans, not centrists. Moreover, given the choice between a more centrist and more extreme candidate, they strongly prefer extremists, with Democrats doing so by about 2 to 1 and Republicans by 10 to 1. Likewise, in open-ended questions, Democratic party leaders are twice as likely to say they look for extreme candidates relative to centrists; Republican party leaders are five times as likely. Potentially driving these partisan differences, Republican leaders are especially likely to believe that extremists can *win* general elections and overestimate the electorate's conservatism by double digits.