Politics: Why do Doomed Candidates Win Primaries?

I’ve seen something nowadays often enough that I’m starting to wonder why it always seems to be the case year after year. Some people are certain to lose an election in the future. Yet they still seem to win the primary against challengers in their party. Why is that? I honestly don’t know, but still thought that I would share thoughts about this with you.

It happened in Illinois in both 2014 and 2018. The incumbent governor was doomed to lose the election. He faced a primary challenge that he won. He then lost the general election. But I wonder still why he win the primary when people should have known that he was doomed to lose at some point in the process.

This could happen yet again with Trump. While some people are convinced that he will win again, I don’t see it as happening. But the question remains: will he win the primary? Well, it is not like he isn’t facing competition from other Republicans in the primary. But the last incumbent president to lose renomination was Chester Alan Arthur. And that was before primaries were a thing. Plus, I have heard that Republicans are trying to avoid primaries in some places at least for the presidency to make sure that Trump wins it. They should know better considering all of the crap that they gave Democrats for the supposed rigging of things against Bernie Sanders.

I may never know for sure why doomed candidates win primaries. Maybe people figure that there will not be any real competition in the primary and just gloomy go with a bad choice as they still think that’s the only thing that will work. That’s what happened with Herbert Hoover. He got to run for president again, but there was no way he could win. Maybe they know that they will lose and figure that they should just let them lose for some reason.

Maybe someone else can explain what’s going on. Of course, I may not know enough primaries to know for sure if doomed candidates are able to lose it to someone else. It is hard to know all of the primaries that happen and if I’m wrong about the candidates who are certain to lose in the general still winning in the primary. Besides, it is hard to tell for sure what will happen in all of the elections in the future.