With the benefit of that best of predictive instruments, hindsight, it has always seemed that the introduction of the direct primary was a reform that ran counter to party interests. Unquestionably, in the long term, it helped to weaken the parties. Consequently, explanations of why this reform was introduced have generally assumed that it was something parties would rather have not done, but that they could not prevent. Thus, one common explanation has been that it was the result of antiparty reformers triumphing over party regulars, while another explanation was that it followed from a supposed descent into one-party dominance in much of the North after the mid-1890s. However, the states studied in detail in the last two chapters demonstrate the limitations of these two accounts of the rise of the direct primary. In the West, the introduction of the direct primary was linked to the success of insurgency, but this occurred only after a number of states, many in the East, had started already to experiment with direct nominations. That is, in spite of the weakness of insurgency in the east, most states there did introduce the direct primary, and there is no evidence either that the legislation involved conflict between antiparty reformers and urban-based political machines. Furthermore, there is also no evidence that the absence of party competition was responsible for this legislation.