How do election primaries work?

Question

As of right now, there are 11 moderator candidates. If there are more than 10, a primary is held, but what is a primary? How does it work? Is it basically the same as the election itself, but instead of selecting our 4 moderators, we select X number of candidates to move on? How many candidates get selected in the primaries to move on to the final round of voting?

Answer 1

In the primary phase eligible community members get to "vote" for as many or as few candidates as they want. At the end of the phase, the 10 candidates with the most votes go through to the actual election phase. This is taken from the side-bar description of the primary phase:

In the primary phase, all nominees advance to preliminary community voting. Any community member with 150 reputation may vote in the primary.

There is no commenting in this phase, only one up or down vote per candidate. The candidate vote scores are all public. Initial voting should provide a rough sense of which candidates are most electable.

All candidates are displayed in random order.

The primary is not binding; nominees may withdraw at their discretion at any point during the primary phase.

After 4 days, the top 10 candidates based on primary vote score proceed onward to the election phase.