Who Will Win the Primaries?

As most of you know, primary elections are held to determine which candidate each party will endorse as their official candidate for the upcoming election. Both parties have primary elections in just a few short months and I'm very interested to see who each party will nominate. An interesting thing to note: The democratic party has narrowed it down to about 4-5 serious candidates while the republican party has a much more crowded field numbering 14+ (as demonstrated in this photo).

Who do you think will win the primary vote for the Republicans? The Democrats? Who do you WANT to win?

Links to: Information about the Republican Primary Elections

                Information about Democratic Primary Elections

Closed Primaries

The more and more I read about political party primary elections, the more and more ridiculous the idea of an open primary seems to me. This article made an interesting analogy that really resonated with me. The article said that forcing a political party to hold an open primary is like making a sports team let their opponent choose their starting lineup before a game. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In Minnesota, members of both political parties are trying to fight state legislature that forces them to hold open primaries (it doesn't seem very constitutional to me to force the parties to do this).

What are your thoughts on Primary elections? Do you feel they should be open or closed? Are there any benefits of an open primary that I am ignoring?