Candidate selection is a key function of political parties, with implications for the functioning of the party system, the legislature, government and opposition. Despite the extensive literature on intra-party candidate selection, few studies examine why parties choose particular methods of candidate selection and/or the relationship between parties’ appeals to voters and their choice of candidate selection methods. Using a re-conceptualization of parties’ appeals to voters based on “representational claims”—what and who parties claim to represent—I argue that accounting for parties’ engagement in both the politics of issues (appeals on policy positions) and the politics of identity (appeals to demographic groups) provides a better insight into parties’ choice of candidate selection methods. Specifically, I hypothesize that parties that focus on a narrow demographic appeals are more likely to use more exclusive candidate selection methods (where the body selecting candidates is small), compared to parties with a broad demographic appeals, with the purpose of ensuring that the identity of the candidates reflects the party’s demographic focus. Following a discussion of intra-party candidate selection and an explanation of the proposed typology, I test my hypothesis on all parties that have gained seats in the Israeli and Dutch parliaments 1977 and 2015 for which data on intra-party candidate selection is available and discuss the implications of the results.