2004 Presidential Primary Calendar

January

Friday, January 2:
Maine Republican caucuses (through March 19)

Tuesday, January 13:
Washington, DC primary (non-binding)

Saturday, January 17:
South Carolina Republican caucuses (through February 21)

Monday, January 19:
Iowa caucuses (both parties)

Sunday, January 25:
Hawaii Republican caucuses (through February 7)

Tuesday, January 27:
New Hampshire primary

February

Sunday, February 1:
North Carolina Republican caucuses (through March 31)

Tuesday, February 3:
Arizona primary (Democrats only)
Delaware primary (Democrats only)
Missouri primary
New Mexico Democratic caucuses 
North Dakota caucuses
Oklahoma primary
South Carolina primary (Democrats only, party-run)
Wyoming Republican caucuses (through February 29)

Wednesday, February 4:
Virginia Republican caucuses (through April 4)

Saturday, February 7:
Michigan primary (Democrats only, party-run)
Washington Democratic caucuses 
Louisiana Republican caucuses

Sunday, February 8:
Maine Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, February 10:
Nevada Republican caucuses 
Tennessee primary
Virginia primary (Democrats only)
Washington, DC Republican caucuses

Saturday, February 14:
Nevada Democratic caucuses
Washington, DC Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, February 17:
Wisconsin primary

Saturday, February 21:
Alaska Republican caucuses (through April 17)

Tuesday, February 24:
Hawaii Democratic caucuses 
Idaho Democratic caucuses
Utah primary (party-run)

March

Monday, March 1:
Delaware Republican caucuses (through May 15 -- State convention)
Kansas Republican caucuses (through June 15)

Tuesday, March 2:
California primary
Connecticut primary (Republican canceled)
Georgia primary
Maryland primary
Massachusetts primary
Minnesota caucuses (both parties)
New York primary (Republican canceled)
Ohio primary
Rhode Island primary
Vermont primary

Saturday, March 6:
Wyoming Democratic caucuses (through March 20)

Tuesday, March 9:
Florida primary (Republican canceled)
Louisiana primary
Mississippi primary (Republican canceled)
North Carolina Democratic caucuses
Texas primary (both parties & Democratic caucuses)
Washington Republican caucuses

Saturday, March 13:
Kansas Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 16:
Illinois primary

Saturday, March 20:
Alaska Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 23:
Utah Republican caucuses

April

Sunday, April 3:
Arizona Republican caucuses (through April 17)

Tuesday, April 13:
Colorado caucuses (both parties)

Tuesday, April 27:
Pennsylvania primary

May

Tuesday, May 4:
Indiana primary

Tuesday, May 11:
Nebraska primary
West Virginia primary

Tuesday, May 18:
Arkansas primary
Kentucky primary
Oregon primary

Tuesday, May 25:
Idaho primary (Republicans only)

June

Tuesday, June 1:
Alabama primary
New Mexico primary (Republicans only)
South Dakota primary (Republicans canceled)

Tuesday, June 8:
Montana primary (Democrats only, Republican beauty contest -- no delegates at stake)
New Jersey primary

Thursday, June 10:
Montana Republican convention (through June 12)

[Primaries in bold; Caucuses in italics]

States that are split vertically had different dates for different party contests. The shade to the left of that line corresponds with the month in which the Democratic contest took place and the right side represents the Republican contest.

[Source: The Green Papers and news accounts from 2004. The latter was used to double-check the dates or discover missing ones.]


A few notes:
1) North Carolina. It isn't often that we witness a traditional primary state -- one that has held a primary every presidential election cycle in the post-reform era -- adopt a caucus system for the purposes of delegate allocation. But that's exactly what North Carolina did in 2004. Of course, the move was one of necessity and not the state parties'/state government's desires. Due to a battle of redrawn congressional district lines, the North Carolina primary (typically in May) was postponed until the conflict was settled in the courts. The primaries for state and local offices occurred in July, but the state parties (mostly just the Democrats) had to scramble to put together a means of delegate allocation. So, while North Carolina technically frontloaded in 2004, it was not a purposeful movement forward. The reason most of the caucuses fall before April or May is so the first step in the process is early enough that the process will be at or near its completion by the time the window in which contests can be held closes.

2) With the Democrats opening the door to February contests, 2004 saw a host of states take them up on the offer. Democratic primaries in Arizona, Delaware, Michigan and Virginia followed GOP contests in those states four years earlier -- when the Republicans had first allowed for more widespread February contests. Plus, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin all shifted their state-funded primaries into February as well. Again, as was mentioned in the 2000 calendar discussion, those allowances by both parties set the stage for the massive shift that brought about 2008's de facto national primary on February 5.

3) In all, there were 11 primaries prior to March, 14 during March and 13 after March. That's actually not a bad distribution of contests. Basically, that means there were 11 contests in February (if New Hampshire is included), 14 in March and then 13 contests somewhat inefficiently distributed across the remaining two months of the process. Sure, that focuses on the primaries, but if you have that same distribution above across March, April and May/June and hold the caucuses in February, that's essentially the same idea as the Ohio Plan the GOP debated last year. Those caucus states are, on the whole, the smaller states which are frontloaded in that plan for the sake of retail politics. An interesting parallel.


Recent Posts:
2000 Presidential Primary Calendar

Shoveling Out from Under...

The Supreme Court Weighing in on Frontloading?

2000 Presidential Primary Calendar

January

Monday, January 24:
Iowa caucuses (both parties)

February

Tuesday, February 1:
New Hampshire primary

Saturday, February 5:
Delaware primary (Democrats only, Beauty contest -- no delegates at stake)

Monday, February 7:
Hawaii Republican caucuses (through February 13)

Tuesday, February 8:
Delaware primary (Republicans only, party-run)

Saturday, February 19:
South Carolina Republican primary (party-run)

Tuesday, February 22:
Arizona primary (Republicans only)
Michigan primary (Republicans only)

Wednesday, February 23:
Alaska Republican caucuses 
Nevada Republican caucuses (through March 21)

Tuesday, February 29:
North Dakota Republicans caucuses
Virginia primary (Republicans only)
Washington primary (Democratic beauty contest -- no delegates at stake)

March

Tuesday, March 7:
California primary
Connecticut primary
Georgia primary
Hawaii Democratic caucuses 
Idaho Democratic caucuses 
Maine primary
Maryland primary
Massachusetts primary
Missouri primary
Minnesota Republican caucuses
New York primary
North Dakota Democratic caucuses 
Ohio primary
Rhode Island primary
Vermont primary
Washington caucuses (both parties)

Thursday, March 9:
South Carolina Democratic caucuses (party-run, "firehouse" primary)

Friday, March 10:
Colorado primary
Utah primary
Wyoming Republican caucuses

Saturday, March 11:
Arizona Democratic caucuses 
Michigan Democratic caucuses 
Minnesota Democratic caucuses

Sunday, March 12:
Nevada Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 14:
Florida primary
Louisiana primary
Mississippi primary
Oklahoma primary
Tennessee primary
Texas primary (both parties & Democratic caucuses)

Saturday, March 18:
Kentucky Republican caucuses

Tuesday, March 21:
Illinois primary

Saturday, March 25:
Wyoming Democratic caucuses

Monday, March 27:
Delaware Democratic caucuses

April

Tuesday, April 4:
Pennsylvania primary
Wisconsin primary

Saturday, April 15:
Virginia Democratic caucuses (& April 17)

Saturday, April 22:
Alaska Democratic caucuses

May

Tuesday, May 2:
Indiana primary
North Carolina primary
Washington, DC primary

Saturday, May 6:
Kansas Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, May 9:
Nebraska primary
West Virginia primary

Tuesday, May 16:
Oregon primary

Tuesday, May 23:
Arkansas primary
Idaho primary (Republicans only)
Kentucky primary (Democrats only)

Thursday, May 25:
Kansas Republican convention

June

Tuesday, June 6:
Alabama primary
Montana primary
New Jersey primary
New Mexico primary
South Dakota primary

[Primaries in bold; Caucuses in italics]

States that are split vertically had different dates for different party contests. The shade to the left of that line corresponds with the month in which the Democratic contest took place and the right side represents the Republican contest.

[Source: The Green Papers and news accounts from 2000. The latter was used to double-check the dates or discover missing ones.]

A few notes:
1) For a year when both parties had "contested" nomination races, there really was a surprising dearth of frontloading. California and Ohio inched up to join Super Tuesday, but those were really the only moves of significance. Even the GOP's allowing for February contests didn't serve as that big a departure from the 1996 calendar.

2) Having said that, Arizona, Delaware, Michigan and Virginia all took advantage of those new rules by holding February contests. It was those contests that kept the Bush-McCain race in the news while the Democrats waited out the period between New Hampshire on February 1 and Super Tuesday a month later. Bill Bradley sincerely wishes the DNC had let some of those other states go that wanted to go earlier. Then again, that was part of the reason that the Democratic side had a "contest" for its nomination. I keep saying "contest" simply because Bush-Gore was a done deal to the point that political scientists were making bets about the race in early 1999. And no, it wasn't your truly, who was merely a baby political scientist at the University of North Carolina at the time.

3) The February allowance by the GOP opened the door for a transitional 2004 calendar and then a 2008 calendar where February was the new March: where most states had taken up residence. So while frontloading between 1996 and 2000 was lacking, the rules changes for 2000 set the stage for the calendars that would develop for the races throughout the rest of the decade.


Recent Posts:
Shoveling Out from Under...

The Supreme Court Weighing in on Frontloading?

1996 Presidential Primary Calendar

Shoveling Out from Under...

The South generally isn't very adept at dealing with snow (...or in some cases the threat of snow*). Usually, six inches of snow is enough to shut the world down. Well, truth be told, an inch or two can have the same effect. But I just thought this applied to the world of economics. It just isn't cost-feasible for state and local governments here in Georgia or across the South to purchase the necessary equipment to deal with snow, especially if you only get significant accumulation once a decade (or so).

I can buy that. But I just didn't know that this applied to natural world as well. Most of the problem with this storm, and the reason FHQ has been unusually quiet the last couple of days, had to do with trees not being at their fittest.

What!?! [Bear with me; I'm hypothesizing here!]

If snow doesn't fall in any given year (or decade), weak trees and especially weak limbs never get tested, much less "weeded out". So when an unbelievably heavy/wet snow hits, chaos, in the form of down trees/limbs and inevitably power outages, is never far behind. And that was the case here on Sunday and Monday.

Maybe, then, just maybe, everyone was wrong to have mocked the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Initiative. Sure, that was meant for forest fire prevention, but it could have proven beneficial in the South in winter as well. Oh fine, it was a measure that only served the logging industry. You got me.

Anyway, I shoveled out from under snow yesterday and today I'm doing the same with email and FHQ-related business. I'll try to make up for lost time as quickly as possible.

*Often the threat of snow is enough to send seemingly 90% of the public out to the nearest grocery store to stock up on bread, milk, batteries, etc.


Recent Posts:
The Supreme Court Weighing in on Frontloading?

1996 Presidential Primary Calendar

Like a Kid in a Candy Store: A 2012 GOP Presidential Preference Poll

The Supreme Court Weighing in on Frontloading?

No, this isn't happening (...yet), but I was asked about the possibility of the Supreme Court allowing the parties' wishes to take precedence over the actions of state governments setting a presidential primary date not in accordance with party rules. [This question arose over at DemConWatch from a discussion over my 2012 Primary Calendar Projection.]

The parties do have the right to set the rules of their nominations. Last year when the Clinton camp was up in arms over the "at-large" casino caucuses in Nevada -- the ones they thought would give Obama a distinct and unfair advantage -- the courts refused to hear the case, falling back on the precedent set in other cases that the party dictates who its nominee will be.

And this has applications in other areas as well. The main conflict has been over the rules concerning how open a primary is. On the question of who can participate in a party's nomination process, the Supreme Court has said that the parties get to decide. In other words, if there is a conflict between state law and the party's wishes, the party gets its way.

This has worked in both directions: parties not wanting closed primaries and parties not wanting open primaries. The case that started all of this was the Tashjian case. Basically, a thirty year old Connecticut law requiring closed primaries came under fire when the state's Republican Party wanted to open their process up to independents as well. The result: The party's right to free association was upheld and independents were allowed to participate in the primary.

On the flip side, California Democratic Party v. Jones established that if a party didn't accept a state-mandated blanket primary as the primary modus operandi, the requirement had to be scrapped. And as the two major parties (and others) didn't accept the California blanket primary, it hit the road.

So what does all this have to do with primary timing? [Yeah, I go on a bit, don't I?] Well, you'd think that if a state law requiring a state to hold its primary on a date the parties didn't like, the parties would get their way. It seems a reasonable extension of the legal doctrine established above, right?

If the DNC says, "Massachusetts, you're going on the third week in May," and the Bay state government doesn't like it, then too bad. Well, what about the RNC? Let's say the GOP says that Massachusetts is fine where it is during the first week in February. Fine, the GOP can go in February and the Democrats can go in May.

Here's the rub, though, and this is where the timing conflict breaks with the opened/closed issue. The state picks up the tab for conducting the primary election. Splitting the two parties up like that doubles the cost (at least theoretically). That places an undue financial burden on the state all of a sudden.

There are a couple of questions that emerge here:

1) What about a state like Montana, where in 2008, the GOP went on February 5 and the Democrats held their delegate selection on June 3? Well, in that case the Montana GOP voluntarily opted out of the state funding to fund its own caucus. Nebraska did the same thing on the Democratic side. And Idaho Democrats have opted out of the state-funded primary at the end of May for years.

2) This one is more important. What if the GOP went along with the plan. Take the Massachusetts example. Let's say that both the DNC and RNC agree that the Massachusetts primary should be in May. Well, now there's a case; one the parties can win because the financial burden is now gone. Massachusetts would likely be required by the courts to shift its primary back a few months since that's what both parties wanted.

But for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the side of the parties on this issue, it would likely require a coordinated calendar assembled in a bipartisan fashion. There are certainly efforts being made on this front, but those competing interests -- that zero sum game where one tiny shift could fundamentally shift the balance in an election toward one party -- will stand in the way of that vision coming to fruition.


Recent Posts:
1996 Presidential Primary Calendar

Like a Kid in a Candy Store: A 2012 GOP Presidential Preference Poll

2012 Primary Reform: Previous General Election Margin as a Means of Setting the Calendar

1996 Presidential Primary Calendar

January

Thursday, January 11:
Ohio Democratic caucuses

Thursday, January 25:
Hawaii Republican caucuses (through January 31)

Saturday, January 27:
Alaska Republican caucuses (through January 29)

February

Tuesday, February 6:
Louisiana Republican caucuses (21 delegates)

Monday, February 12:
Iowa caucuses (both parties)

Tuesday, February 20:
New Hampshire primary

Saturday, February 24:
Delaware primary

Tuesday, February 27:
Arizona primary (Republicans only)
North Dakota primary (Republicans only)
South Dakota primary (Republicans only)

March

March: Virginia Republican caucuses

Saturday, March 2:
South Carolina primary (Republicans only -- party-run)
Wyoming Republican caucuses

Tuesday, March 5:
Colorado primary
Connecticut primary
Georgia primary
Idaho Democratic caucuses
Maine primary
Maryland primary
Massachusetts primary
Minnesota caucuses (both parties)
Rhode Island primary
South Carolina Democratic caucuses 
Vermont primary
Washington caucuses (both parties)

Thursday, March 7:
Missouri Democratic caucuses
New York primary

Saturday, March 9:
Alaska Democratic caucuses 
Arizona Democratic caucuses 
Missouri Republican caucuses 
South Dakota Democratic caucuses

Sunday, March 10:
Nevada Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 12:
Florida primary
Hawaii Democratic caucuses 
Louisiana primary (both parties -- 9 GOP delegates)
Mississippi primary
Oklahoma primary
Oregon primary
Tennessee primary
Texas primary (both parties and Democratic caucuses)

Saturday, March 16:
Michigan Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 19:
Illinois primary
Michigan primary (Republicans only)
Ohio primary (Republicans only)
Wisconsin primary

Saturday, March 23:
Wyoming Democratic caucuses

Monday, March 25:
Utah caucuses (both parties)

Tuesday, March 26:
California primary
Nevada primary (Republicans only)
Washington primary (Republicans only)

Friday, March 29:
North Dakota Democratic caucuses

April

Tuesday, April 2:
Kansas primary (canceled -- Republican State Committee chose delegates)

Saturday, April 13:
Virginia Democratic caucuses (and April 15)

Tuesday, April 23:
Pennsylvania primary

May

Tuesday, May 7:
Indiana primary
North Carolina primary
Washington, DC primary

Tuesday, May 14:
Nebraska primary
West Virginia primary

Tuesday, May 21:
Arkansas primary

Tuesday, May 28:
Idaho primary (Republicans only)
Kentucky primary

June

Tuesday, June 4:
Alabama primary
Montana primary (Democrats only, Republican beauty contest -- no delegates at stake)
New Jersey primary
New Mexico primary

Wednesday, June 5:
Montana Republican caucuses (through June 13)

[Primaries in bold; Caucuses in italics]

States that are split vertically had different dates for different party contests. The shade to the left of that line corresponds with the month in which the Democratic contest took place and the right side represents the Republican contest.

[Source: Congressional Quarterly and news accounts from 1996. The latter was used to double-check the dates or discover missing ones.]

A few notes:
1) 1996 is the turning point in the frontloading era, in my estimation. The impact of California's decision to pick up its belongings and move from June to March cannot be underestimated. All those delegates being decided upon three months earlier than usual change the calculus of the presidential nomination game for candidates and states alike. Every state following California was even more at risk of being meaningless than ever before.

2) From a numbers standpoint, there were 42 states that held primaries for at least one party in 1996. 29 of those states fell in either February or March. With the exceptions of Virginia, Kansas and Montana, all the contests after March were primaries. In other words, there had been some consolidation of caucus states in the earlier period and a bifurcation of primary states. Those primary states after March were all states that held their presidential primary concurrently with their primaries for state and local offices. Not all of the states that held concurrent primaries were late (see Maryland and Texas ), but each one of those late primaries fell into that category.

3) 1996 witnessed a couple of attempts at regional primaries. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont (the Yankee Primary) all held their primaries on March 5. Illnois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin (the Great Lake Primary) all held their contests on March 19. Plus, there was the remnants of the Southern Super Tuesday in 1988. Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas all went on March 12. The latter series of contests virtually sealed the deal for Bob Dole's ascendance to the GOP nomination, and before the race ever really got to the Midwest of the mini-Western primary (California, Nevada and Washington). So even though California moved, the Golden state still missed out on the action.


Recent Posts:
Like a Kid in a Candy Store: A 2012 GOP Presidential Preference Poll

2012 Primary Reform: Previous General Election Margin as a Means of Setting the Calendar

If You Were Indiana, What Would You Do in 2012? A View from Similar States

Like a Kid in a Candy Store: A 2012 GOP Presidential Preference Poll

From CNN/Opinion Research Corporation:

Palin: 29%
Huckabee: 26%
Romney: 21%
Jindal: 9%

Sample: 429 Republicans (nationally)
MoE: 4.5%
Conducted Wednesday and Thursday of last week (2/18-19)

A couple of thoughts:
1) Palin, Huckabee and Romney are basically tied and Jindal is simply suffering from a lack of name recognition nationally at this point. The poll was done prior to his appearance on Meet the Press last weekend and before his response to Obama's speech to Congress this week. Poor performance or not, I suspect the Louisiana governor would have made it into the low to mid-double digits if the poll had been conducted this week.

2) If these are the candidates, I have to say that this bodes well for Mitt Romney. With Iowa and South Carolina having such conservative Republicans, there's the potential that Huckabee and Palin split the conservative vote (Huckabee's 2008 organization vs. Palin's appeal) and open the door for Romney. The former Massachusetts governor finished second to John McCain in New Hampshire and won the Nevada caucuses in 2008. Granted this is all predicated on both the idea that the calendar remains pretty much the same as it was in 2008 and that Jindal never gets off the ground in his efforts. Neither of those are sure things this far out.

Plus, as Pollster points out: at a similar point four years ago Hillary Clinton led John Kerry 40% - 25% with John Edwards at 18%. Barack Obama? He wasn't included. And we see how that worked out.


Recent Posts:
2012 Primary Reform: Previous General Election Margin as a Means of Setting the Calendar

If You Were Indiana, What Would You Do in 2012? A View from Similar States

Indiana and 2012

2012 Primary Reform: Previous General Election Margin as a Means of Setting the Calendar

FHQ was lucky enough to have Will Bower (of PUMA fame) stop by to add his primary reform system to the comments section of our recent 2012 Primary Calendar Projection. Below is my rather lengthy response to the shape of the system and his plan in particular.

It's funny, Will. I had this same thought during the summer of 2007 when a group of Democratic Ohio state senators introduced a bill that would have moved the Buckeye state's primary from March 4 to January 29 (the same day as the Florida primary). That would have put the decisive state from the previous two general elections near the front of the 2008 primary queue.

Having said that, let me offer one suggestion and some other comments.

Suggestion: I glanced through your original post on this subject as well as some of the comments and it seems to me that some people had issues with the potential for constant rotation.
So why not cut down on the some of the volatility inherent in focusing on just the previous election and focus instead on the last two/three election cycles? Average the margins in each state over that time and set the calendar by rank order accordingly. [I'd actually like to see how the calendar(s) would differ.] That would control for anomaly elections yet still allow for some movement but not a wholesale upheaval from one election to the next.

My impression is that there are generally two things we know about voters and their perceptions of the presidential nomination process:

1) They like knowing when they are going to vote. We already know because the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is election day that the next presidential general election is on November 6, 2012.

2) They also like knowing that their vote has an impact. If you're voting in a primary held after the point at which a nomination has been decided, that vote isn't making that much difference.

The "easiest" remedy to these two potentially contrasting ideas is a national primary. Everyone knows when they are voting and that their vote matters. The disadvantage is that voter learning would be quite low with the end result that the front-runner would carry an even more decisive advantage into the election.

As I have documented in this space, there are also several rotating primary (whether regionally aligned or not) ideas as well. There are several drawbacks to these ideas:

1) It increases the likelihood of regional candidates that may not have broad appeal (Something that your plan admittedly addresses.).

2) Depending on the plan, it increases the travel constraints on the candidates (And no, I don't buy your argument that Iowa and New Hampshire are far apart. The candidates know that those states are going to be first and invest their time and money wisely well in advance (years not weeks) of those contests.). This also favors the candidates with the most money and name recognition.

3) Here's an issue that I haven't seen addressed anywhere in regards to these rotating primary plans. What happens when your party's nomination is not being contested in a year when your region/grouping is going first. Depending on the plan, it could take twelve years for the process to work its way around to you. And then, there's no guarantee that the same situation won't arise again. This also doesn't seem quite fair.

In a lot of ways, these plans have unintended consequences written all over them.

But the thing is we do have some evidence of support for each of these ideas. A survey of 1285 people conducted pre- and post-Super Tuesday in 2008 asked respondents about their support for primary system reform. Over 70% supported each plan with the national primary idea having slightly more support. Surprisingly though, when given the option, respondents preferred a regional primary system that continues to grant Iowa and New Hampshire an exemption over a such a system where their "first in the nation" status is stripped. [A national primary was still preferred to each.] For more on this survey and some other interesting analyses on it, please see the Tolbert, et al. piece in January's PS.

________________________________________________

But what about a primary system based on margin in the previous cycle? Yes, it is a potentially good way to vet candidates for the general election, but at the same time it insures that the spotlight is on the same group of states for the entire election year -- primary and general elections. There's something about that that doesn't seem fair.

The main issue I see is that to coordinate this or any of the rotating plans is requires either federal intervention or both national parties working in concert to impress upon state governments and parties that one of these plans is better than what we've currently got or a national primary. And I'm not convinced the parties would go along with this (whether it is the right plan or not). Let's assume for the sake of argument that this plan is adopted as is for 2012. That means that 14 of the first 15 states (and 20 of the first 25) will be states that were all red in 2004. Is the Democratic Party going to sign off on a plan that allows the Republican Party a chance to actively campaign and organize in all those formerly red states? Possibly, because it keeps them from organizing the way Obama did in red (caucus) states in 2008 in similarly cast blue states. But I doubt they would.

And even if the parties did, what would prevent cast-off, non-competitive state governments/parties from shifting their contests into more relevant positions? In other rotating systems, even those states would have their day in the sun every few cycles. It isn't like Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho can will themselves to be more competitive. Nor can Massachusetts, Rhode Island or Vermont. State governments dominated by particular state parties in those states, in fact, would resist that idea out of hand because it would entail helping the opposition party build itself. It is a lose-lose situation for those decision-makers; a situation that would make them seriously consider defying the calendar rules.

One thing to consider here is allowing for these states to have a seat at the table as well. Thomas Gangale's American Plan aligns states according to size but allows for a couple of the later groupings to shift into earlier positions. So instead of California being stuck at the end in perpetuity, the Golden state has a possibility of going as early as the fourth grouping of the process. That could apply to your plan as well, but it would mean shifting in some of the least competitive states into a more meaningful position.

__________________________________________________________
The first step is seeing what the GOP's Temporary Delegate Selection Committee comes up with between now and the summer of 2010. Their decision will have a large say in whether there will be significant reform before 2012 kicks off.


Recent Posts:
If You Were Indiana, What Would You Do in 2012? A View from Similar States

Indiana and 2012

Democratic Ulterior Motives for 2012 and Frontloading

If You Were Indiana, What Would You Do in 2012? A View from Similar States

Yesterday, I laid out a model for projecting how much attention the state of Indiana would have gotten had it held its presidential primary on an earlier date during previous cycles. Before we run the numbers, though, I thought it would be helpful to look at how other similar states have fared in moving their delegate selection events to earlier dates. Despite the fact that size just doesn't seem to matter (Neither my model here nor Ridout and Rottinghaus' model found the number of delegates a state has to be a significant factor in explaining the variation in a states decision to frontload or in the amount of attention said state receives.), my first inclination is to look at how similarly sized states fared after a frontloading move.

For our purposes, we'll use electoral votes as a proxy for size. Indiana has eleven electoral votes and fortunately, over the last several presidential election cycles there have been several similarly sized states that have made significant moves from one cycle to the next.

State Attention Changes (Delegates)
State	Before	After	Attention Change
Missouri (11)	March 7, 2000	February 3, 2004	-0.37%
Tennessee (11)	March 14, 2000	February 10, 2004	+1.32%
Wisconsin (10)	April 4, 2000	February 17, 2004	+2.39%

[NOTE: I should probably make at least some mention of the attention variable here. If you've had a chance to look at the Ridout and Rottinghaus paper cited above, the data they use to operationalize the concept is the number of candidate visits to and the number of ads run in a particular state. In the past I have used candidate spending and media coverage (a measure borrowed from Gurian and Haynes 1993) as a measure of this concept, but that series of measures has been compromised by both a change in what the FEC required candidates to file and by the proliferation of candidates opting out of the matching funds system.

As was my practice with the earlier set of data, I take the ads and visits data and convert it to percentages. Yes, that prevents us from saying, "Indiana would have gotten X more visits/ads had it moved its presidential primary Y number of of days/weeks forward." However, I find it powerful to look at this in terms of the share of attention each state got. "Could Indiana have increased its piece of the pie if it had been earlier?" If each state were created and treated equally then, we would expect them to each get about 2% of the total amount of attention (100%/50 states = 2% for each state). States, though, are not equal. Specifically, they are not equal in terms of size. A state like California, then, would be expected to net just more than ten percent of the total amount of candidate attention, while South Dakota would be expected to receive approximately one half of one percent. Indiana, in this case, is essentially right on average, expected to garner a hair more than 2%. From this, we can get a sense of whether a state has out- or under-performed based on what its expected share of the total amount of attention is.]

What, then, did Missouri, Tennessee and Wisconsin -- three states similar in size to Indiana -- gain from moving their presidential primaries to earlier dates between 2000 and 2004? In Missouri's case, not much. The Show-Me state actually lost ground, having gone from being lost in the Super Tuesday shuffle in 2000 to being stuck behind South Carolina and Arizona in 2004. The only reason I can think of to explain this is that the prevailing sentiment must have been that Missouri was going to be close in the general election anyway and that it was more important for the candidates to show strength in the South (in the Democrats' case) even if South Carolina was a done deal for November. First in the South status matters more than general election prospects, then.

While the Missouri case is somewhat puzzling, Tennessee and Wisconsin basically performed in the same way. Both went from essentially no attention in 2000 (both fell after Super Tuesday that year) to their expected levels of attention (give or take a few one-hundredths of a perentage point). What helped both in that regard was that both moved from inconsequential calendar positions to pre-Super Tuesday spots where they were not sharing the spotlight at all or with just one other state (Tennessee and Virginia went on the same date.). Overall though, this is a surprising finding (limited in scope though these cases may be). At least in terms of states around this size, we're talking about basically claiming a level of attention that should reasonably be expected and not out-performing that expectation. Basically, size may matter, but it is probably far less significant than how crowded the position to which a state of this size is moving.

Obviously size isn't all that matters, in fact across the two studies cited above, it has no real impact. But what are other means by which we can draw similarities between Indiana and other states? One thing that crossed my mind was that Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com put together a nice chart of State Similarity Scores during the summer months of the 2008 campaign. [Sadly, the chart is no longer up in the post and I've tried it with three different browers. However, due to the magic of the internet, I was able to unearth the chart. Safari will allow you to right click the icon that is in the place of the image and save the original. I'm assuming that the reason it has disappeared is because the 1 GB Blogger allowance for images has been exceeded. But I could be wrong. Anyway, I'll reproduce the chart here, but only with the understanding that this is NOT my work. I am merely borrowing it for the purposes of this analysis.] Basically, Silver attempted to discover the percentage of similarity between states based on 19 dimensions.

State Similarity Scores

[Chart via FiveThirtyEight.com. Click image to enlarge and here to go to the original post there.]

Across those 19 dimensions, Indiana has the most in common with neighbor Ohio, Kansas and North Carolina. Kansas is a caucus state (with the exception of 1992) which makes it more difficult to equate with other primary states and North Carolina has been on the same date as Indiana for all but two cycles in the post-reform era (1976 and 1988). The Tarheel state got more than its expected share of attention in 1976 and matched its expectation in 1988. North Carolina is slightly larger than Indiana and serves as a nice baseline for comparison. Again, we see that sharing the spotlight on a particular date makes a difference (on its face at least). North Carolina had its late March date in 1976 all to itself (and was consequential in the GOP nomination race) but was part of the larger Southern Super Tuesday in 1988, a year when the state did better in terms of receiving attention than in the past, but not as good as it would have been had all the other Southern states not gone simultaneously.

The state that shares the most in common with Indiana, though, is Ohio. And the Buckeye state certainly offers a cautionary tale when it comes to the impact of delegate-richness on the level of attention a state receives. Despite being a bellwether during the general election, Ohio has consistently come in under its expected level of attention. Much of that has to do with the state having a presidential primary mired in either May or June for much of the post-reform era. When the state jumped to March in 1996 and ended up coinciding with the Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin primaries, Ohio did gain attention from the candidates, but far less than would be expected for a state of its size and importance.* When Ohio moved again in 2000 (to Super Tuesday), the state actually lost ground. Again, the number of other states on the same date seems to matter.

Just looking through the data (without modeling and then predicting anything), then, size doesn't seem to matter that much. On top of that, if Indiana were smart, they would wait until the last possible moment in 2011 to decide on a date for its 2012 presidential primary (if they choose to go ahead with the move). In other words, the legislators in the Hooiser state would be wise to see where everyone else (or most everyone else) is going and then decide. The problems there, though, are twofold. The earliest allowed date, if party rules remain virtually unchanged, is going to be the first Tuesday in February, and as we've seen, it is going to be crowded. In other words, attention gains would be limited (The real gain would be in insuring that the state's voters have a say in who the party or parties' nominee(s) are going to be.). Relatedly, state legislators would also have to weigh the defiance option. If they go the Florida/Michigan route, Indiana risks losing delegates to the convention, but possibly gains much more attention in the process (especially if the "lose half their delegates" penalty on the GOP side remains the same). But the latter problem is more a problem for the national parties than it is for the states. The penalty just isn't strong enough to prevent states from defying party rules.

*This is even more curious since Ohio had aligned its primary with three other states in the region and those states had the date all to themselves. What didn't help was the fact that Dole's sweep through the remnants of the Southern Super Tuesday the week before forced his main rival, Steve Forbes, from the race, virtually assuring the senator of the GOP nomination


Recent Posts:
Indiana and 2012

Democratic Ulterior Motives for 2012 and Frontloading

Florida in 2012: Primary on the Move?

Indiana and 2012

As of yesterday, the resolution to form a committee to investigate the possibility of moving the Indiana presidential primary had made it through the Indiana state senate on a voice vote. All of this coming a week after the resolution (SCR (Senate Concurrent Resolution) 28) had emerged from committee successfully. Sure, this is the same strategy that was utilized and failed during the 2008 legislative session in Indiana (in the House -- HR 105). The difference this time is that there is actually bipartisan support for studying the move, whereas a year ago GOP State Rep. Suzanne Crouch was the only one pushing for the committee. In 2009, though, there is a Democrat and a Republican co-sponsor of the resolution in each chamber.

This strikes me as a wise way of going about this process. Why not look into the prudence of shifting the primary instead of just moving along with everyone else? [Who says a legislature can't be a deliberative body?] Indiana isn't California, so the candidates aren't necessarily going to flock to the Hoosier state if the state government there opts to shift its presidential primary to Super Tuesday, say.

But what is Indiana likely to gain by moving up versus staying put? Let's take a step back for a moment and discuss this situation. Overall, this is akin to the study that Travis Ridout and Brandon Rottinghaus had in PS early last year (Fortunately, that pdf link is not gated, but I'll link it here anyway.). Their goal was to predict the benefits a Western Regional Primary would receive based on varying levels of "crowdedness" and proximity to the New Hampshire primary. The benefits of the regional primary dissipated both the further away the bloc primary was from New Hampshire and the more frontloaded the calendar of contests around that regional primary got. It could be instructive to follow their lead -- taking the data from 2000, 2004 and now 2008 to predict what Indiana would get from moving earlier in 2012 -- but I'd argue it'd be just as instructive to see what Indiana would have gotten in 2000 and 2004 if they had moved up a certain number of weeks and with far fewer assumptions.

The same rules basically apply: We can regress the same group of variables Ridout and Rottinhaus did on the candidate attention variables. That information will allow us to simulate what Indiana or any other state would have gotten by simply shifting both its proximity to New Hampshire and how big of a crowd there was on the date where Indiana "moved." Fortunately I have most of this data and should be able to put something together over the coming weekend.

But first, what factors matter in this equation?

• Delegates: As I alluded to above, size maters. California is likely to get more attention from moving than Indiana.
  
• Primary or caucus?: Despite all the chatter about caucuses in 2008, primaries still garner the most attention from candidates.
  
• Event Scheduling: This site is pretty much predicated on the idea that in the current system, earlier is better.
  
• Number of candidates: Obviously, the greater the number of candidates in the nomination race at the time of a state's contest, the more attention that state is likely to get.
  
• Number of simultaneous events: A crowded field of contests on any one day translates into candidate resources stretched thin. Look no further than Arkansas on this one.
  
• Number of events in the same week: The reasoning above holds true here as well. If a state has a contest on the weekend following Super Tuesday, it may receive short shrift from the candidates than if it had not been as close to so many other contests.
  
• Number of nearby states on the same date: Finally, resources are hypothetically more efficiently spent if a cluster of contests in neighboring states occur simultaneously. If John McCain is already in Missouri it is much easier (and more likely) to go campaign in nearby Oklahoma or Arkansas or Tennessee prior to February 5, 2008.
  

And before we get into a statistical model, it would probably be best, not to mention instructive to look at some descriptive statistics for similar states that also recently frontloaded. That's where I'll turn tomorrow.

Recent Posts:
Democratic Ulterior Motives for 2012 and Frontloading

Florida in 2012: Primary on the Move?

1992 Presidential Primary Calendar

Democratic Ulterior Motives for 2012 and Frontloading

Yesterday, Jack put a bee in my bonnet by bringing up the specter of Democratic ulterior motives looming over the presidential primary scheduling for 2012. And as all good comments usually do, that got me thinking about the state legislative parties working to sabotage the nomination process for the alternate party. Just to be clear, I don't think this is necessarily happening. I don't think that Republicans could have foreseen what was going to happen with the DNC's sanction upgrade (fully stripping the state of its Democratic convention delegates) prior to the 2008 primaries or that the Democratic nomination would stretch out as far as it did. In any event the votes in both the Florida House and Senate were nearly unanimous; bringing in most of the Democrats in the process. If the Republicans in the Florida General Assembly were acting in ill will, then the Democrats took the bait. And I don't think that is the case any more than I think State Rep. Kevin Rader is proposing a reversion of the primary date in Florida to March to hurt the GOP in 2012. I just think he wants a primary that is in compliance with DNC rules (...if they were to remain the same for the next cycle or two).

But as long as we're talking ulterior motives, how about this one? The goal isn't necessarily to throw the 2012 GOP process into chaos, but to decrease the opportunity for on-the-ground organizing. In other words, keep the GOP away from an early and competitive, in this case, Florida primary and cause them to miss out on the organizational positives they would have gained. I'm going to go ahead and assume that if the primary rules are unchanged and the schedule remains similarly static, save Florida, the Republican nomination will have been decided well before the second week in March when Florida would hold its primary. Basically the, should Florida prove competitive in the subsequent general election campaign, then, the GOP's nominee will have lost out on some of that early organizational activity.

If 2008 taught us anything its that intra-party divisiveness has several levels. Jimmy Carter/Ted Kennedy divisiveness equals party paralysis while Obama/Clinton divisiveness leads to potential organization-building that will prove useful in the general election. [Now, it could also be that Barack Obama caught lightning in a bottle and that Hillary Clinton's endorsement really helped, but humor me, will you?] Of course, an additional layer in this is competition. Competition in 2008 is alright when both parties have contested nominations, but in 2012 it may not be welcomed in the Republican nomination battle. That type of competition builds interest in the race from state to state, but that could be offset to some extent by the need for the GOP to quickly settle in on an opponent for Obama. Would competition have helped the Democrats in 2004? [Actually, don't answer that. It could be that the Swift Boat stuff could have come out earlier, a la Jeremiah Wright, and either sunk John Kerry or helped his team develop a better strategy for dealing with it.] Still, the DNC allowed for February contests in 2004 precisely so that the party could unify quickly behind a nominee and begin the fight against George W. Bush. Would the RNC repeat this strategy or play with fire and attempt to mimic the competition and organization route the Democrats took in 2008? The former has failed, and the latter has the potential to blow up in their faces if the competition turns nasty.

But let's revisit this organization hypothesis because I don't think it can be understated. Democrats certainly could act in a way as to prevent primary period organization on the part of the Republicans, but it is probably more likely that we see Republican efforts to recreate what the Democrats had in 2008. This doesn't have to be some full-blown effort to resituate all the states on the calendar. It could simply be a few perceived November battlegrounds that get moved to earlier dates. This may also explain why Republicans in North Carolina and Indiana are pushing for earlier contests in 2012.

Let's think about this in terms of states those two states. Here are two states where Obama benefited because the Democratic nomination stretched into and through May. Obama was able to begin building the foundation in those states in a way he perhaps couldn't have minus the competition he had from Hillary Clinton. If Obama was the nominee at that point, Obama-McCain may not have energized voters in the same way that Obama-Clinton did. And in any event, the spotlight wouldn't have been that brightly shone on either state at that point.

If Indiana and North Carolina are shifted to earlier dates in 2012, as Republicans in each state are pushing for to varying degrees, that could provide the eventual nominee with some very much needed early organization in two of 2008's closest states*. So this isn't so much a matter of Democratic ulterior motives as it is about Republican motives in terms of the proper balance to create for 2012. [Am I saying the post title was misleading? No, of course not.]

*Of course if both Indiana and North Carolina move to Super Tuesday in February, then the quality of organzation is likely to suffer because candidate resources will be stretched so thin across so many states. Each would have to tamp down on the level of competition from other states.


Recent Posts:
Florida in 2012: Primary on the Move?

1992 Presidential Primary Calendar

The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (2/19/09)