GOP Temporary Delegate Selection Committee for 2012

I had a link to a full version of the Republican National Committee rules (2009-2012) come into my inbox this morning and thought I would cut and paste the relevant language concerning delegate selection for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination here. Additionally, the full text of those rules is appended at the bottom of the post.

The section, Rule 10(d) follows [See page 17 of rules below.]:

(d) There shall be a temporary committee to review the timing of the election, selection, allocation, or binding of delegate and alternate delegates pursuant to Rule No. 15(b) of these rules to the 2012 Republican National Convention. The Temporary Delegate Selection Committee shall be composed of fifteen (15) members, which shall include one (1) member of the Republican National Committee from each of the four (4) regions described in Rule No. 5, elected by the members of the Republican National Committee from each region at the 2009 Republican National Committee Winter Meeting; further, the chairman of the Republican National Committee will appoint three (3) additional members of the Republican National Committee and six (6) Republicans who are not members of the Republican National Committee. The chairman and general counsel of the Republican National Committee shall serve as ex-officio voting members. The chairman of the Republican National Committee shall convene the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee as soon as practicable after the 2009 Republican National Committee Winter Meeting. The Temporary Delegate Selection Committee shall make any recommendations it deems appropriate concerning additions to Rule No. 15(b) of these rules, provided that such additions shall preserve the provisions of Rule No. 15(b) adopted by the 2008 Republican National Convention, which shall be voted upon without amendment by the Republican National Committee at the 2010 Republican National Committee Summer Meeting and which shall require a two-thirds (2/3) vote to be adopted. Any action adopted would take effect sixty (60) days after passage. The Temporary Delegate Selection Committee shall disband following the 2010 Republican National Committee Summer Meeting.

Thus far, the membership of the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee (TDSC) has been scrutinized to some extent (see here and here), but not fully and the other related rules have been ignored as well. An important question emerges:

• How much power does the newly-instated Chairman Michael Steele actually have in this process?

At the outset, Steele has an immense amount of power over the membership of the committee. The very same meeting where Steele was elected also elected four RNC members to serve on the TDSC. Additionally, Steele, himself, and the RNC's general counsel (To be a Steele appointee according to Rule 5(c) [See page 8 in the rules below], though I can't find any documentation that current counsel, Blake Hall, was among those let go by Steele in the February wave of staff resignations/firings.*) both serve as members of the committee. Steele also has nine other appointments; six from among the members of the RNC and three from outside those ranks. If reform is the desired outcome then, Steele can choose among those within and outside of the RNC that really value a change, significant or otherwise.

The membership aspects have been discussed, but what is lost in this is the fact that two-thirds of the RNC still has to vote in favor of any change. Now, the committee already voted in favor of the Ohio Plan, but had that derailed by the McCain campaign at last year's St. Paul convention. Hypothetically then, this could be pushed through again without the same obstruction. Whether that comes to pass or not depends on the changes made at the state level for each state's member(s). Then again, these are the folks that elected Steele in the first place.

In other words, this situation is a bit fluid. And with chatter ramping up the last couple of weeks that Steele may be out of a job, the formation of the committee is even more up in the air. If you are betting on when the TDSC will be up and running, I'd opt for later rather than sooner if I were you.

Republican National Committee Rules, Adopted 2008

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*Incidentally, when I was searching for news about Blake Hall, I came across this podcast where he addresses presidential primary reform; specifically the Ohio Plan, which at that point -- summer 2008 -- had been passed by the RNC to be voted on at the national convention. The vote failed, but did lead to the crafting of the rule creating the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee. There were some interesting notes in this interview. Number one, Hall, whether he is retained as general counsel and is on the TDSC or not, supports primary reform of some sort. He indicated that the RNC penalty for violating a hypothetical Ohio Plan would be the same as it was in 2008 (a loss of 50% of a state's delegates). However, he also indicated that there had been discussion about increasing that penalty. Hall closed by discussing the tradeoff there, citing the Democratic problems in 2008. Namely, if a party is going to have a severe delegate penalty, said penalty has to be enforced.
[Original link to podcast here.]


Recent Posts:
Should Indiana Frontload in 2012? (Part One)

WA-SoS Urges Steele to Back a Regional Primary System

2008 Electoral College by Congressional District

Should Indiana Frontload in 2012? (Part One)

The View from 2004

A couple of weeks ago I laid out a simple model for examining the variation in the amount of attention (candidate visits and ad buys) states receive during any given presidential primary season. I further offered that one could use the information from this model to then predict the amount of attention a state would have gotten had it been in a different, more advantageous, calendar position. Let's reproduce the list of factors hypothesized to have an effect on the amount of attention a state would garner:

• Delegates: As I have alluded to before, 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 get 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.

Since Indiana is in the process of looking into whether they want to form a committee to look into whether they should reposition their own presidential primary, I've been using the Hoosier state as my test case. [And incidentally, SCR 28 has passed the Senate by voice vote and has been introduced and read in the House as of March 10.] The question then is, "How much more attention would Indiana receive if it held its presidential on an earlier date?"

For the purposes of this exercise, we'll define earlier as the earliest date on which a state could hold its delegate selection event without sanction from the national party. And we'll be looking at this in terms of the 2004 primary calendar (Not to brag, but it is awfully nice to be able to reference all the primary calendars back to 1976 now.). I'll add in a 2000 projection later, but it is a bit messier with both parties having contested nominations. There are a couple of additional factors to consider. For now though, I'll focus on 2004, when only the Democratic nomination was at stake. In 2004, the earliest a non-Iowa/New Hampshire state could hold its contest was a week after the New Hampshire primary, February 3. Indeed, six states moved into the brave new world of February for the 2004 cycle, the cycle when the Democratic Party initially allowed for contests that early. In other words, there was some competition on that date but not anywhere close to the level of competition for attention on that same first Tuesday in February of 2008.

If Indiana had moved from the first week in May to the first week in February for the 2004 cycle, then, what would the Hoosier state have taken home? I looked at the descriptives of this recently and found that a handful of similarly-sized states to Indiana frontloaded in 2004 and gained as a result of the move. Tennessee and Wisconsin essentially went from nothing to around the amount of attention a state of their sizes would be expected to be if all other factors were equal. The other state, Missouri, unfortunately suffered because its favorite son, Dick Gephardt, was running and the contest had been pre-emptively ceded to the Congressman by the other candidates. [Yes, Gephardt had dropped out by this point, but the amount of attention the state got was far less than it would have been if Gephardt hadn't been in the race at all. He had only dropped out a couple of weeks prior and other states on February 3 -- especially South Carolina -- were getting much more attention.] Moving into February, then, had its advantages.

The Model

Before we look into the ramifications of Indiana having been the eighth state on February 3, 2004, let's look at how the underlying model performed.

Regression Analysis of State-level Attention Shares (2004)
Variable	Coefficient	Indiana Value (actual/earlier)	Explanation of Measurement
Delegates	.434	1.87	Percentage of total Democratic delegates
Timing	-.011	106/15	Number of days since first contest
Primary?	.569	1	Dichotomous: 0 = Caucus 1 = Primary
Candidates	1.496***	2/7	Number of candidates vying for nomination at time of contest
Events/Day	.753	0/7	Number of other simultaneous events
Events/Week	-1.366*	0/7	Number of other events in the same week (Wednesday-Tuesday)
Neighbors?	.022	0/0	Percentage of neighboring states holding simultaneous events
Attention (DV)	--	0.09	Average percentage of candidate visits and ad buys
Constant	-2.136
R2 = .47 | n = 50 | Significance: *.05 **.01 ***<.01

Looking at Indiana in particular, we're talking about a primary 106 days after the nomination race began -- well after it was over in fact -- that basically got nothing in terms of attention. Despite the fact that it is around the median for size and the fact that Indiana held the only event on its date or week, the Hoosier state primary just fell too far after the point at which the nomination had been decided to matter.

The Results

Across the board, though, what factors did matter?* I'm not terribly surprised that the percentage of delegates wasn't a significant variable. As I've said before, it just doesn't seem to matter in the context of frontloading. Timing didn't even matter, but that may have more to do with the fact that it is fairly highly correlated (>.8) with the number of candidates in the race at the time of the primary or caucus, which was a significant factor. Multicollinearity is a potential problem with the events/day and events/week variables. Obviously there is some amount of overlap between those two concepts, but the two are nearly perfectly correlated (>.9). That said, when events in a week is dropped, the simultaneous events on a date variable is still not significant. In events/day's absence, events/week remains significant. The oddity here is that with both are included in the model, they run in counter directions, which is not consistent with the hypothsized (the more events, the less attention). As it turns out, it is the significant variable (events/week) that runs in the proper direction. [Fortunately.] Together, these seven variables account for just shy of half of the variation in attention we see across the fifty states. Not a great fit, but not all that bad for a first pass.

The Prediction

With that baseline set, what level of attention can we predict Indiana would have gotten if it had shifted its presidential primary to February 3? We'll have to alter Indiana's numbers on events/day (7 events), events/week (7 events), percentage of neighbors going on the same date (0%) and the number of days after Iowa (15) to make this prediction. With those numbers imputed into the regression equation Indiana's predicted share of candidate attention rises from essentially nothing in reality to over five and a quarter percent had the Hoosier state's primary been held during the first week in February. That is consistent with the amount of attention Arizona actually got. Now, size doesn't matter in this model, but Arizona is a similarly-sized state to Indiana. Arizona did get the benefit of having a primary simultaneously with its eastern neighbor, New Mexico, which got a similar share of the total attention for the cycle.

Great, so, Indiana would have gotten about 60 times as much attention as it got in 2004 by moving from May to February, but how do we go about interpretting a share of attention. What does that mean in terms of the number of ads bought or the number of candidate visits to the state? I'm glad you asked. I'll pick up there tomorrow with part two.

*Yeah, but how do we go about reading those coefficients from the table above? We can see that the number of candidates in the race at the time of the contest and the number of events occurring in the same week as any given contest matter, but what do those numbers mean? In the case of the candidates variable, we can interpret that coefficient to mean that a one candidate increase translates to a 1.5% increase in the amount of attention a state receives. In a somewhat counteractive fashion, a one contest increase in the number of events in a given Wednesday-Tuesday week causes a 1.4% decrease in the share of attention a state garners. Of course the other variables play a role in determining this as well despite not being statistically significant. Substantively, both the percentage of delegates and primary/caucus distinction are significant, though the latter isn't as much as the extant literature might lead s to believe. In the case of the former, a one percent increase in the share of delegates a state had means a .4% increase in the amount of attention that state got.


Recent Posts:
WA-SoS Urges Steele to Back a Regional Primary System

2008 Electoral College by Congressional District

2008 Presidential Primary Calendar

WA-SoS Urges Steele to Back a Regional Primary System

Well, indirectly...

The other day I was pleased, though not surprised, to see that Washington Secretary of State, Sam Reed was calling on newly-elected RNC chair Michael Steele to appoint secretaries of state to the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee that will shape the Republican primary system/calendar for 2012. [Pleased because any news on this front makes for more discussion here at FHQ. And not surprised because Reed, as a secretary of state and former president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, wasn't really going out on a limb to endorse a system that he and other secretaries of state have constructed and backed.]

However, as David Ammons, Secretary Reed's communications director, alludes to, Secretary Reed is getting out in front of a process that will take place between now and the summer of 2010 to craft the system for the 2012 nomination -- a system that will right the frontloading wrongs highlighted by the 2008 calendar. For my part, I'm less concerned with the specific reform in this case and more interested in the means by which Reed envisions it coming to pass.

Ammons was kind enough to share the secretary's letter to Steele with me and in it, Reed identifies the need to...

"...appoint Secretaries of State to this committee. It only makes sense to have people that are knowledgeable about the process and election procedures participating in creating the solutions to these problems."

Recall that the 15 person Temporary Delegate Selection Committee is comprised of 4 elected memebers from the RNC (one of those four, Fredi Simpson, happens to be from Reed's home state of Washington) and eleven members chosen by Steele himself. Of course, Reed then goes on to offer up both his and Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson's (also current president of the National Association of Secretaries of State) services to be two of those eleven chair-selected members.

So, what we are starting to see is the obvious.

1. Steele has quite a bit of power over this process.
2. Who those 11 members are matters.
   

To that second point, secretaries of state are going to be predisposed to supporting the NASS rotating regional primary plan. But that may not be the direction in which Steele wants to steer this process (...if Steele even hangs on to the position). Outside of occupation/elected office, though, what can we look at in terms of the future members' characteristics to get a sense of what the ultimate plan will be? As I've already stated, if the primary calendar remains unchanged in 2012, Mitt Romney is in a prime position to capture the GOP nomination. Much of that depends on Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee not only entering the race but splitting the vital social conservative vote in both Iowa and South Carolina. And that conclusion is not out of line with the results of the recent straw poll at the CPAC conference. Those two things (CPAC straw poll and Iowa/South Carolina nominating contests) don't necessarily equate to each other, but the same sort of dynamic could be at play. Regardless, support for Romney is essentially a proxy for support for the status quo in terms of the nomination system. Support for other candidates, then, could mean support of some measure of reform. [And that isn't to say that Romney supporters can't also support primary reform, but it won't happen unless the system is seen as something advantageous to the former Massachusetts governor.]

With that in mind, one thing I've already looked into is the FEC reports on contributions from the four elected members of the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee. This is something we can look at for the other 11 members when they are named as well. Here are those four members (via TheNextRight):

Region	Member	Defeated
Northeast	David Norcross (NJ)	Ron Kaufman (MA)
South	John Ryder (TN)	Morton Blackwell (VA)
Midwest	Pete Ricketts (NE)	Bob Bennett (OH)
West	Fredi Simpson (WA)	Ron Nehring (CA)

Norcross, for example, gave $2300 to Mitt Romey's campaign in early 2007. The other three, however, didn't appear to have national-level contribution activity other than to the RNC. Those three focused much of their donations on state parties and local senate candidates. As the other members are named, we may be able to draw similar conclusions.

But for now we're just playing the waiting game.

[UPDATE: The letter cited above is now posted in full on the Washington Secretary of State's web site now.]


Recent Posts:
2008 Electoral College by Congressional District

2008 Presidential Primary Calendar

2004 Presidential Primary Calendar

2008 Electoral College by Congressional District

I have been wanting to look into this for a while -- just to compare the 2008 election under the currently configured electoral college to the electoral college under the Maine/Nebraska system -- but neither the data nor a good map made themselves available. And even though the Swing State Project has had the data on this up for a while, CQ drew my attention back to the issue yesterday. From those sources, it can be discerned that Obama won 242 congressional districts and McCain 193. [We know, for instance, that the Democrats won 257 seats in the House and the Republicans won 178. Further, Obama won 34 of those districts where a Republican candidate won the House seat. McCain was able to win in 49 districts where a Democrat was victorious in the House race. That's a net gain of 15 districts/electoral votes for McCain.]

[Click Map to Enlarge]

The map above isn't the greatest -- it doesn't, for instance, include Alaska and Hawaii -- but it conveys the point. [Plus, I've yet to see a map on this.] The dark-shaded districts are the ones where Obama or McCain and a Democrat or Republican House candidate, respectively, won the district. In the lightly-shaded districts, McCain and Obama won while a House candidate of the opposite party carried the congressional race. Now, it should be noted that some of the smaller suburban/urban districts don't show up as well as those districts larger in area. However, below you'll see the list of all 83 districts where the vote for president and House were split between the two parties. These seats, or at the very least a fraction of them, are where the battlegrounds will be in next year's midterms.



House seats aside, under the electoral vote allocation system used by Maine and Nebraska, the winner of a congressional district receives one electoral vote and the overall statewide winner wins the two electoral votes that represent a state's two senators. Adding the 56 electoral votes from the 28 states Obama won (plus the three electoral votes from the District of Columbia), the president's electoral vote total would have equaled 301. McCain, meanwhile, would have started off with more electoral votes from congressional districts alone to have suprassed his total under the current electoral college system (173 electoral votes). By adding in the 44 electoral votes for overall statewide victories would have brought the Arizona senator's total to 237 electoral votes.

The bottom line is that the Democrats gained in 2008 from in the system as it is set up currently. And that is strange considering the party has been behind the eight ball in terms of the electoral college for the better part of a generation. If the system shifted to a completely Maine/Nebraska set up that would tilt things toward the GOP a little more. In the process, though, there would be a move from focusing on a handful of swing states to a finite number of swing districts. And despite the fact that a split between the presidential and House votes in a district does not make for a competitive presidential race in that district necessarily, we are talking about 83 such districts in 2008 from 37 states. From a strategic standpoint, it would be fun to see the system operate under this method for one election cycle.

[NOTE: I'd like to add a special note of thanks to those who contacted FHQ either via the comments or through email with corrections and/or suggestions. I think we've got it right now. The post is certainly better because of those comments.]


Recent Posts:
2008 Presidential Primary Calendar

2004 Presidential Primary Calendar

2000 Presidential Primary Calendar

2008 Presidential Primary Calendar

January

Thursday, January 3:
Iowa caucuses (both parties)

Saturday, January 5:
Wyoming Republican caucuses

Tuesday, January 8:
New Hampshire primary

Tuesday, January 15:
Michigan primary

Saturday, January 19:
Nevada caucuses (both parties)
South Carolina Republican primary (party-run, state-funded)

Saturday, January 26:
South Carolina Democratic primary (party-run, state-funded)

Tuesday, January 29:
Florida primary

February

Friday, February 1:
Maine Republican caucuses (through February 3)

Tuesday, February 5:
Alabama primary
Alaska caucuses (both parties)
Arizona primary 
Arkansas primary
California primary
Colorado caucuses (both parties)
Connecticut primary
Delaware primary
Georgia primary
Idaho Democratic caucuses
Illinois primary
Kansas Democratic caucuses
Massachusetts primary
Minnesota caucuses (both parties)
Missouri primary
Montana Republican caucuses
North Dakota caucuses (both parties)
New Jersey primary
New Mexico Democratic primary (party-run)
New York primary
Oklahoma primary
Tennessee primary
Utah primary
West Virginia Republican state presidential convention

Saturday, February 9:
Kansas Republican caucuses
Louisiana primary
Nebraska Democratic caucuses 
Washington caucuses (both parties)

Sunday, February 10:
Maine Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, February 12:
Maryland primary
Virginia primary
Washington, DC primary

Tuesday, February 19:
Hawaii Democratic caucuses
Washington primary (Republicans only)
Wisconsin primary

March

Tuesday, March 4:
Ohio primary
Rhode Island primary
Texas primary (both parties & Democratic caucuses)
Vermont primary

Saturday, March 8:
Wyoming Democratic caucuses

Tuesday, March 11:
Mississippi primary

April

Tuesday, April 22:
Pennsylvania primary

May

Tuesday, May 6:
Indiana primary
North Carolina primary

Tuesday, May 13:
Nebraska primary (Republicans only)
West Virginia primary

Friday, May 16:
Hawaii Republican state convention (through May 17)

Tuesday, May 20:
Kentucky primary
Oregon primary

Tuesday, May 27:
Idaho primary (Republicans only)

June

Tuesday, June 3:
Montana primary (Democrats only)
New Mexico primary (Republicans only)
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 2008. The latter was used to double-check the dates or discover missing ones.]


A few notes:
1) The 2008 election ended up doing what 2000 did not. [No, it didn't prevent use of the butterfly ballot.] With no one from the incumbent presidential administration seeking the Republican nomination, both parties had competitive primary races. Granted the widening of the window to allow for February contests helped, but the removal of partisanship* from the frontloading decision-making process certainly didn't hurt the states' motivation to shift to earlier dates. In other words, state actors on both sides of the aisle opted for an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" strategy. Republicans and Democrats in state legislatures were much more likely to get along on this issue operating under the assumption that, "Hey, if your contest is early it won't hurt our party as long as our contest is early too." Of course, hindsight being what it is, Republicans in some states may have had some reservations about shifting forward given the competitiveness of the Democratic nomination race and what that meant in terms of organization for the Obama general election campaign. In 2008, then, conditions were much better in terms of enticing states to frontload than they had been eight years earlier.

2) Obviously, the somewhat "happy" balance of contests from the 2004 calendar was slightly disturbed in 2008. Again, in terms of primaries, there were in 2008 24 primaries before March 5 during March and 10 after March. That differed from the 11-14-13 primary distribution across the same time periods in 2004. On its face, then, most of the frontloading -- in terms of primaries -- came from those during March states from 2004.

3) The real issue with the 2008 primary calendar was the fact that a handful of states decided to defy national party rules and hold their delegate selection events prior to February 5. Florida and Michigan got all of the headlines because of the severe penalty initially imposed upon both states by the DNC. Well, the initial rule called for a loss of half a state's delegates in the event of a timing violation, but the DNC wanted to make an example of Florida.

...and then Michigan. While that was the big story, lost in the shuffle was the fact that all of the states that held January contests on the Republican side received a penalty of half their total convention delegates as well. Iowa and Nevada were exempted because the first steps in their caucus processes did not directly allocate any delegates to the Republican convention. However, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wyoming (and perhaps Maine. I'll have to check to see if the February 1-3 caucus in the Pine Tree state allocated delegates directly to the convention.) all lost voting rights for half of their delegations to the Republican convention in St. Paul (Read more about that situation here and here.). Moving forward to 2012 and beyond, though, the issue becomes whether or not this defiance was aberration or if there will be a greater number of rogue states challenging the national party rules.

*Florida Democrats may take issue with the phrase, "removal of partisanship." Granted, it wasn't until after the fact that the state had been stripped of all its Democratic convention delegates that Florida Democrats had a problem with partisanship. In this case it was a state government completely controlled by Republicans; Republicans who were unwilling to help Democrats out of the predicament. Of course, Florida's Democratic state legislators didn't really have a leg to stand on since the votes on HB 537 were nearly unanimous in both chambers of the Florida General Assembly.


Recent Posts:
2004 Presidential Primary Calendar

2000 Presidential Primary Calendar

Shoveling Out from Under...

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