Introducing FHQ Plus

Last week marked the 16th anniversary of FHQ's initial post. It was modest by 2007 standards. Many things around here are. But it was the first step in the development of a site that has become a resource, a companion guide to presidential elections generally, but nominations and nominations rules in particular. As I have noted on similar occasions in the past, it all started as little more than an effort to gather and share anecdotal evidence of presidential primary movement for the 2008 cycle for dissertation research and transformed over time into a field guide of sorts. The mission became an effort to catalog and contextualize not only primary calendar changes within and in between cycles, but nominations rules changes as well, and to package all of that insanely complex maneuvering into something more easily digestible for everyone. 

Look, it is a niche. I know that. I have known that. This stuff can read like stereo instructions sometimes. And I have seen folks' eyes glaze over when I launch into it. Nevertheless, 16 years in, I have learned 1) that there is value out there in this resource and 2) that there is a cyclical nature to all of it. That glaze over the eyes gets a little thinner with regularity: every four years as the presidential nomination races heat up, this information -- the primary calendar, the rules, the impact each (and the changes to each) will have within states and collectively to the process on a national scale --  becomes more important. Well, it is always important, in truth. But it begins to rise in relative importance every cycle once the midterms pass. Traffic jumps a little and then a lot. Email requests increase a little and then a lot. Or in the case of the 2024 cycle, they jump a lot if the Democratic Party waits until after the midterms to fundamentally reshape its primary calendar. 

But that is the way it goes, or perhaps, the way it has gone. I work hard to create for and maintain this resource. It has been extremely important to me to freely share it all so that the information could get out there. So that it could benefit those who are looking to be better informed about the ins and outs of the presidential nomination process. As a political scientist, I continue to wear that teaching hat, and I continue to place a great deal of value on the notion that knowledge is power in the hands of citizens in a democracy. And that mean citizens of all stripes from those in campaigns, parties and media to those in the academy and everyone else just trying to make some sense of the complex systems that determine who the standard bearers for the major parties will be in presidential elections. 

FHQ remains committed to that value.

But the model will change for the first time after 16 years. FHQ -- frontloadinghq.com -- is not going anywhere. But today I am excited to launch FHQ Plus, a paid subscription arm of FHQ built on the Substack platform. If you have been a regular reader of or have casually happened upon FHQ over the years, then the concept will be similar at FHQ Plus. Those discussions of primary movement and delegate selection rules changes will be there. In-depth analyses and other musings to further contextualize those changes will be there. Reactions to news and other events that require more space than social media will allow will be there too. And so will some other enhancements that are made available on Substack. Twitter is not going anywhere, but there is obviously some uncertainty with how the platform is going to function in the future. The Substack chat function allows for some interesting connectivity among subscribers to FHQ Plus that may nurture important conversations. [And I'll be real, bots spamming the comments section on Blogger forced me to switch to moderating that; something to which I never took. I just did not have the bandwidth to deal with it.] And there are podcast possibilities as well. 

And no, that does not completely gut the original FHQ. Our flagship property, the presidential primary calendar will stay in place. Increasingly, links from the calendar will lead to FHQ Plus, but the base calendar will remain available to everyone. That same basic structure will hold for base delegate allocation rules pages when those are posted in the future. And I brought Invisible Primary: Visible back at the beginning of the month with this move in mind. It will continue to post every weekday in the mid-morning on FHQ and continue to deliver insights too big for social media and too small for a stand-alone post. And the vast majority of the FHQ archive will remain right where it is, available for everyone. Additionally, there are tentative plans to cross-post one item from FHQ Plus every week (probably on Saturdays) and a dedicated "column" (probably on Sundays).

Everything else moving forward will be published on FHQ Plus. I have wrestled with a pay model for a while now. Keen observers may recall that for a period during latter half of 2022 there were ads in various places around FHQ. Ultimately, I did not like the way that cluttered up the site. There was and is already a lot of material to take in at FHQ and ads only served as a distraction from that. A subscription model circumvents that distraction. 

The monthly subscription rate to FHQ Plus is initially set at five dollars ($5) or for the year, $30. In both cases, that is the lowest level allowed through Substack.

This is another aspect of this with which I wrestled. Five dollars will price some folks out. I get that. Others may feel like five dollars undervalues the FHQ experience. Folks who fall into that latter category -- those who place a higher value on FHQ Plus and its mission -- are free, welcome really, to give at a value that they feel is appropriate. Think of it as akin to how Radiohead distributed In Rainbows. It was a pay-what-you-want model with a nominal service charge -- what was it, 10¢? -- to use a debit or credit card and get the digital file for the album. FHQ Plus is the same. If you want, you can pay what you want under the Plus Founder (Suggested) option, where you can input a yearly price your choosing about $30. But the baseline charge will be five dollars a month or $30 a year. 

In the end, this is not Netflix. It is not Spotify. It is not whatever fill-in-the-blank other service you subscribe to. But FHQ Plus does fill a void, and in my estimation, an important one that arises for a lengthy period every four years. It is a niche service, and I am asking folks to chip a bit to help FHQ continue in its larger mission to fill that void.

Most importantly and in closing, I want to do something that I try to do every year when the anniversary of FHQ's launch rolls around, and still never really feels like enough. I want to say a very sincere thank you to everyone. Thank you to everyone for reading, whether from near the beginning or not until only recently. Thank you for the interactions and the comments here or on social media. They often led to posts or made existing ones better. Thank you to the long line of folks over the years -- you know who you are -- who have advocated for FHQ, who have promoted the site or its affiliated social media channels, and who have reached out privately to offer words of praise or a simple thank you. Those efforts, no matter the size, have meant the world to me. And I greatly appreciate them all. 

Thank you and welcome to FHQ Plus.

--

Josh

--

Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Lessons Learned in 2016 and the 2024 Republican Nomination

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Think, for just a sec, about those early presidential primary polls

Alaska Democrats Will Hold an April 6 Party-Run Presidential Primary

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

New Ways to Get FHQ

Things are ramping up for the 2024 presidential election cycle (whether any of us are ready for it or not). 

That is certainly also true in FHQ's neck of the woods. The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee's decision late last week to continue the process of altering the pre-window states on the Democratic calendar has set off a flurry of activity here and elsewhere. 

Long ago, I set up an email subscription/newletter service through Feedburner that many of you have taken advantage of over the years. And many of you may have subsequently probably forgotten you even did that it was so long ago. Feedburner, of course, has since died (and did so during a dormant period around here). As such, I have migrated the subscription service from Feedburner over to Follow.it, and email delivery of FHQ content will begin again.

If you are new to FHQ and are interested in signing up for the newsletter service, then simply enter your email address in the box in the righthand column (the one with the big black Subscribe button). [If you are on the mobile page you will have to toggle over the web version.]

Finally, with all the recent movement at Twitter, I, like many others, have explored alternatives as a backup of sorts. I have been posting for a few weeks now at both Mastodon (@fhq@mas.to) and Post (@fhq_). Please follow FHQ in those spaces if you are so inclined. 

Links to all of these and more are always also provided at the conclusion of each post.

As always, thanks so much for reading and following along.

--

Recent posts:

Michigan Presidential Primary Bill Stuck in End-of-Session Rush

DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Adopts Biden Calendar Proposal

Biden Calls for Calendar Shake Up Ahead of Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies.   

FHQ Turns 14

Today marks the beginning of FHQ's 15th year. Like any other period of time, it has been a span that has seen both ups and downs, none more challenging than this last year. But that is nothing unique to FHQ. We have all in various ways been pushed since the start of this pandemic.

They were humble beginnings. For a site that started out as nothing more than an attempt to gather information about how the 2008 presidential primary calendar was forming and share it as part of the (anecdotal) data gathering process for a doctoral dissertation, FHQ blossomed into something else. Over the years we have brought in many advocates and allies (and detractors too, I am sure), Democrats and Republicans, academics, practitioners and lay person alike with a simple goal: to inform the public about the complex process that both parties use to nominate presidential candidates and how that process has changed. 

Each hour, day, week, month spent during these last 14 years aiming for that goal have been extremely rewarding, but I want to close with a simple thank you to those of you new and old who have taken the time to read and take part in the conversations begun and continued here and on social media. So thank you. Thank you for being a part of this endeavor. I look forward to what the next year of FHQ brings.

--

Josh

Recent posts:

Oregon Bill Would Shift Presidential Primary to Super Tuesday

Circling of the Wagons for First-in-the-Nation in New Hampshire

From Where Will the 2024 Delegate Rules Changes Come?

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or subscribe by Email.

See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies.     

FHQ at 8 and the Future

Back in late March, around the time Ted Cruz was announcing his presidential intentions and the Affordable Care Act was celebrating a birthday of its own, FHQ hit the eighth anniversary of its humble start. At the time I did not really want to compete with those events and then the end of the semester push intervened. Yet, for a site that revolves around and thrives on the rhythms of a presidential election cycle, an eighth birthday is not without some symbolism. That is two presidential terms of office, and that brings FHQ into a third cycle of digging into the minutiae of the presidential nomination process (among other things).

I wanted to take a moment to say a very sincere thank you to everyone: all who have read over the last eight years, those who have offered constructive criticism about the site and made it and me better, and the folks who have from time to time dropped a note of encouragement. Every bit of it has been greatly appreciated.

I don't know that I set out to create this FHQ. At its origin, the site was nothing more than a self-interested effort to gather some (probably too late) anecdotes from around the 2007 formation of the 2008 presidential primary calendar. I wanted those events to highlight various aspects of my dissertation research and figured why not share. What followed was a closely contested Democratic nomination race in which the rules like those behind the primary calendar seemed to matter. That provided enough fodder to allow FHQ to start growing.

And it did in fits and starts thereafter. If 2008 was a debut album with pretty limited success, then 2009 was a lame follow up with a bunch of filler. Seriously, go look at some of that stuff. I was still trying to find my voice as a blogger and figure out what I wanted FHQ to be. That did not come until 2011 when, thanks to the RNC and their delegate selection rules -- or penalties with minimal teeth really -- put the primary calendar and delegate allocation firmly in the 2012 spotlight. FHQ was in the right place at the right time.

There were many others, but stories from Molly Ball and Jeff Zeleny in particular really put FHQ on the map in late 2010 and into 2011. Persistent support from bloggers in the political science community like John Sides at the Monkey Cage and John Bernstein at various places before he arrived at Bloomberg View also helped to spread the word on FHQ and legitimize what I was doing here. Without those folks, far fewer people would know me as obsessive, exhaustive or an American hero (all of which the self-deprecating part of me want to dispute) in talking about mainly presidential nomination rules and their impact. Without them and others FHQ does not end up on Fresh Air or the PBS Newshour to share with a wider audience what I greatly enjoy talking about and teaching. I am grateful for those people and the opportunities I've had because of them. Thank you all.

At the end of the day, though, it all comes back to that desire mentioned above: to share with whomever cares to read or listen what I know and what I have learned about the rules of the presidential primary process and their effect in shaping the outcome of any race for a presidential nomination. Being able to share what I know about the process has always been the goal around here even if as that developed slowly and somewhat organically over the last eight years.

 Thank you all for reading.

--
I would be remiss if I did not also touch on the future for FHQ. The plan is not to change all that much, but external circumstances may force a change in the standard operating procedure around here. For the last five years I have been chasing something that may not exist. Following a long and messy divorce in 2009-11, I was basically left to choose between 1) being near my kids and 2) the possibility of an academic job that I had worked hard for (throughout graduate school) but may take me far away from my kids. For five years I have been able to find a certain sweet spot: temporary jobs at North Carolina institutions that have kept me close enough to my kids.

All the while, the intention has always been to find something long term -- tenure-track -- here in North Carolina. That has proven elusive. The academic job market is tough like a great many sectors of the economy these days, but tougher when you make the choice -- no matter how noble -- to constrain yourself geographically to a particular area in order to be a part of your kids' lives. Overall, though, I am dependent on there actually being jobs, both long-term and temporary. And sometimes there are not any of either.

That is the case for me now as my contract at Appalachian State runs out. This year brings an uncertainty that breaks with the status quo of the past few years and has me contemplating shuttering FHQ to pursue other opportunities. The sentiment would have been unthinkable to me not that long ago and is tough to type now. But I owe it to FHQ readers, both loyal and casual, to be candid about my situation and this site. Matters are different enough for me in 2015 that I have to be open to doing things in [a] way(s) that I did not think I would.

My plan is not to shut FHQ down at the moment (or any time in the future to be perfectly honest). Right now, I've got work on a book project ahead of me; a book that I would prefer to get out and share with people some time in 2016. But I am now more open to other possibilities; campaigns, media, think tanks, etc. than I have ever been. I have to be. If you are in any of those categories or others and would like to talk to me about how my expertise fits into what you are doing in preparation for the 2016 elections drop me a line by clicking on the "Contact" link in the upper right sidebar.

Thanks for reading, y'all.
--
Josh

Recent Posts:
An Update on Connecticut Republicans and 2016 Caucuses

March Presidential Primary Bill Stuck in Neutral in Rhode Island

Florida Republicans Go Winner-Take-All

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Let's Talk About the Primary Calendar and the Republican Nomination Race, Part Two

FHQ has received some questions from a handful of reporters and emails from interested readers this week concerning the state of the 2016 presidential primary calendar. Mainly, the subject has revolved around a simple question: Why are there differences between the FHQ calendar and other calendars out there? This is particularly relevant in view of the fact that I sketched out a different tentative calendar at the Monkey Cage earlier this week.

Think of those two versions as two opposite ends of a spectrum. FHQ will call them the ideal national party calendar (the Iowa on February 1 version) and the real time FHQ calendar (the Iowa in January version).

The latter calendar is devised under the premise that if primary season began today, knowing what we know now, where would the carve-out states fall? Given that the New York primary is still scheduled on February 2 as of today, that means that at least Iowa and New Hampshire would ease into calendar slots ahead of that. And if Colorado Democrats and/or Republicans opt into the February 2 caucus option that is available to them under Colorado law, that may bump Nevada up too. That would have a domino effect, pushing Iowa and New Hampshire up even further into early January.

FHQ would be surprised if New York did not move to a compliant primary date. The legislature in the Empire state just moves more slowly than others. With a year round session they can afford to legislate at a more leisurely pace than states with legislatures that adjourn in May. As a point of reference, New York did not begin the process of moving its primary until June 2011 for he 2012 cycle.

Similarly, FHQ does not think Colorado Republicans will opt into a February 2 caucus date in 2016 like the party did in 2011. It has not really been talked about, but Colorado got one of the nine Republican primary debates -- the October CNBC one -- and that either is or was a nice bit of leverage for the Republican National Committee to have. [A debate is what Governor Jan Brewer was angling for in 2011 when she threatened but did not move the Arizona presidential primary into January.]

Yet, New York is scheduled for February 2 and until that primary is moved via legislation, then Iowa and New Hampshire would be ahead of that point.

...if primary season began today.

That separates the FHQ calendar from the ideal national party calendar. And bear in mind that the national parties both have an interest in telling everyone that primary season will begin on February 1. The parties both want the certainty of a set schedule as soon as possible and tend to act as if everything is fine until it very obviously is not. That is what got FHQ a call from the RNC legal counsel's office in 2011. They were curious, if not upset, that I had the carve-out states penciled into calendar spots in January. That discussion ended in a stalemate: the RNC arguing that their rules said the carve-out states would be in February and FHQ countering that the 50% penalty did not seem to be deterring some states, notably Florida, from moving to non-compliant positions on the calendar. [NOTE: Not wanting to appear political science smug prevents me from pointing out who ended up being right on that one. Oops.]

The lesson? The calendar is not set until it is set. And the 2016 presidential primary calendar is not set yet. It is a heck of a lot closer to the national parties' ideal calendar in 2015 than it was in 2011 though. And the national parties have to like that.

Recent Posts:
The SEC Primary Has Nothing to Do with Georgia Being More Prominent in 2016

Nevada Democrats and a Presidential Primary in the Silver State

Kansas Senate Passes Bill to Permanently Cancel Presidential Primary

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook or subscribe by Email.

If Primary Season Began Today: A Note on the 2016 Presidential Primary Calendar

There is a method to how FHQ assembles its 2016 presidential primary calendar that bears repeating now that the process is getting into the thick of primary/caucuses movement (or at least to the point in the cycle when most of said movement is typically witnessed). That method boils down to a simple question:

If primary season began today, where would the various primaries and caucuses fall on the calendar? 

To answer that, let's first think about another couple of related (if not redundant) questions. What do we know? What information do we have? FHQ answers these questions first before it sets a preliminary calendar. And what we know at this point is what state laws or state party bylaws tell us. In the vast majority of primary states, state law clearly lays out a date on which a presidential primary election is to be conducted (using state funds). The exceptions are the carve-out primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina along with a handful of other states that have options layered into state law that provide (or were created to provide some scheduling flexibility).¹

Caucuses are slightly different. State parties set the dates of the caucuses/convention process and often that is not something that is codified in the state party bylaws. In fact, those states where a date is codified well in advance of a presidential election year are the exceptions. Hawaii Republicans, for instance, set a date in their party bylaws. Colorado and Minnesota have caucus processes that are guided by state law insofar as the dates are concerned.

Currently on FHQ's calendar, there are 35 states with known primary dates. But that is not the extent of our knowledge on the matter. We also know that...

• Colorado parties have a choice between the first Tuesday in February and the first Tuesday in March for their precinct caucuses.
• Minnesota parties have to agree on a date for Democratic and Republican precinct caucuses in 2016 by the end of February 2015. If they cannot come to an agreement, the caucuses will be conducted on the first Tuesday in February. 
• The carve-out states are protected by the national party delegate selection rules. The DNC has set specific dates for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, but the RNC lets the process play out between those four states (and others). The RNC, however, does protect the carve-outs. And in 2016 that protection is more robust. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina have a month before the next earliest contest in which to schedule their primaries or caucuses. If New York law is not changed, then the carve-out states would have a window of a month before February 2 -- when the New York primary is scheduled -- to set the dates of their contests. The other part of that protection is that the national parties have more severe penalties they can use in 2016. The DNC gives its Rules and Bylaws Committee the power to increase the baseline 50% delegate penalty and the RNC rules would strip rogue states of all but 9 or 12 delegates depending on the delegation size. 
• New Hampshire will want to be before every state but Iowa.
• Iowa will want to be first.
• South Carolina will want to be ahead of all southern states by at least a week (more likely ten days if the parties in the Palmetto state stick with Saturday primaries).
• North Carolina is a problem right now. The primary in the Tarheel state is tethered to South Carolina's. The state law passed in 2013 calls for the North Carolina primary to be the Tuesday after the South Carolina primary (if the South Carolina primary is before March 15. It will be.).  If South Carolina plans to keep a Saturday primary, the Tuesday after that -- and thus when the North Carolina primary would be scheduled -- would violate that seven day buffer the South Carolina parties like (but is not called for in law). 
• New York moved for 2012 from February to April, but came to February back when the law expired at the end of 2012. 
• Michigan has signaled that it will move out of the end of February.

FHQ also assumes that Colorado, Minnesota and Utah -- states with options -- will choose the later and rules-compliant dates available to them and that New York will repeat its move back to a later date in 2016.

What that means is that the states that are on the calendar from March-June have contests scheduled for 2016. The dates are set in stone unless they are changed. That is why the currently convening state legislatures are important to the calendar formation process.

But...

[...and this is a significantly big BUT...]

The carve-out states plus North Carolina currently have no specified dates. Given what we know from above, though, we can make educated guesses about where they would end up on the calendar. The first domino to fall would either be South Carolina or Nevada. South Carolina would be more problematic because of how the North Carolina primary is anchored to its primary. South Carolina would not, for instance, opt for a Saturday, February 27 primary and allow a North Carolina (and other southern states already schedule there) to hold contest just three days later on March 1. South Carolina would at the very least draw North Carolina into the penalized portion of the calendar (i.e.: February), so that the potential penalty would pressure the North Carolina state government into making a change to the law (or barring that, force the state parties to conduct caucuses to avoid penalty).

FHQ has South Carolina on Saturday, February 13, but that could just as easily be a week later on February 20. [We have made the editorial decision to hold off on such a move until after Michigan moves its primary. ...if Michigan moves its primary.]

There will be some interesting cross-party jockeying between South Carolina and Nevada as well. The DNC rules put Nevada first among the two (third overall on the calendar), but South Carolina Republicans have, by custom, gone in that third position on the Republican calendar. The point is that South Carolina and Nevada represent four contests, not two. That's four contests -- different potential dates for each party in both states -- that have to get squeezed into that month-wide window the RNC rules provide.

FHQ currently places a unified Nevada set of caucuses ahead of a unified set of South Carolina primaries (until more information is known later in 2015).

Iowa and New Hampshire will ideally (from their perspectives) settle on dates earlier than the others once the dust has settled on all of the above.

Right now that means, speculatively...
Monday, January 18: Iowa
Tuesday, January 26: New Hampshire
Saturday, February 6: Nevada
Saturday, February 13: South Carolina
Tuesday, February 16: North Carolina

All of that is speculative. Repeat: SPECULATIVE. Given what we know, though, that is a reasonable guess about where those contests would end up.

...today. That's the huge caveat.

Much will change between now and when Iowa and New Hampshire settle on dates for 2016 later this fall. As information changes, so will the calendar.

--
¹ And even then, New Hampshire is a state that has options. State law calls for a March primary or allows the secretary of state the discretion to set the date if the presidential primary in the state is not the first primary on the calendar. South Carolina state law only guides the funding of the presidential primary in the Palmetto state. The state parties select the date or dates on which the primaries will be held.


Recent Posts:
RNC memo gives Iowa Straw Poll a green light

Arizona Bill Introduced to Again Attempt to Schedule Presidential Primary on Iowa Caucuses Date

Update on 2016 DC Presidential Primary: Off to June

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Happy New Year

FHQ wants to wish everyone a happy 2015. States reacting throughout the coming year to the national party delegate selection rules finalized last year should give us all plenty to mull over as 2016 approaches.

Recent Posts:
Will a Calendar Bump Up Mean More Candidate Visits in SEC Primary States?

Why Getting Arkansas into an SEC Primary is More Difficult

But Southern States Will Have to Be Proportional

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Back in Business

Well, the FHQ post-election winter hiatus is over.

And it is funny that Jonathan Bernstein should receive a question on the 2016 rules and steer folks this way. It is that time of year when the national parties are starting to/continuing to reexame their delegate selection rules and states -- whether state parties or state legislatures -- are beginning to make their first (typically unsuccessful) attempts at legislation (or state party bylaws) to change the dates of their primaries and caucuses.

On that note I should mention that FHQ will be sitting down to discuss the 2016 presidential nomination rules on the side of the RNC winter meetings in Charlotte next week before heading up to DC to give a talk and discuss the rules at the National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference. Both should trigger a number of items to be posted in this space.

Ready or not, 2016 starts now. Well, in truth it began back in August, but still...

Recent Posts:
The Unintended Consequences of Piecemeal Electoral College Reform. Or How to Turn Pennsylvania into New Hampshire

The 2004 Electoral College Spectrum

The 2000 Electoral College Spectrum

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Catch Up Time

As FHQ mentioned via Twitter earlier this week, life (and death) and a not all that unexpected uptick in the frequency of polling releases have formed a perfect storm of delay around here. Very simply, I'm behind. However, FHQ will be in catch up mode this weekend. To the extent I can churn them out, you will see a semi-steady stream of outdated updates to the electoral college map starting with the survey data released on September 20. I sincerely hope to be fully updated by Monday and then rollout a map with redefined (constrained) categories on Tuesday; just in time for the debates.

As a means of review, that will mean:
1) The "strong" category will shift from being states with averages over 10% to those above 9%.
2) "Lean" states will now be those with weighted averages between 4-9% instead of between 5-10%.
3) Most consequentially, "toss up" states will be those with averages below 4%.

Finally, let me apologize for the slowdown in posting and thank you all for your patience as we bring things back up to date.

--Josh

Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (9/28/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/27/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/26/12)

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

FHQ Credentialed for Both Major Party Conventions

Word on credentials decisions seemingly [finally¹] trickled out via email from the Democratic National Convention Committee to the blogger class yesterday. FHQ was among the lucky ones to nab credentials to the Charlotte convention, meaning we'll be on the ground at both conventions later this summer.

Big news. I'm excited to see (and share) what happens at both conventions in terms of the 2016 rules.

...among a great deal of other things.

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¹ The RNC notified me of FHQ's credentials to the Tampa convention at the end of June.

Recent Posts:

The Electoral College Map (7/17/12)

Curbs on 2012 Frontloading, Sanctions and the GOP Proportionality Rule

Thoughts on 2016

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Excuses, excuses

In case you haven't noticed, the output here at FHQ has been, well, paltry of late. A confluence of factors including the end of the semester, family stuff and a trip last week to Boston all conspired to slow things down in May to a level not witnessed around these parts since 2010. Anyway, the break offers an opportunity to take a step back and hit the reset button moving forward.

About the only thing that I have tried to keep on top of is the state-by-state look at delegate allocation rules. That will continue for the upcoming states and until Utah brings up the rear on June 26. I even have a couple of draft posts that were never completed for a handful of Super Tuesday contests. I'll finish those up and post them for the sake of posterity. We may or may not need to consult them again in 2016.

Additionally, there a quite a number of loose ends on the 2012 primary season that I'd like to tie up. The reason I was up in Boston a week ago was to participate in an informal workshop with some of the principals from the rules making bodies in both parties. The intention there was to look back on 2012 with an eye toward 2016. As I was putting my thoughts together for that gathering it became quite clear that there is a continued need for examining the impact of the rules changes for 2012. I have a few (a lot of?) thoughts on the both the meeting and on primary season 2012 generally. Look for both in the coming days.

Finally, FHQ has been chipping away at the assembly of our quadrennial electoral college model. Expect to see that too in the coming days.

--
Yeah, yeah. I need to update the delegate count, too. I know.


Recent Posts:
2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Kentucky

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Oregon

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Nebraska


Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Question Time

For some time I have admired -- and totally wanted to rip off -- the Question Day posts that Bernstein does on occasion. To this point, I had neither the time or inclination to do so. But the combination of the desire to try out the format and the influx of good questions via comments or email this week, I think, has pushed me over the edge.

In a nod to Question Time in the British House of Commons (and to acknowledge the fact that today is looking crazy time-wise), I'm going to field (good, quality¹) questions and spread the answers out over more than just today. I've already got three really good questions with which I definitely want to deal,² but if you have any others questions feel free to drop in in the comments section below or via Twitter under the hashtag, #fhqquestiontime.

--
¹ Seriously, keep it substantive, folks.

² To avoid overlap, I already have and plan to answer questions concerning:

• Ron Paul's delegate strategy (and the convention)
• Turnout in upcoming primaries
• The status of Rick Santorum's delegates (post-suspension)

Recent Posts:
Iowa GOP considers new rule for close caucuses 

Pair of Missouri Bills Would Shift Future Presidential Primaries Back to April

House-Passed Bill in Virginia to Consolidate Primaries in Presidential Election Years to Be Considered in 2013 in State Senate 


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Housekeeping: Flip Flop

[Fun experiment: Who thought this was going to about Mitt Romney? It isn't.]

This change was inevitable, but since primary season has kicked off and since more and more people are/have become interested in what the dates of the other primaries are, FHQ is going to switch the links to the "clean" and marked up versions of our 2012 presidential primary calendar. The rationale is that we don't want to completely overwhelm/confuse people with information when their intent is to simply find out when the Virginia primary is or when Maine Republicans will caucus.

Rest assured, a link to the marked up version will continue to be embedded in the main link into which most will enter the site.

You can find those links here:

• Marked up
• Clean

--
Josh

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FHQ on The Daily Rundown

                                   

[Somewhere in the background Carly Simon music is playing.]

I have complained in the past about the coverage of the 2012 presidential primary calendar, but I don't have anyone to blame on this one but myself if I don't like it. Well, I could blame it on the questions I got.

Yeah, that's the scapegoat.

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Sigh: Cite Your Sources, CNN

Now CNN is getting in on the act.

[Click to Enlarge]

Again, I don't want to bite the hand that sometimes feeds FHQ, but seriously, if you are going to stop by the site and then write a story, you could at least bother to say, "Hey, I read this somewhere else earlier today." And in CNN's case, they popped in with a specific "cuomo signs presidential primary bill" Google search at 12:45 this afternoon, and the CNN story on something that happened last week appeared at 5:21.

Strangely enough my initial post calling out CBS appeared immediately after the New York bill post. I don't particularly want to keep doing this, but as long this keeps happening, I have to stick to my word to continue calling out news outlets when they do this.

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Message to News Outlets: Cite Your Sources

Here at FHQ, we go to great lengths to cite any and all sources we use in our posts. Please call me vain or a gloryhog, but I prefer to be called an academic that operates under a standard where sources are cited and expects some measure of reciprocity in return. Where FHQ is vulnerable to being accurately called vain, perhaps, is in the fact that we regularly check our site stats. I'm unapologetic about being a stats -- of any kind -- nerd.

That said, I take note when IP addresses from various news outlets pop up. This morning it was CBS News (via Sitemeter):

Look, I don't want to make too big a deal out of this, but I do want to point out this continuing trend (The AP routinely hangs out at the site and someone at the Daily Rundown was on the site for quite a while a couple of weeks ago researching prior to a rather feeble roundtable discussion of the primary calendar situation. Yes, I complained about that, too.). But someone from CBS was on the FHQ this morning at around 10:45 and lo and behold an article appeared on CBS News an hour and a half later. Now, sure that's only 49 seconds, but Sitemeter tabulates time between clicks, not overall time spent on the site. In other words, it doesn't accurately depict how long said CBS employee was on the site. But you'll notice that Texas (the search term via Google) and Super Tuesday are layered into the discussion in the item. And furthermore, the next stop was the overall 2012 presidential primary calendar.

I have worked amicably in the past with several other sources that have done their due diligence on this front. I appreciate the efforts that those at Politico, The Boston Globe, The LA Times, The Fix (at The Washington Post) and The National Journal among others have made in not only talking to me in the past but in citing FHQ in their posted items. I only wish there was a uniform standard that was used and applied across all outlets.

I will continue to raise this issue when these incidents occur. I've worked hard to put together a resource that all can and should be able to use if properly attributed.

Thank you.

Josh

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Suggestions Needed: Who Should Replace Mike Huckabee on the Candidate Emergence Tracker?

Now that Mike Huckabee is out of the race for the 2012 Republican nomination, there is an open slot on the FHQ 2012 GOP Candidate Emergence Tracker. I'm leaning toward Mitch Daniels, but the comments section is open to your suggestions.

Have at it.

[Yes, sadly there are only five items that Google allows to be embedded.]

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New Look FHQ

The FHQ network is vast enough at this point that we can count among our ranks former graduate school colleagues who level warranted criticisms against our overly pixelated, needs-to-be-revamped logo and graphic design people who can fix the problem. And yes, a change of the FHQ button has been long overdue. That brings me to the point. FHQ is sporting a new look courtesy of the good folks over at tombluehead.

Thanks to all and enjoy.

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Four years in...

FHQ let yesterday come and go without marking the fourth anniversary of the site. Usually we like to keep it business-like around here, but it is worth noting that we've been at this for an entire presidential election cycle now. [Are there other measures of time other than presidential election cycles?] Something that started out on a personal level as a means of collecting data about the formation of the 2008 presidential primary calendar for my dissertation research has grown into a resource for not only the formation of the calendar but for tracking the factors relevant to presidential nomination races.

FHQ has come a long way since that first post (and can probably be faulted for starting well after much of the initial calendar action had taken place in 2007), and has morphed from something that wasn't necessarily intended for public consumption to something that is a tool for academics and journalists alike. I'm proud of that evolution and want to extend a hearty thank you to all who have been readers, loyal or otherwise, over the last four years.

Thanks,

Josh

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A Note on FHQ's 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar(s)

We are entering a phase in the formation of the 2012 presidential primary calendar that is much more difficult to track efficiently. Some states are moving dates, others are proposing legislation to the move dates of their presidential primaries and still others are to this point doing nothing. With all of this going on it, the potential exists for there to be a number of iterations of the calendar out there to account for all of the minor details that are changing. Our effort is to get as much information out there as possible about this process, but if we continue to produce calendar after calendar every time something changes, we run the risk of confusing visitors who enter the site on a past calendar page and are unable to get the most recent update. Links to the most recent calendar posts are always added when the calendar is updated, but those have proven ineffective.

As such, FHQ has made the proactive decision to automatically redirect visitors coming into those past 2012 calendars to a static page that has been created to house the most current update. This will first and foremost get visitors the most up-to-date information on where the calendar stands. That is the primary objective.

But what does that mean for you old hands who drop by on a regular basis to check on the calendar. Well, for folks who come into FHQ from our RSS, Twitter or Facebook feeds, not much. It is still business as usual. When a change to the calendar takes place, a new update will be posted. You will get that notification through the channels listed above once that update posts and can choose to follow that link to the post or to go to the static page for the calendar. They will both be updated (nearly) simultaneously. One of the advantages of a page (and link) devoted to the latest update is that it gives FHQ the ability to add links to new legislation from states to that calendar without having to put out an all-new calendar for that one minor change. Again, we don't want to flood the market with seemingly conflicting calendars. Updates, then, will be reserved for when the calendar actually changes -- like when Idaho moved or once Minnesota's first Tuesday in February date was triggered. For those just interested in a quick glance at where the calendar stands, but not necessarily how it got to that point, it is probably a good idea to bookmark the new page, and check in for the latest update at your own leisure.

Everyone has their own way of checking these things and we don't want to mess with that, but FHQ has to balance being completely open and making sure that people are getting an updated and informative look at where the calendar stands at the moment they enter the site. Once the calendar is set in stone, the redirects will be removed and people can once again go through the archive of updates. A post linking to all those updates will probably be useful at that point.

--

Thanks.

Josh

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