The Presidential Primaries as we understand them are a relatively recent development in America’s electoral politics. Not that America's electoral system has been immutable; from changes to electing the President and Vice President on a single ticket to the direct election of Senators, America has been willing to change its processes for electing its governing officials. The modern Presidential Primary process we are familiar with today is a response to the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
To understand the adoption of the modern system, we should set the stage leading up to the 1968 DNC. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson was President and had only four years early won reelection in a landslide victory. However, despite passing some legislation popular with the Democratic base, like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, civil strife at home continued to grow. The Civil Rights movement continued its fight for equality and the Vietnam War continued to drag on, distracting from Johnson's domestic agenda—'The Great Society'. The absence of a clear motivation or objective for the Vietnam War—other than the increasingly broad policy of 'Containment'—along with the draft and apparent lack of any progress towards victory galvanized the public against the war,
particularly among young Americans. As a result, the anti-war movement became a focal point of the 1968 Democratic Presidential Primary.
Tapping into this zeitgeist, Eugene McCarthy, Democratic Senator from Minnesota—not to be confused with Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, of 'Red Scare' and 'McCarthyism' fame two decades prior—ran a primary campaign against President Johnson on an anti-war platform. Meanwhile, President Johnson, an adept politician, read the tea leaves and announced that he would not seek reelection on March 31, 1968. Four weeks later, Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President.
Leading up to the Convention, held during the final week of August 1968, only 13 states and Washington DC held primary elections. Humphrey was not on the ballot in any of these primary elections, yet he won the Democratic nomination from delegates from the remaining 37 states controlled by party leaders. Outraged by the party leadership's flagrant power grab, anti-war protesters confronted police outside the convention hall, which devolved into a riot.
In response to the chaos of the 1968 DNC, the Democratic Party decided to hold primaries or caucuses in every state to decide their nominee for President. The Republican Party followed suit shortly after.
Though not nearly as dramatic as the events of the 1968 DNC, tumult during the 2020 primary has again pushed Democrats to rethink how they conduct their primaries. During the 2020 Iowa Caucus, the first contest between Presidential candidates, a failure of the electronic voting software delayed results, caused confusion, and ultimately led to conspiracy theories over stolen votes. The discussion whether to replace Iowa—and New Hampshire—as the first primary states predates the 2020 hiccup, however. Some have pointed out that both Iowa and New Hampshire are whiter and more rural than the country as a whole, and so, are unrepresentative of the country. This matters because the early states in the primary process winnow the field of candidates, effectively selecting the candidates later states will vote for. Voters in two states that are predominately white and rural are going to have different considerations than a more diverse and urban electorate.
President Joe Biden has weighed into the discussion, proposing South Carolina be the first primary state. President Biden owes his presidency to his primary victory in South Carolina. Heading into another primary in a year, the President likely wanted to discourage any potential challengers, and if one should arise he would want an early, decisive victory to quash any concerns over his electoral chances before they arose. If there was any doubt that President Biden’s suggestion of South Carolina was about politics and not representation, FiveThirtyEight looked at which states were most representative of the Democratic Party’s base. They found South Carolina ranked 46, behind Iowa (42) and New Hampshire (34).
While there are some objective measures over which state is most representative of the country to go first in the primaries—Illinois according to FiveThirtyEight—I think this begs the question, should any one state be first in the primaries? After all, voters in a Midwest state, even a representative one, will have considerations other than voters in the plains dealing with drought, or boarder states dealing with immigration, or coastal states dealing with rising sea levels.
Iowa and New Hampshire will make the case for themselves to continue to hold their positions as first in the nation. Some of these I find convincing; others, not so much. These states will argue that because they have held this position in the primaries for so long the residents of the state understand the importance of their selections and take this responsibility seriously. This, I’m not so convinced by, but we’ll look into voter motivation a bit later. The argument continues; because both Iowa and New Hampshire are relatively small, candidates are able to easily visit every major town and every county; meeting with voters across the state. This 'retail politics' is important for candidates to hone their message and actually "touch grass". I am a bit more persuaded by this argument; politicians should understand the interests and concerns of the people they are seeking to represent, however, the early campaign message is being tailored to an electorate that does not look like the nation. And lastly, the media markets in these states are relatively cheap. This gives newcomers who do not have a campaign war-chest or a robust fundraising network in place the ability to compete. I think this too, is a valid argument. We should not want a system that is biased towards a ruling class and only allows the wealthy to break onto the political scene.
So, the question then becomes, can we achieve these benefits while also improving representation? To this point we’ve done a bit of stage setting, but let’s complete the picture with a quick look at what primaries look like today. I opted to look at the 2016 Presidential Primary calendar because (1) it was an open primary for both Democrats and Republicans, and (2) the 2020 Primary calendar was interrupted and jumbled by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2016 the primaries began on Monday, February 1, with the Iowa Caucus and ended Tuesday, June 7. It spanned five months and there were 20 different election days. The primaries also began seven months before the party national conventions that are typically held in August—though candidates are declaring their candidacies earlier and earlier in the election cycle.
Of the 50 state elections held by both parties to determine their nominee, Democrats held 14 caucuses and Republicans held 13. If you live in a state that holds the more common primary and are unfamiliar with caucuses; these are party meetings typically held during the evening, in a public place where candidate surrogates make speeches before voters cast their ballot. This creates barriers of participation for people who cannot take time off work, find transportation to the caucus location, find someone to care for their children, or cannot attend an hours long meeting during the week for a myriad of other reasons. Many others have made the case against caucuses so I will not go into detail here. As the main thrust of my argument is for greater representation, caucuses that systemically preclude full representation—specifically participants of specific groups like parents, the sick or disabled, or poor—should be retired in favor of primaries.
Now to get back to our question; should any one state be the first primary state? Inspired by FiveThirtyEight, I did my own analysis of the demographics of states based on race, educational attainment, urban and rural divide, occupation, and employment status. Unlike FiveThirtyEight, I looked at the country as a whole and not the demographic breakdown for one or both of the parties. I also included a few more categories than the team a FiveThirtyEight. Based on the metrics I used, Oregon should be the first state to hold a primary—South Carolina is ranked 26, Iowa 38, and New Hampshire 43.
To those who do not live in Oregon, it might seem like an odd choice (to those in Oregon it might seem odd!); Oregon is whiter and slightly more educated than the nation as a whole. However, its rural-urban divide, occupation, and employment rate trend very closely to the national average.
If ranking by race alone Illinois would be first; educational attainment – Georgia; rural-urban divide and occupation – Oregon; employment – New York. These other states may seem like more natural choices, they are states that are often in the political discussion in a way the Oregon is not.
If we were to select one of these states to be first though, what other arguments would we have in defense of any individual state over the others? Cards on the table, I think an average of each of these metrics should be used, but I have no good argument for Oregon, alone, to be first. There may be reasons why a state should not be first; the state already holds an outsized influence over politics and media—think New York or California—or, as has been argued, the state is unrepresentative of the country. However, I am not able to defend weighing one state's political quirks more heavily by placing it first in the primaries, even if it is the most representative state in the country. Particularly because those quirky political preferences are weighed so heavily by our primary process.
I said I would return to voter motivation, so lets take a look at that now. Every four years as part of the horse race coverage there will be stories about 'electability'. No one really knows what electability means. It is a lot of vibes, but one could assume it means something like broadly popular and able to win elections. A candidate is able to make a strong case for this by, well, winning primary elections. But the strange thing about the discussion around electability is that it is a bit circular in its reasoning. Discussions over candidate electability often lack the context of 'favorability' or 'strength of support' polling, which might actually do a better job of telling us who voters like and support—i.e. who is electable. Instead, electability seems to be asking respondents who they think has the most support and is the most well liked. In the early primary states there are few metrics for voters to inform this decision; there are fewer poll results and no primary results. So, the electability metrics that are released are take into consideration by voters, and because partisan primary voters want their party to win in the upcoming general election, they vote accordingly. And here is the circular reasoning; voters think a candidate is electable and so will vote for that candidate, who wins the election because they were electable (or more accurately, perceived to be electable). After the first few primary results come in, some candidates will perform well and appear electable while others will perform poorly and drop out. This is the winnowing effect of the early states that we previously discussed; but what's more, these early states have defined a narrative for the winning candidates going forward—namely, that they are electable.
In 2016 Iowa voted first on February 1 and a week later New Hampshire voted on February 9, then about a week and a half later the next election was held on February 20. In the Republican field, Ted Cruz won the Iowa Caucus; Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum dropped out. Donald Trump won the next primary in New Hampshire; Jim Gilmore, Chris Christie, and Carly Fiorina dropped out. Two elections and the field of Republican candidates was halved. On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton won the Iowa Caucus; Martin O'Malley withdrew after, leaving the race between Clinton and Bernie Sanders up to the Convention.
Following New Hampshire there is a week and a half before the next set of primaries for the media to start to create narratives for election based on the results 1.38% of the country. Even if California were to be first in the nation, at 12% of the nation's population, would we think this fair? Perhaps, but I think there is a better way. It seems to me, the primary calendar should be, to some extent, condensed and regional primaries should be held.
Above is my suggested regional groupings for primaries. Refer to Figure 1 in the linked support below for further detail of this breakdown. When trying to determine the regional groupings I had a couple objectives in mind; (1) I tried to keep the regions compact and (2) I tried to ensure the population across regions was relatively consistent. The latter is why some groupings might look a little odd, like Pennsylvanian's inclusion in the Appalachia grouping instead of New England or the Midwest. However, if I were to group PA with New York in New England, or with Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest the results of these regions would potentially weigh more heavily. It is the same reason Texas and Florida are separated.
Maintaining compact regions is important for one of the reasons that Iowa and New Hampshire argue they should be first; it should be as easy as possible for candidates to traverse the regions to see as many voters as possible. That will be easier in some regions than others, the Central region is very large, but that is in the interest of this region having a comparable population to the others. By having regions, for the most part, continuous it allows candidates to set routes and continually stop and visit with voters in different regions in a way that would not make sense if Florida was grouped with Washington. Sure, a candidate could drive, stopping a long the way, but that would be wasting valuable time on states that have either already voted or will be voting in a later primary, at the expense of some states that will be voting in the next primary.
One might argue that this is exacerbating the problem; we are swapping out the interests of the first few states for the interests of the first region. This is a fair concern, but as we did with individual states, we can identify which region is most representative of the nation to prioritize that group first. Furthermore, while there may be some regionalism at play, the individual politics of each state are unique leading to a greater diversity of representation.
Pressing on this further, one might point out that this system would continue to favor larger states. Candidates would spend their time campaigning in the largest states in the region. To this I would point out that in several regions there is more than one highly populated state and this would not obviously be a sound strategy as it would effectively be forfeiting in the other states, which leads to my next point.
With each region having a similar population there is no obvious leader, meaning that winning the first region may not be as significant as winning the first state. This is because the results of the first primary become a bit more complicated. A candidate might come out of the first set of primaries with the most delegates, but they may not win a majority of the states or votes. Or maybe a different candidate wins in each state. Or perhaps the candidate that wins a plurality of the states or votes does not win the most delegates. Any of these results preclude a clean narrative of a front runner. Sure, there will likely be candidates that drop out, but the mixed results allow more to stay in. It may not remove the 'electability' question, but it at least would allow more candidates to credibly make an argument for it, allowing for later primary regions to vote for their preferred candidates.
It is also worth considering how this will affect the campaign strategies of candidates. Not that there is no strategy currently involved in primary campaigns, but this would allow candidates deploy their resources differently. Under the current system candidates take a risk not campaigning heavily in Iowa and New Hampshire; the strategy paid off for President Biden, but not everyone is a former Vice President with deep connections in Congress (specifically to Representative Jim Clyburn from South Carolina).
Consider the New England region; less well-funded candidates could choose to forego media buys in the expensive New York media market in favor of flooding New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine with ad buys. Sure, well funded campaigns with wealthy donors are going to be able to play in every market, but how is that different than how the campaigns are currently conducted? And if well funded campaigns do decide to go the route of expensive ad buys in the New York market hoping to win a knockout win with a big delegate haul, they will have fewer dollars for ad buys in other markets. This allows new comers to the national political stage to target their campaigns in hopes of breaking through other, smaller media markets and notching a couple wins to carry momentum into the next regional primary.
To state the implications of this plainly; the adoption of regional primaries would include expensive media markets in nearly every region. However, because there are so many markets in play at the same time, it has the potential to dilute well-funded campaign's ability to flood all media markets making less well-funded campaign's media efforts in cheaper markets more potent.
So, now that we are all convinced, we should have regional primaries, which region should go first? Based on my analysis, the order should be South Central first, followed by the Midwest, South East, New England, Central, Appalachia, and West Coast last.
I think order matters a bit less if a regional primary calendar is adopted, for the same reasons given for adopting regional primaries in the first place. It has also been suggested that a rotating primary schedule should be adopted so that one region (or state) is not always first, which seems reasonable to me.
Parties are largely in control of how primaries are conducted. Its true that Iowa and New Hampshire have state laws requiring that they are the first states to hold caucuses or primaries, but there are ways around this. I mention this because it means it is far easier to reform this specific part of our electoral system than it would be to reform general election processes; through Constitutional amendment or reform efforts in each of the 50 states. I would like to say that it is good that the Democratic party is again wrestling with the problems in their primary system, however, it seems clear that they have placed Democrat priorities over democratic principles. Primaries are where our electoral process begins; if that first step is unrepresentative then how can the elections that follow be representative?
