What If Nevada Voted First In The Democratic Presidential Primaries? Or New Jersey? Hawaii?
When it comes to the presidential primary calendar, it can feel like if youre not first (or, at least, not living in one of the four states that get to vote early on), youre last. For a long time now, that has meant that if you dont hail from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, candidates and political media could care less what you think.
But for Democrats that might finally change. Concerns about Iowa and New Hampshires representativeness have only grown in recent years. Not to mention that after Iowas disastrous 2020 caucuses, where myriad technical problems hampered the reporting of results, there have been renewed calls for the Democratic Party to alter its calendar ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle.
The latest push came earlier this month, when the Des Moines Register reported that the Democratic National Committee was examining a draft proposal to determine which states would vote early. Under that proposal, states would seek a waiver to vote early based on multiple criteria, including a states ability to run [a] fair, transparent and inclusive primary; ethnic diversity; geographic diversity; union representation; and general election competitiveness. And although the DNC didnt end up considering the proposal at its March gathering, intraparty debate over the calendar will continue, with the possibility that some set of these criteria will play a role in determining the voting order of states in 2024.
With that in mind, we took a look at what the primary calendar might look like if the early-voting states were determined by these sorts of criteria. Of course, not every state would apply for a waiver, and we also cant know for sure what data the DNC would use or, moreover, what secret sauce it would employ when deciding how to weigh various data points; nor does the DNC have full top-down control over the voting order of states. But! If we set all that aside, this might still be the direction in which the party moves, so heres a look at which states would score well or poorly based on the fairness of their elections, their ethnic and racial diversity, their rate of union membership and their competitiveness in the 2020 presidential election.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-nevada-voted-first-in-the-democratic-presidential-primaries-or-new-jersey-hawaii/
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)It is a diverse state and fits in where the party is today.
bottomofthehill
(8,347 posts)The media is so expensive, only the rich could play
jimfields33
(15,965 posts)No way would candidates want this expensive media state in the first group.
FloridaBlues
(4,008 posts)Indykatie
(3,697 posts)Biden came close to being run out of the race before a state with a substantial number of Black voters even had a chance to vote. States like IA and NH should not be setting the narrative for who is a viable Dem candidate for POTUS each cycle. Not to mention that IA uses a caucus system which always seem to end up being a clusterf*ck. The Dem party should move all caucus states to the end of the primary schedule.