Primary States on the Move
Once Florida announced last Friday that it was advancing its primary to January 31, from fifth to first in the GOP selection process, the question was how long would it take for the four early states getting jumped -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- to respond in kind.
The answer: less than 72 hours.
South Carolina's thrown the first counter-punch, pushing its primary to January 21, 10 days before the Florida vote.
That's something of a surprise, as the expectation was the Palmetto State would move to Jan. 28, three days before the Florida primary -- as was the case in the now-defunct schedule.
And it further complicates the primary calendar. Nevada Republicans voted over the weekend to move their caucuses to the Saturday following the New Hampshire primary. But, obviously, Nevada doesn't want to overlap with South Carolina.
As New Hampshire comes a week after the Iowa caucuses, the new calendar may look something like this: Iowa on Jan. 3, New Hampshire on Jan. 10, Nevada on Jan. 14, then South Carolina and Florida. The same order, but a month earlier.
And it leaves a big hole in the first week/weekend of February for someone to fill the sixth spot.
The winner in this? In my opinion, Florida.
If there's a 10-day lag between South Carolina and the Sunshine State, think of the hype going into that primary.
Moreover, it's not like Florida will be punished for trying to cut in line. The state moved up its primary in 2008; the national parties backed off threats to refuse to seat the delegations at their national conventions.
Do you honestly think the GOP would get into p.r. scrape with the Florida delegation at next year's convention in . . . Tampa?
One thing I find interesting is the disconnect between states starved for attention and national parties trying to starve a quick selection process into submission.
In addition to new GOP rules that cut delegates from states that ignore the sanctioned schedule (yeah, right), states that hold elections before April will see their delegates awarded proportionally instead of winner-take-all. In theory, that prevents an early date for "going over the top" delegate-wise.
And there's the backloaded factor. California' primary has moved from February to June. New York doesn't vote until late April. The bottom line: there will be 10 times fewer delegates committed by the end of February 2012 than there were in 2008 — when 1,400 delegates were bound to candidates.
Think Mitt Romney's "tortoise" strategy is starting to make sense?
Question: is there anything we can do to prevent presidential voting in January?
Or should we accept the inevitable and brace ourselves for the 2016 New Hampshire primary . . . held in December 2015?
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Comments :
Feb '11
Re: Primary States on the Move
Whatever it takes: December '15, September '15, Feb '13! You can be sure that NH will preserve its first in the nation primary, however much everyone else tries to jump ahead. It's the only thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on right now. ...Bipartisanship! ;-)
Edited on Oct 3, 2011 at 11:03amApr '11
Re: Primary States on the Move
How did all this crazy primary scheduales come about? Who put NH and IW first any way? They are like the least important states in the union. I don't see why every state party can set their own election deadlines. If everyone is trying to go first why not put all states up on one day...frankly I find this desire to push dates up stupid. There should be no more than like 6 months between the nomination and actual presidential election. I blame 24hour news. I mean campaigns are what they live for. They hype every single straw poll, every survey, every slight fluctuation in a candidates performance as if this last data point is the decisive one.