Replies

Well, why should Iowa be first? Tradition is not a good reason. I don’t know why they like having these a-holes flood their IHOPs every four years anyway, obviously it boosts their economy and that’s probably it.

I don’t care what the dems do but on our side, of the current early states, South Carolina should be first (makes sense for Dems too because of the Black vote).

Of course, and so far no one agrees with me, but it’s simply not fair at all unless the whole country votes at the same time. Imagine if it was like that in the general election (Maine used to vote early, but not for President).

I’m devising a system I’d like to see used for the GOP nomination, national caucuses with a state by state point system based on how many Republican votes the state cast in the last election (mimicking the electoral college), runoff if no one gets a majority.

I predict without change eventually every state will try to move to Super Tuesday and create a defacto national primary.

If you insist on staggering the primaries they has to be a better way to do it.

“ I’m devising a system I’d like to see used for the GOP nomination, national caucuses with a state by state point system based on how many Republican votes the state cast in the last election (mimicking the electoral college), runoff if no one gets a majority.

I predict without change eventually every state will try to move to Super Tuesday and create a defacto national primary.

If you insist on staggering the primaries they has to be a better way to do it.”

Well thought out. Sensible. Refined.

The problem with a National Primary Day, even if each state allocated delegates individually, would be that the candidate with the highest name-ID would tend to win and candidates wouldn’t be able to build support organically. We can complain all we want about IA and NH, but the fact that they go first and second with nothing else on those days, and they are relatively small states, permit candidates to make their case directly to the voters.

Of course, there is nothing magical about IA and NH that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere if two other states went first and second a week apart. (Well, it couldn’t be replicated in CA or probably TX because of their size.) So I would not be opposed to having the first two (heck, the first four) states rotate, with a week off between 1, 2, 3 and 4.

While I like your idea of basing the number of GOP delegates on the number of GOP presidential voters per state—the current system kinda sorta tries to do something similar—I think that the states that go first (rotating) should be the ones that are the most competitive in presidential elections. There are two reasons for this. First, both parties should vote on the same day, not only because primaries cost the state time and money, but also because it reduces the number of people who invade another party’s primary. And second, we want to nominate a presidential candidate that can win the electoral college, so I am more interested in how popular he is in FL, OH, WI, etc. than in how much he can run up the score in more heavily GOP states such as WY or TN. By having battleground/swing states going first, it would work for both parties.

BTW, looking at the past two presidential elections, if I had to choose the key states that should go early in the process based on their competitiveness, both IA and NH would be in the top 15, along with FL, OH, WI, MN, MI, PA, NC, AZ, NV, GA, ME, CO and VA. IA swung from Obama to Trump, and NH was within the margin of fraud.