United States presidential primary
The staggered nature of the presidential primary season allows candidates to concentrate their resources in each area of the country one at a time instead of campaigning in every state simultaneously.
The primary received its first major test in the 1912 election pitting incumbent president William Howard Taft against challengers Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette.
Roosevelt proved the most popular candidate, but as most primaries were non-binding "preference" shows and held in only fourteen of the-then forty-eight states, the Republican nomination went to Taft, who controlled the convention.
In the ensuing non-binding "beauty contest" of 1952, Republican Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated his broad voter appeal by out-polling the favored Robert A. Taft, "Mr.
Also, Democrat Estes Kefauver defeated incumbent president Harry S. Truman, leading the latter to decide not to run for another term.
After this, a Democratic National Committee-commissioned panel led by Senator George McGovern – the McGovern–Fraser Commission – recommended that states adopt new rules to assure wider participation.
Instead of going to a polling place, voters attend local private events run by the political parties, and cast their selections there.
Under the U.S. Constitution, U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College, and thus voters residing in those areas are basically ineligible to vote in the general election.
[23][24][25][26] A customary ceremonial practice has been for the losing candidate(s) in the primary season to "release" their delegates at the convention and exhort them to vote for the winning nominee as a sign of party unity.
[29] Thus, presidential candidates officially announce their intentions to run that early so they can start raising or spending the money needed to mount their nationwide campaigns.
However, to reduce expenses and encourage turnout, the major parties' primaries are usually held the same day and may be consolidated with other state elections.
The first binding event, in which a candidate can secure convention delegates, is traditionally the Iowa caucus, usually held in late January or early February of the presidential election year.
[33] In recent elections, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary have garnered over half the media attention paid to the entire selection process.
As a result, even a little-known, underfunded candidate can use retail politics to meet intimately with interested voters and perform better than expected.
[42] America's increasing ethnic diversity, urbanization, and geographic redistribution made influential political leaders come to the realization that Iowa and New Hampshire were not representative of the rest of the country.
Following the 2004 election, then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid began making a case for Nevada as the perfect American microcosm.
[44][45] For the Republicans, it is considered a "firewall" to protect establishment favorites and frontrunners in the presidential nomination race, being designed to stop the momentum of insurgent candidates who could have received a boost from strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.
[48] In the 2012 Republican primaries, Newt Gingrich initially finished poorly in the early states, but then scored an upset victory in South Carolina over frontrunner Mitt Romney.
Because it is held in various states from geographically and socially diverse regions of the country, it typically represents a presidential candidate's first test of national electability.
For example, John McCain officially clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination in March,[51] while during that same month Barack Obama held a substantial lead in pledged delegates in the Democratic Party primaries.
[52] In 2012, Obama faced no major challenger in the Democratic Party primaries since he had the advantage of incumbency (see below), while Mitt Romney gained enough delegates to be declared the presumptive Republican nominee by late April.
Senate majority leader and Nevada senator Harry Reid was a major proponent of moving that state's caucuses to January, arguing that Nevada would be the perfect American microcosm: its western location, significant minority population, and strong labor population would be more representative of the country as a whole than Iowa and New Hampshire.
[55] In 2005, the primary commission of the Democratic National Committee began considering removing Iowa and New Hampshire from the top of the calendar, but this proposal never gained approval, so those two states remain as the first two contests.
[56] In an article from Detroit News, Tennessee Senator William (Bill) Brock said about front-loading, "Today, too many people in too many states have no voice in the election of our major party nominees.
For presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for example, their respective paths to nomination became uneventful and the races become merely pro forma.
The following proposals attempt to return the primary system to a more relaxed schedule, and would help less-funded candidates by lowering the cost of entry.
The idea is that fewer initial primaries, typically in smaller states, would allow grassroots campaigns to score early successes and pick up steam.
Author and political scientist Larry J. Sabato is also a proponent of this plan, but his proposal would have the order of regional primaries determined by lottery on January 1 of each presidential election year instead of on a rotating basis.
In addition, his plan would allow for a few small population states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, to hold their primaries in advance of the first region.
The primary criticism of this plan is that travel costs would be quite high: in each round, candidates would essentially have to cover the entire country to campaign effectively.
