If It Was So Easy to Change Then It Would Have Changed By Now

FHQ read with some interest the latest editorial from Michelle Cottle at The New York Times before the weekend hit. It was one of a genre the vintage of which one sees in the seemingly lazy days between presidential nomination cycles. One can call those of that ilk the "it's time for a change (to the presidential nomination process)." Sure, they are around every cycle, but they tend to most often arise in the midst of (or perhaps just before) a new round of presidential primaries and caucuses. 

In other words, they often come too late. So in Cottle's defense, at least her call for reform is coming at a time in which it may actually matter: before the national parties set their rules for the upcoming cycle. Granted, FHQ's defense of the piece only goes about that far. Much of it leans on a sort of Green Lantern theory of presidential nomination reform. If only the interested players tried a bit harder, then all the ills of the process would be gone. But that theory and this piece ignore the realities of reform. 

If it was as easy to change the process as it is made out there, then certainly things would have changed by now, nearly half a century into the post-reform era. But those rules do not change with ease. They are and the presidential nomination process is a tremendous collective action problem for the parties. And while consensus may (or may not) exist to make changes, agreeing to what those tweaks will be is a much more difficult enterprise when considering the mix of interests involved: the national parties, the state parties, the state governments, the candidates and their proxies on rules-making bodies. Getting enough of those groups on the same page is tough enough in the abstract, but the climb is steeper still when the politics of any given moment intersect with the process. 

Now may be one of those times when the moment is right for change. Iowa Democrats bungled their caucuses in 2020. Neither primary or caucus electorate in Iowa nor New Hampshire matches well with the current constituency of the broader Democratic Party coalition of the moment. And there seems to be a willing candidate to fill their void on the primary calendar. Maybe the stars will align. However, missteps may scuttle any potential for change. Nevada Democrats may be at some risk of overplaying their hand. The conditions are right, but the provocative nature of their January primary bill may complicate its efforts, riling up not only New Hampshire as Cottle points out, but also the national party.

And that is what often gets lost in these primary reform prescriptions that pop up every four years. They can raise the ills of any given process, but often fail in considering the process for bringing about such a change. 

Take Cottle's consideration of caucuses in 2020. Caucuses are not new, nor are the problems associated with them. She notes that "caucuses are a convoluted, vaguely anti-democratic way to pick a nominee," and that "the Democratic National Committee urged the state parties to shift to primaries." The DNC did and as Cottle mentioned, most states responded. This was quietly a big deal for the DNC. It was a rules change that worked and worked really well. It was not a new directive from the national party to hold primaries because some states -- Kansas, for example -- are controlled by the Republican Party on the state level and were not open to establishing a primary. In fact, after years of caucusing in the face of unfunded (and ultimately cancelled) primaries, Republicans in the Sunflower states eliminated the primary option once and for all in 2015.

But even most states in that bind adapted. Most adopted party-run primary systems that had early and mail-in options for those seeking to participate in the process. Sure, the national party would prefer state government-run primaries, but lacking that alternative in some states produced something of a laboratory for innovative party-run primary plans. Best practices derived from those states may serve as a call to action in states like Iowa where there, for now, continue to be caucuses. But Iowa is also a state where the Republican Party is calling the shots in state government. There is the delicate balance to tread with New Hampshire, but there are some success stories from the 2020 cycle that should be celebrated rather than barely mentioned. Often it is those incremental changes that prove the most consequential. 

 

In the end, however, other changes -- like those to the beginning of calendar -- are tougher. Not impossible, but difficult. And it will take more than "the national party seiz[ing] the opportunity to shake even harder, reforming a system that’s increasingly out of touch with voters." It will take the national party working with interests on the ground in the states to make it happen. And as the last fifty years have shown, that is easier said than done. 

Recent posts: 

The Week the Calendar Wars Heated Up

Early Signs: Nebraska Electoral Vote Allocation Likely to Stay the Same

Why Can't Nevada Just Replicate New Hampshire's Calendar Strategy?

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies.    

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Biden Running for Re-election

Four years after President Trump immediately upon being inaugurated filed to run for re-election in 2020, surrogates of President Biden took a verbal although not formal step in the same direction. 

Senator Chris Coons (D), the newly inaugurated president's fellow Delawarean, let Politico know very simply that, "He is planning to run again."

Now, part or perhaps all of this feels obligatory. No president wants to kick off his or her term as a lame duck. That gives both Congress and the bureaucracy license to dig in over time and resist or obstruct changes both big and small. This move, then, heads that off, albeit likely only temporarily. 

It also holds at bay other prospective Democrats waiting in the wings. That group, including the newly installed vice president, now has to take an even more wait-and-see approach to any possible 2024 run for the Democratic nomination. But unlike Congress and the bureaucratic end of the executive branch, those potential candidates still have time. And while there may be a flurry of early activity on the rules side for 2024 among Democrats, the majority of visible invisible primary activity is going to continue to occur among the Republicans who are likely to seek the party's nomination in likely just two years time. 

So candidate emergence, to the extent it is going to continue happening as 2024 slowly approaches is going to be a mostly Republican action. 

Recent posts: 

A Few Notes on the 2024 Presidential Primary Calendar

One of Biden's Magic Numbers is Now a Little Different

No, not among pledged delegates.

Former Vice President Joe Biden clinched the Democratic presidential nomination over the weekend, surpassing the 1991 pledged delegates necessary to reach a majority. But with nearly one-fifth of all delegates yet to be allocated in the remaining contests, it remains to be seen whether Biden will earn enough pledged delegates and open the door to superdelegate participation in the presidential nomination roll call vote during the national convention.

To do that the presumptive Democratic nominee would have to be allocated a majority of all delegates (in pledged delegates). That way superdelegates would be unable to overturn a tight pledged delegate majority -- one that does not exist in 2020 -- if the group voted as a bloc. But again, that will not be necessary in 2020. Biden has a wide enough pledged delegate lead to have clinched the nomination by the pledged delegate method. The only question left outstanding is whether he will win enough delegates to allow superdelegate participation on the first ballot.

Biden is on pace to do that, but that number -- the majority of all delegates -- has changed during primary season. Appendix B to the Call for the Convention had the number of superdelegates at 771 at the end of 2019. For the 2020 cycle, however, the secretary of the Democratic National Committee had to certify the number of superdelegates to each state party by March 6, 2020 under Rule 9 of the 2020 delegate selection rules.

That subsequent certification adjusted the number of superdelegates in 23 states and territories. And those changes ranged from an addition of four (4) superdelegates in New York to a loss of two (2) superdelegates in three jurisdictions (District of Columbia, Illinois and Oregon).


Although, in the aggregate, the changes across all 23 states and territories largely cancelled each other out. There ended up being three more delegates added from states than subtracted. And that increases not only the number of superdelegates to 774, but slightly raises the magic number of all delegates Biden would have to win in order to allow superdelegates into the roll call voting at the convention.

So, instead of that number being 2376 delegates, Biden will have to get to 2378 pledged delegates to trigger the superdelegate voting privileges. No, that is unlikely to be too high a bar for the former vice president to clear. But it is a change.

When Will Biden Clinch? It Depends.

Any guess on what date he pushes it over the finish line, @FHQ? My guess is Georgia and West Virginia on June 9th.

— Matt Cypher (@MLCypher) May 15, 2020

There is certainly an argument out there that Biden wrapped up the Democratic presidential nomination back on April 8 -- the day after the Wisconsin primary -- when Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign. The former vice president shifted from being the presumptive presumptive nominee to the presumptive nominee then.

And an argument can be made that the trajectory of Biden's delegate math made that obvious on many of the Tuesdays throughout March. But trajectory is one thing as is the fact that all of the remaining viable candidates other than Biden pulled out of the race for the Democratic nomination. However, crossing over the requisite 1991 pledged delegates to become the nominee is another thing altogether. As of now, Biden is just shy of 1500 delegates and needs around 38 percent of the delegates available in the remaining states with contests to surpass that threshold. Given how the primaries and caucuses have gone since Sanders dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden, that will not prove to be too heavy a lift.

But when will Biden hit and pass 1991?

It depends.

One thing that can be said is that it will not be in May. There are just two more contests -- Oregon and Hawaii next week -- and just 95 delegates to be allocated before the end of the month. June 2 offers both more contests and 479 more delegates. But even then, it would be a bit of a stretch for Biden to get to 1991 by then.

Again, it depends. If one looks at the contests that there are results for since April 8 when Sanders suspended his campaign -- Alaska, Wyoming, Ohio, Kansas and Nebraska -- they paint a certain picture, one where Biden gets almost 74 percent of the qualified vote on average. And if Biden receives around three-quarters of the delegates in future primaries and caucuses, then he will just barely eclipse the 1991 delegate barrier on June 9 when Georgia and West Virginia hold primaries.

Yet, that is something of a rough estimate. It assumes that congressional district delegate allocation will mirror statewide delegate allocation and that may or may not be the case. But that potential variation across congressional districts may end up pushing Biden's magic number clinching point deeper into the delayed primary calendar.

Another variable that may influence when that point occurs is the nature of the small sample of contests that have happened since Sanders's exit from the race. Three of those five contests were in party-run primary or caucus states (Alaska, Wyoming and Kansas). No, that party-run part does not matter to the math going forward, but that all three used ranked-choice voting does. The redistribution of votes in those contests inflates the qualified share of support that both Biden and Sanders received. As a result, the average qualified share used in arriving at the June 9 target date for clinching cited above may be a bit more generous to Sanders than to Biden. After all, much of the voting in the April 10 Alaska party-run primary took place by mail before Sanders dropped out on April 8. The 45 percent Sanders received may not exactly be representative of the share he has gotten and will get in future contests.

If one looks at the other two contests -- Ohio and Nebraska -- then it is clear that Sanders is very much flirting with the threshold to qualify for delegates. And if Nebraska is the new normal -- a state where Sanders failed to qualify for delegates either statewide or in any of the three congressional districts -- then that would speed up Biden's journey to 1991. Were Biden to receive all of the delegates available -- assuming he is the only candidate qualifying for delegates -- then he would easily surpass 1991 on Super Junesday, June 2.

But how the allocation goes between now and the end of primary season will likely be something in between those two extremes: 1) Sanders receiving about a quarter of the qualified vote and 2) Biden being the only qualifying candidate. Of course, there are not that many contests nor delegates at stake between June 2 and June 9. The caucuses in the Virgin Islands fall on June 6, but there are just seven delegates on the line there.

Look, the bottom line is the one where this discussion started: Biden will be the nominee. The question is when he more officially becomes the presumptive nominee in the delegate count. The above is a rough guide. One thing that can be said is that even if one follows the Sanders-generous extreme above -- the one where the Vermont senator receives about a quarter of the delegates -- then Biden will by the end of primary season have enough pledged delegates in his column to allow superdelegates participate on the first ballot roll call vote at the national convention. That is, of course, assuming the current rules remain the same when the convention Rules Committee adopts rules for the convention.

What's to Know About the Statewide Delegate Reallocation Process So Far? There's not much to go on, but...

Earlier on Thursday, April 30, both the Biden campaign and the suspended Sanders campaign jointly announced that both had struck a deal to allow Sanders to keep his statewide delegates. Under the Democratic National Committee delegate selection rules, any candidate no longer running for the nomination is to lose any statewide delegates -- at-large and PLEO delegates allocated based on statewide results -- to any candidates who are still in the race and originally received at least 15 percent of the vote statewide.

The agreement made between the two campaigns would continue to follow the letter of the rule. Delegates will still be allocated -- or reallocated as the case may be -- to Biden after a primary's or caucus's results come in. However, at the time of selection statewide delegate slots in a proportion corresponding to any qualified share of the vote Sanders received (presumably over 15 percent) would be filled by Sanders-aligned delegate candidates. That has the effect of keeping the overarching reallocation rule intact for this and future cycles, but places the onus on state parties to select delegates in accordance with the statewide results in their states' contests.

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FHQ will have more on this in a later post, but for now wanted to more closely examine the reallocation process that has occurred so far. Admittedly, it does not amount to much and the coronavirus has decreased the activity even further. Under the original state-level delegate selection plans, nine states would have selected statewide delegates by the end of April. Those nine states would have made up just under 13 percent of the total statewide delegates. But again, the coronavirus pandemic has intervened, disrupting the plans state parties laid out and had approved by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee. Of those nine states, five state parties in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma and Tennessee shifted their statewide delegate selection to later dates in May and June.

That leaves just four states that have actually conducted delegate selection through the end of April.¹ And those four states -- Colorado (April 18 virtual state convention), New Hampshire (April 25 virtual state convention), North Dakota (March 21 virtual state convention) and Utah (April 25 virtual state convention) -- comprise just more than 3 percent of the total number of statewide delegates allocated and selected.

That is not much of a sample and it certainly is not all that representative of how the overall reallocation process will work in other states. North Dakota, for example, held its party-run primary after the race had winnowed to just Biden and Sanders, and then selected statewide delegates before Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8. That meant that Sanders was allocated delegates and had those slots filled with Sanders-aligned supporters before the Vermont senator was out of the race. Those delegates cannot be reallocated.

Moreover, in New Hampshire where statewide delegates were selected this past weekend, there were no candidates still in the race who got more than 15 percent in the February 11 primary and thus no one to whom to reallocate any delegates. Those eight delegates were split among the candidates who originally cleared the 15 percent threshold but who are no longer in the race (Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Sanders). In other words, there was no explicit reallocation of delegates among Granite state Democrats either. It was impossible.

That leaves just Colorado and Utah where only 33 statewide delegates (roughly 2 percent of the total) were at stake. Both also saw multiple candidates clear 15 percent on Super Tuesday. Bloomberg and Warren joined Biden and Sanders over 15 percent in both contests. Colorado Democrats throughout the primary season winnowing process have provided a real-time reallocation tally of its statewide delegates. The party shows Biden as the sole qualifier for statewide delegates, but has yet to release a list of statewide delegates selected ("coming soon" according to this site).

Similarly, in Utah, Democrats there have yet to release a list of statewide delegates selected on April 25. Biden delegate candidates dominated the list of candidates, but it is unclear what the results were in the Beehive state and what the reallocation and selection there looks like.

The take home message here is that there has not been a lot of actual statewide delegate reallocation and/or selection yet. This deal between the Biden and Sanders campaigns, then, comes at a good time. Statewide delegate slots will be reallocated to Biden, but will be filled Sanders delegate candidates where the Vermont senator receives more than 15 percent statewide. And selection has yet to take place for nearly 97 percent of statewide delegates.

That process has yet to really get off the ground yet.


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¹ This excludes American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands which selected territory-wide delegates in March in conjunction with their caucuses. Between them, both territories account for just 12 total at-large delegates.

An Early and Tentative Look at Democratic Bonus Delegates for 2020

NOTE: Click here for the final breakdown of delegates by category for each state.


Now that the 2020 Democratic presidential primary calendar is all but complete, one can begin to assess which states are definitively eligible for bonus delegates. Under the rules of the Democratic nomination process, there are two ways in which a state party can be awarded delegates in addition to those apportioned it by the DNC formula. One is based on timing and the other on the clustering of contiguous primaries and/or caucuses.

Timing bonus
The timing bonus stems from the manner in which the Democratic National Committee partitions the primary calendar. Stage I encompasses the February carve-out contests plus those scheduled in the month of March. None of the states that fall into this earliest calendar category are eligible for any additional delegates.

However, the next two (of three) stages are. Any contest scheduled during the month of April falls into Stage II and is awarded an extra 10 percent bonus. That 10 percent is calculated using the base delegation, the output of the DNC apportionment formula before the 15 percent "add-on" delegates or PLEOs (party leader and elected officials) are tacked on to the pledged delegate total.¹ That is really just a longer way of saying that any bonus is calculated as a percentage of a state's district and at-large delegates combined.

Finally, the last section of the calendar -- Stage III -- includes any contest that falls in either May or the earliest part of June. Those state parties see a 20 percent bonus added to their base delegations.


Clustering bonus
The other bonus added in 2010 for the 2012 cycle gives incentive to states that form regional or subregional primaries later in the calendar. Any state with a contest clustered with contests in at least two other neighboring states are eligible for a 15 percent bonus added to their base delegations. But only states with regional or subregional clusters on or later than the fourth Tuesday in March can be awarded that bonus. There is, then, a timing element to this bonus as well. And what that ultimately means is that unless a cluster wedges into a spot in the last week or so of March, then all other clustering states are eligible for more than one bonus. An April cluster would mean a 15 percent bump plus a 10 percent timing increase. And any cluster in May or later would qualify for a 20 percent timing bonus plus the 15 percent clustering increase that totals to a 35 percent increase to a state's base delegation.


Early and Tentative 2020 bonus delegates
Again, with the 2020 primary calendar near completion, one can map out how many bonus delegates there will be and in which states that will end up. Yes, the dates of the primaries in New York and Washington, DC are unsettled at this time, but are very likely to end up on April 28 and June 2, respectively. If one assumes both end up on those dates then each would be among the 24 states and territories in the 2020 cycle to qualify for bonus delegates. That total is down from 28 bonus-qualifying states in 2016. Arizona², California, Idaho, North Dakota, Puerto Rico and Utah all lost bonuses by moving up and/or opting into (earlier) primaries rather than (later) caucuses. And Louisiana and Kansas both gained bonuses by shifting their contests to later and bonus-eligible dates for 2020.

What appears below is a detailed table of how many delegates have been apportioned by the DNC to each of the 57 states and territories with contests. The pledged delegates, broken into their various categories, appear in Duke blue, the automatic delegates (superdelegates) are shaded in Carolina blue.   And a tentative tally of bonus delegates also appears (where applicable) in shades of green. The darker the shade of green, the greater the bonus calculated from and tacked onto the base delegation total.



Now, again, this is apt to change some based on any further but unforeseen changes to the calendar. However, given the current (likely) calendar, there would be 211 bonus delegates awarded across the 24 eligible states. Nearly a quarter of them are apportioned to New York alone, a beneficiary of not only a timing bonus should the primary in the Empire state wind up on April 28, but a clustering bonus as well. Pennsylvania also benefits from that double bonus. Together, Pennsylvania and New York represent nearly 40 percent of the total bonus delegates apportioned. In fact, the entire six state Acela primary cluster on April 28 accounts for over half of all of the likely bonus delegates, all benefiting from a double bonus (25 percent in total).

Practically speaking, the addition of any bonus delegates adds to the total number of pledged delegates and total delegates. And that, in turn, means that the number of delegates needed for any candidate to win the nomination increases as well. The pledged total would rise to 3979 delegates, meaning that a candidate would need 1990 pledged delegates to win the nomination on a first ballot vote conducted without superdelegates.

In the event that the nomination process goes beyond the first ballot, a candidate would need a higher total number of delegates, including the superdelegates, to win the nomination. The overall total, including bonus delegates, would increase to 4745 delegates.³ As a result the magic number to clinch the Democratic nomination on a second or subsequent ballot would increase to 2373 delegates. A candidate can also enter the convention with that number of or more delegates and win the nomination on a first ballot vote that includes superdelegates.


How might these bonus delegate totals change in the coming months?
Unless the calendar undergoes a late and unforeseen change, then the above is likely what the final bonus delegate and pledged delegate totals will look like. Should the New York bill moving the primary there to April not be signed into law, for example, then New York Democrats would lose their 49 bonus delegates and the overall bonus delegate total would decrease.⁴ That would alter not only the bonus total but the overall total.

Barring those sorts of late cycle moves, however, the bonus delegate total is as close to locked at it can be. By extension, that means that the pledged total is unlikely to change as well, and thus the 1990 delegate magic number is fairly close to accurate.

Where things remain in flux is within the superdelegate total. The secretary of the DNC does not have to confirm that total (for each state) to state parties until March 6, 2020. Most of likely changes on this front will take place during the fall 2019 gubernatorial elections and any special elections to Congress, and then, the changes are only likely to be pretty minimal.

[MORE: How the magic number may be more fluid in 2020 than it has in past years.]


How are bonus delegates apportioned to eligible states?
Here it may be useful to refer back to the table above. At the bottom is a tab called "Bonus Distribution". If one clicks on that, then one can see where the bonus delegates are distributed in a state's total. Alaska, for example, would gain one bonus delegate, and that extra delegate ends up filtering into the district delegate total.

Why?

Here, things get a bit more complicated. First, a state's base delegation is made up of district and at-large delegates. By rule, 75 percent of that base delegation should be district delegates with the remaining 25 percent reserved for at-large delegates.

Adding bonus delegates to the base delegation total potentially alters that balance. Bonus delegates cannot all, then, be added to the at-large delegate pool (the allocation of which is determined by statewide results). The method the DNC uses is not to lump at-large, district and bonus delegates into a pool and recalculate a new 75/25 district-to-at-large balance. Rather, the DNC leaves the originally calculated at-large and district pools alone and calculates a 75/25 split of any bonus delegates for which a state may be eligible. The 75 percent portion is then added to the existing district delegate total and the remaining part to the at-large total.

The only places where this process breaks down to some degree are, first, when the resulting apportionment of bonus delegates to each of the two pools ends with a remainder of .5. Both sides of the calculation cannot round up, otherwise an additional delegate is added to a state's total. In those cases, the district bonus segment is rounded up and the at-large bonus segment rounds down.

Small delegations and bonuses are also potentially problematic. In the case of delegations so small as to only warrant one bonus delegate, that delegate would always mathematically end up in the district total. However, in cases like Alaska and Wyoming -- where just one bonus delegate is apportioned -- that one bonus delegate filters into the at-large pool.

The resulting bonus delegate distribution for 2020 is weighted slightly more toward the at-large side. 26.5 percent of the bonus delegates are collectively apportioned to at-large pool, more than the 25 percent goal. Of course, that is based on the aggregated totals (155 district bonus delegates and 56 at-large bonus delegates). The distribution relative to the balance called for in the rules differs from state to state and is also closer to 75/25 when considering the overall pools of district and at-large delegates (with bonus delegates added).

In the end, all this really means is that a marginal number of delegates winds up in that overall at-large pool that is allocated based on statewide results.



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¹ PLEOs are distinct from superdelegates. Before 2012, both were in the same unplugged category. But upon the recommendation of the Democratic Change Commission to reduce the number of superdelegates, the DNC adopted rules changes in 2010 for the 2012 cycle. That change shifted those add-on/PLEO delegates from unpledged into the pledged category.

² There was no purposeful move of the Arizona primary for the 2020 cycle. However, the language describing where the primary falls on the calendar, while advantageous in 2016, is not for 2020. The primary is scheduled for the Tuesday immediately after March 15. In 2016, that date was the fourth Tuesday in March and qualified Arizona Democrats for a clustering bonus (along with Idaho and Utah). That Tuesday in 2020 is on March 17, too early to be eligible for a clustering bonus (even if Arizona had not lost its 2016 partners for 2020).

³ The DNC total for superdelegates does not seemingly include the Democratic governor of the Virgin Islands. That addition is reflected in the superdelegate and overall totals in the table above.

⁴ That would also mean that New York would have a February primary and, by rule, lose half their delegates. Typically, a penalty like that is meted out during primary season but restored for the convention. But it is an open question as to whether the DNC through the Rules and Bylaws Committee would restore any penalized delegates in a scenario where there is no presumptive nominee heading into the convention. All state-level delegate selection processes are to be completed no later than June 20, 2020. After that point, the secretary of the DNC would confirm the total number of delegates of all of the candidates, determining the likely parameters of the first ballot vote: with or without superdelegates. But things would have to be pretty close for a penalized total of 112 delegates from New York to make the difference.


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Guam Democratic Delegate Selection Plan Sets Territorial Caucuses for May 2

An August 1 press release from the Democratic Party of Guam announced the party's delegate selection plan for the 2020 presidential nomination cycle.

The document details Guam Democrats plans for May 2 caucuses (coinciding with the party-run primary in Kansas). Timing the contest at that point on the calendar -- the same first Saturday in May date the party used in 2016 -- will qualify the Guam Democratic delegation to the Democratic National Convention for a stage III timing bonus that will increase the delegation by one at-large delegate from six base delegates to a total of seven.

Those seven delegates will be allocated under DNC rules to the candidates who receive 15 percent or more of the vote in the May 2 caucuses.

Rounding out the Guam Democratic delegation are an additional six automatic delegates (superdelegates): the four DNC members from the territory (party chair, party vice chair, national committeeman and national committeewoman), the Guam Democratic delegate to Congress and the Democratic Guam governor.


The Guam Democratic Party caucuses have been added to the 2020 FHQ presidential primary calendar.


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Northern Mariana Island Democrats Will Caucus on March 14

While it has seemingly had no public comment period online -- at least one that FHQ has been able to track down -- the delegate selection plan for the Democratic Party in the Northern Mariana Islands has made its way to the Democratic National Committee. This is something that has changed in the last two weeks because when FHQ spoke with folks  on staff with the Rules and Bylaws Committee then, the national party had yet to receive a submission.

In any event, the plan is in, was reviewed and approved by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee on July 30, and calls for a March 14 caucus. That will be the Saturday following contests in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington. That second Saturday in March date was the same one the territorial party used in 2016. Although the news of the caucus is new, the date is not. This is only confirmation of that maintenance of the status quo on the calendar.

This leaves only Guam as the remaining Democratic contest with no confirmed date for the 2020 cycle. New York, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC all are in the midst of potential date changes but have preexisting times for their primaries on the books.


The Northern Mariana Island Democratic Party caucuses have been added to the 2020 FHQ presidential primary calendar.


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The Clock is Ticking on Contested Convention Chatter

The 2020 Democratic presidential nomination process is far enough into the invisible primary now that contested convention stories are popping up at a pretty brisk pace. FHQ is not quite to the point of saying another day, another contested convention story, but we may not be that far off either.

But rather than take the latest one from Cameron Joseph over at Vice News and poke holes in it, I will take a different approach and ask a different question: How much longer should we the politically attentive public expect to deal with the quadrennial rite of contested convention speculation?

There are a variety of ways to look at this, but FHQ will take something of an indirect approach. Both events in primary season and media reactions to those events help to drive attention toward the possibility of a contested convention. So let's turn to the Google Trends data from the last three presidential election cycles, the three for which full data is available.¹ Rather than squeeze the full time series into one figure FHQ will break it into cycles, covering the trendlines for "contested convention," "brokered convention," and "open convention" from January 1 in the year prior to the presidential election year to January 1 of the year after the presidential election has occurred.

One thing is obvious from the figures below right off the bat: The term brokered convention remains the most used term for an unresolved nomination race at the convention stage.


2016
During the 2016 cycle, brokered conventions reached its search height during the first week in March, the week on which Super Tuesday fell during that cycle, and then trailed off thereafter. There was a surge in contested convention searches two weeks later during the mini-Super Tuesday that formed right as the proportionality window in the Republican nomination process closed, allowing state parties to allocate their delegates in a winner-take-all manner if they so chose. But again, that was the peak and it dropped off after that point. Certainly questions lingered as to whether either party's nomination race would remain unresolved for a prolonged period after Super Tuesday, but the searches petered out for the most part.


2012
There is a fairly similar pattern that developed during 2012 as well. The primary calendar was a bit more elongated in 2012 relative to 2016. Florida again jumped into January and forced three-quarters of the carve-out states to follow suit. But that left a significant lull in activity through the bulk of February. But the peak in brokered convention searches falls in a window that includes Super Tuesday (the first Tuesday in March) and extends to and through the following week. That second Tuesday in March featured a couple of competitive southern contests in Alabama and Mississippi that seemed like openings for Santorum and/or Gingrich to challenge Romney, but those opportunities were largely missed (in the delegate count).


2008
Finally, in 2008 a familiar pattern is again observed. Sure, Super Tuesday was a month earlier during that cycle compared to either 2012 or 2016, but it still represented the point of peak brokered convention searches.


That repeated pattern -- a Super Tuesday peak -- suggests a few things. First, this seems to have more to do with the calendar -- the collection of contests on Super Tuesday -- than say the number of delegates allocated by a certain point on the calendar. I say that because there was wide variation in the number of delegates allocated on or before Super Tuesday. It ranged from a high of 83 percent of the delegates allocated by the time Super Tuesday was over in 2008 in the Democratic process to a low of a little more than 25 percent once Super Tuesday was completed in the Democratic process of 2016.

Second, just because searches for brokered or contested or open conventions drop off after Super Tuesday, does not mean they (nor the stories and/or events that drive them) cease altogether. But the bulk of this is yet to come for 2020. The occasional contested convention story may come up as the Vice News story did yesterday, but they largely fall on deaf ears. Most just are not paying attention yet. There may be a mini surge of searches during particular junctures in the invisible primary, but those tend to pale in comparison to the peak of searches that seemingly tend to fall at or around Super Tuesday each cycle.

That finally appears to suggest that if 2020 follows the same pattern, the Democratic nominee may not yet be known, but that the process will be on the way to an answer by around Super Tuesday. And if a multi-way race persists to and through that point on the calendar, then we may not reach the height of 2020 brokered convention searches until later in the calendar.

But FHQ is not willing to make that bet just yet.

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¹ Google Trends stretches back into 2004, but not far enough to encompass the Democratic presidential primaries.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- How the 2020 Endorsement Primary Will Be Different

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

It is not going too far out on a limb to say that any one aspect of a presidential nomination cycle is or will be different than it was in previous cycles. That is and has been the nature of the process in the post-reform era. Rules change. Candidates change. Conditions change.

2020, then, is not exactly like 2016 in the same way that 2016 was not a carbon copy, at least on the Democratic side, of 2008.

One area where 2020 will differ from 2016 is in how candidates running for 2020 accrue endorsements along the way. Much has been made of the rules changes the Democratic National Committee made with respect to superdelegates. That group of unplugged delegates was not eliminated, but their collective voting power at the national convention was curbed to some degree. However, left untouched by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee was the ability of individual superdelegates to endorse candidates vying for the 2020 nomination.

In that way, superdelegates could play much the same role in 2020 that they have in previous cycles.

But the conditions of 2020 may augur against that. For one thing, there are far more candidates who are seemingly running this time around than four years ago. And there is also no clear frontrunner at this point in 2020 as there was in 2016. The clarity of Clinton's status was buttressed by the endorsements she had. At a similar point in 2015, the former secretary of state had 62 high profile endorsements. And that was before she had announced her bid.

No one candidate for 2020, announced or not, has anything approaching that level of institutional support. Joe Biden's name has been invoked by California senior senator, Diane Feinstein, and New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. And while that may be significant given that folks from those two states -- Harris from the Golden state and Gillibrand from the Empire state -- are running, the total falls far short of Clinton's from four years ago (if one can even consider those full-throated endorsements for Biden at all).

Again, however, with a larger field of candidates and no clear frontrunner, some of that is to be expected. But there may also be other forces at work here that are worthy of further consideration.

One that has been mentioned in light of the 2016 controversy over superdelegates and resulting rules changes that stemmed from that is that some elected officials in the position to endorse may opt to wait as others have in the past until after their constituents have voted (or all of the voting is complete). In some way, superdelegate decision making on the endorsement question is like that of the calculus that big money donors are facing now: wait for the dust to settle a bit and then weigh in.

Yet, the extent to which superdelegates may be frozen out of making an endorsement goes beyond that which donors are encountering. Some may be waiting on a signal rather than more actively/forcefully giving one; a reverse of the causal relationship noted in Cohen, et al. in The Party Decides.

Another aspect of this that I have not seen picked up on to this point is the reduced potential for high profile endorsements this cycle as (unfairly?) compared to the far less wide open 2016 cycle. And what I mean by that is there are already a fair number of superdelegates who are vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020. On a basic level, then, there are just fewer superdelegates to provide endorsements. Elizabeth Warren is not going to endorse Cory Booker anymore than Kamala Harris is going to throw her support behind Jay Inslee.

...at this time.

This, too, to some hypothetical extent has a freezing effect on other high profile would-be endorsers. Why support someone now only to see them withdraw from the race in the coming months? Why endorse a colleague/ally now over another colleague/ally?

In other words, there is a timing element to layer into this decision-making framework. The confluence of everything above may -- may -- give less incentive to early endorsements, but really increase the likelihood (and impact?) of later endorsements once the field has winnowed some and some of these superdelegates are culled from the pack.

In the meantime, there may be other endorsements to fill the void: state legislators. They may not meaningful on an individual endorsement basis, but in the aggregate may give us an idea of which candidates have some institutional support on the state level. And that may, in turn, influence where some of the heavier endorsement hitters wind up in the end.

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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Add Kamala Harris to the list. The California senator is officially in and not just exploratory committee in -- like Castro, Gillibrand or Warren -- but in in.

2. Brown's PAC continues to add staff in Iowa.

3. Recent speeches are giving the potential Larry Hogan challenge of the president for the Republican nomination some steam.

4. If his was a run *for* 2020, it was a very half-hearted run from Bob Casey that is now over. It never really got beyond the "I won't close the door on it"/"I'm thinking about it" stage.

5. Booker gets encouragement to run while in Louisiana and Georgia on his trips through the states on the way to South Carolina on the MLK holiday.

6. New Hampshire got a visit from Warren for the second consecutive weekend, and South Carolina will see her there this week.

7. Howard Schultz and his advisers floating the idea of an independent bid seemingly indicates an awful lot about how things are going for him in the Democratic invisible primary.

8. There were no endorsements, but one would rather have potentially influential Iowa Democrats at a  speech during a first trip to the Hawkeye state than not. Gillibrand had the state party chair and 2018 Democratic for secretary of state stop in.

9. Both Gillibrand and Harris are touting widely distributed fundraising successes following their presidential announcements.

10. Swalwell's Palmetto pitstop over the weekend gave a bit more of a glimpse into his thinking on a run.

11. Finally, Elaine Kamarck has a solid piece on the 2020 rules and the Democratic nomination. The only omission is some of the superdelegates/endorsements-related implications which were more controversial in 2016 and were not affected, at least not directly, by the changes for 2020.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- California, Early Voting, and the 2020 Rules

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

As 2018 came to a close a second wave of folks seemed to be getting in their two cents about the impact of the three month shift of the California presidential primary on the 2020 calendar.¹

And it is not a move that is without import. While California pairing with Texas (among others) on Super Tuesday is a new wrinkle for 2020, frontloaded primary calendars with California on the heels of the earliest states are not. California was part of the logjam on the first Tuesday in March in 2000, and similarly just a month behind Iowa kicking things off on the 2008 calendar.

Of course, the dynamics of each of those races were different. Each cycle is always different in some way from its predecessors.² The 2000 cycle saw fields of candidates on both sides that were comparatively small. And in 2008, California was early on a de facto national primary date, but other states -- Florida and Michigan -- sought to push even more directly into the early calendar territory Iowa and New Hampshire.

But maybe 2020 is when the stars align for a California primary move to be of consequence. Perhaps, but 2019 has already witnessed no lack of 2020 candidate maneuvering. And the attention, at least to this point, seems to be in the usual directions: toward the earliest states.

Yes, there is still time for that to change.

In fact, the increase in early voting in the Golden state and the stretch of that window of convenience voting to a point on the calendar in line with the caucuses in Iowa may be enough to alter the equation. It is that reality that has driven much of the renewed discourse about the California primary and 2020.

Some have argued that the implications of the California primary move coupled with that Iowa-aligned early voting start means that the Golden state cannot be ignored. If that is even partly true, then it will likely serve as an extension of the frontloaded calendars cited above. To be successful, candidates have to have the resources to plan for a crowded Super Tuesday, and in 2020, an early vote GOTV effort in the state. Both have winnowing possibilities layered into them.

Still others have made the case that a largely unwinnowed, or lightly winnowed, field entering into a month-long California primary voting window may lead to a fractious split of a large cache of delegates, raising the likelihood of an inconclusive outcome to primary season.

FHQ would submit another scenario altogether, a rather counterintuitive one.

Those rooting most heavily for a still crowded field by the time California rolls around in 2020 are those with some nominal frontrunner status, those with some experience winning statewide in the Golden state, or those with some combination of the two. The more crowded it is, the less likely it is that some number of candidates clears the 15 percent threshold to qualify for delegates in (each of the 55 races for delegates in) California.³

The fewer candidates that crest above 15 percent, the greater the delegate prize California would be to those who do. Bear in mind that, despite the fact that winnowing was slow in 2016 in a crowded Republican nomination race, no primary or caucus saw any more than three candidates receive 15 percent or more of the vote.

And hey, if it is crowded enough in the California results, then California could become a very big prize indeed. If early voting is great enough and distributes the votes in a way that only one candidate clears that threshold (in all 53 jurisdictions), then California becomes a winner-take-all affair.

Advantage: winner.

But it is early yet and the winnowing has only really just begun.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Sanders is heading to the Palmetto state to speak at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally.

2. Later this month Bloomberg will be in Virginia to speak to the Democratic Business Council. This one is more preaching to the choir than broadening any likely coalition of the former New York mayor's.

3. In Iowa today, Steyer is going to announce something. What can one announce in the Hawkeye state?

4. Speaking of announcements, Castro is building up to his own later this week. Yesterday he was in Iowa pledging to shun PAC money and in Nevada reaching out to the Latino community.

5. Meanwhile, Draft Beto stretches into Nevada and California with new hires in an attempt to pull the former Texas congressman into the 2020 race.

6. Finally, Harris has an entry for the 2020 Book Primary.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

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¹ Second wave because there was an initial round back in 2017 when the California legislature pushed the presidential primary in the Golden state up.

² That is the reason that even small rules changes can yield large impacts (or alternatively, be amplified by differing dynamics).

³ There will be 55 contests for delegates nestled in the broader California primary. Allocations of at-large and party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates will be based on the statewide results, while the results in each of the 53 congressional districts will determine how the varying numbers of congressional district delegates will be allocated.

#InvisiblePrimary 2020: Uh oh Biden?

Over at Politico, Charlie Mahtesian has this to say about a prospective Biden candidacy for 2020:

"Joe Biden, who leads the Democratic 2020 presidential field in early polls, has all the markings of a front-runner. He possesses a sterling résumé, access to a donor base, name recognition and eight years of loyal service to a president who’s loved by the party base. There’s just one problem: He’s also a deeply flawed candidate who’s out of step with the mood of his party." [Emphasis is FHQ's]

That is just the opening, but Mahtesian goes on to count off the issues Biden may encounter in the lead up to and during 2020. The usual suspects are in there: age, some pre-#MeToo moment indiscretions that may look different in the current context, and a host of past Senate votes that may again spell trouble now that conditions are different in 2018-20. 

And that all makes sense. Any or all of those things could derail a Biden run before it starts or some time after it is launched. But Mahtesian is potentially overstating the case here by not exactly detailing where it is that Biden could be in trouble. First, he aggregates the potential roadblocks, toggling back and forth between primary phase problems and general election setbacks. This is compounded by imperfect comparisons to 2016 and Hillary Clinton's troubles throughout that cycle (in both phases).

Age, for example, could be a problem for Biden in the primary phase. It is shaping up to be a crowded field with a number of younger alternatives. But millennials did not have trouble supporting an older candidate in 2016. Much of that had to do with the binary choice that most Democratic primary voters and caucusgoers had during the last cycle. Both options were older. That does not appear to be an issue for 2020. And candidate age may not be what is driving the decision-making of younger voters in the Democratic primary electorate. 

During the general election phase, as Mahtesian notes, the age issue would be at least somewhat neutralized compared to another septuagenarian like Trump. 

A similar dynamic exists across election phases when the focus shifts to how pre-#MeToo actions are perceived in a post-#MeToo world. That may affect Biden during a competitive Democratic nomination race, but compared to what? Compared to whom in the Democratic field? Additionally, perception of those actions is something that may resonate with a significant segment of the Democratic primary electorate: women. Female voters may opt for someone other than Biden because of that. They already have more options in 2018 than they did in 2014.

But again, during the general election phase, those perceptions of pre-#MeToo actions look different when compared to Trump, his past behavior, and past and present comments. Does that neutralize the issue? Is it a recipe for potentially depressing turnout to some degree among women (something that is much more likely to disproportionately affect Biden)? 

In those two areas, Biden would potentially suffer more in the nominations phase. However, when Mahtesian shifts gears and begins to focus on Biden's past Senate votes on a number of issues, the exact nature of where -- primary or general -- the pain is felt fades into the ether. Each of those issues -- whether the 2005 bankruptcy bill or the 1994 crime bill -- affects specific constituencies within the Democratic primary electorate. Biden's positions were compared to Clinton's in 2016, but neither stood in the way of the latter claiming the Democratic nomination during the last cycle. Again, however, the field will be different -- more robust -- in 2020 than it was in 2016. Similar positioning by Biden for 2020 may affect his odds of winning the nomination, but, depending on how the large field winnows and who survives, the effects could vary from great to minimal. 

Moreover, the contours of 2020 winnowing extend to the Connor Lamb-like "personally against but politically for" positioning on abortion rights when Mahtesian substitutes Tim Kaine for Hillary Clinton as the point of comparison to Biden. That may or may not be an issue for the former vice president. That depends upon to whom exactly he is compared. Across all of those issues, it may be a problem in the primaries, but less so in the general election. 

Look, based on name recognition alone, Biden is at the top of list of potential 2020 Democratic nominees at the moment. That may change. It may not. Given how relatively early it is in the cycle and that the far too early to be meaningful polls are the most data-rich metric at this time, things are apt to change. Visits will be made to 2018 battlegrounds and 2020 early states. Campaign teams will be built. But any propensity for who is in that pole position to morph hinges on to whom Biden is compared. If one is to carry much of Mahtesian's comparison of between Clinton and Biden to its logical end -- Biden as the 2020 stand-in -- it will not be just Bernie Sanders on the other side this time. There will be others involved who will split the nascent Democratic primary electorate differently than in 2016 and impact the direction of that race through the invisible primary in much different ways. 

That competition may undermine Biden's candidacy. But it may also be that it is too early to cast Biden as this cycle's Jeb Bush. There are warning signs there; similarities, sure. Yet it is not clear just how those "deep flaws" will filter through the patchwork of processes that determine presidential nominees. That gauntlet tends to produce broadly acceptable general election candidates, even ones with flaws. 

But at this stage there are more questions than answers as to how another Biden foray into presidential nomination politics will play out. 

Superdelegates and the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee: A Different Perspective After the Winter Meeting

The Democratic National Committee is coming off its 2018 winter meeting, a meeting that culminated with the acceptance of an interim report on the 2020 rules. That report followed continued discussions by the Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) in conjunction with the winter meeting and a previous preparatory RBC meeting just a week before. FHQ tuned in to both rounds of RBC discussions and continues to be struck by the framing of the rules discussions in media accounts. By far the most dominant lens through which those rules discussions are being viewed is the lingering Clinton-Sanders tensions in the broader party coalition.

And it is not that those depictions are wrong. Rather, it is that they are overly simplistic and have missed some important developments along the way that run against that frame. This phenomenon is at its most stark with respect to the party's efforts on superdelegates, the unpledged elected officials and party leaders that have periodically been controversial in Democratic presidential nomination politics.

On the surface, there is a group that wants to see superdelegates go and an opposing group that wants to maintain the status quo. And there also exists the aforementioned Clinton-Sanders divide left over from the 2016 race. These two cleavages in the party are often treated as reinforcing in the context of these 2020 rules discussions. And that is an easy conclusion at which to arrive: the Clinton/establishment faction wants to keep the current superdelegate system intact while the Sanders group would like to see them go.

However, there is growing evidence that that is just not the case; that those two divides do not buttress each other nearly so completely as is often described. For starters, for all of the chatter about the purge of loosely Sanders-aligned members of the RBC by DNC chair, Tom Perez, during and after the 2017 DNC fall meeting in Las Vegas, the committee has not exactly moved against the interests of the Sanders faction in the context of the 2020 rules discussions. The fear within that faction at the time and since was and has been that the RBC would ignore or dilute the recommendations of the Unity Reform Commission.

On the matter of superdelegates, neither has been the case. In fact, the RBC interim report to the DNC stated that the committee "agrees [with the Unity Reform Commission] that the Party must revise the role and reduce the perceived influence that automatic unpledged delegates have in the presidential nominating process." Furthermore, David McDonald, RBC member from Washington, summed up the committee work to this point quite well in observing that there is consensus on the RBC to make a change -- revise and reduce -- but not on the nature of the influence superdelegates have on the nomination process. In other words, at the very least, there is a perception problem with the current superdelegate system. That, too, was voiced by other members of the committee during the RBC session on superdelegates at the winter meeting.

Rather than a keep superdelegates/get rid of superdelegates divide, then, there is within the RBC a perception problem surrounding superdelegates. And that is less about stay or go or Clinton-Sanders and more about how to reduce the perceived role of those unpledged delegates in the Democratic nomination process.

That "how" question, and particularly the options that have been developed to address that how, cross-cut both of the other cleavages as well. Working from the Unity Reform Commission recommendations, the RBC hit something of a wall. This is something that has been missed in nearly all of the accounts of the two early March RBC meetings. Neither the pooled vote option nor the alternate vote option recommended by the Unity Reform Commission have been viewed by the RBC as wholly acceptable answers to the superdelegate problem.

The alternate vote option drew fire from state party chairs on the RBC for overly complicating the roles of both them and their parties in administering the delegate selection process. Another issue that arose from the discussion of the alternate vote option was the potential for forcing abstentions from superdelegates bound to candidates they do not support.

And the pooled vote option, while perhaps a more elegant option, saw pushback from members of the RBC over its automatic transmission of superdelegate votes to the state tally sheet, removing the need for an actual human to fill the delegate slot. As RBC member Elaine Kamarck remarked, if the party moves in that direction "why even have a convention at all."

Together, those criticisms moved the discussion in a different direction: eliminate the superdelegate votes on the first ballot for the presidential nomination. Elimination is a simpler solution relative to the intricacies of the alternate vote option. Additionally, it is, perhaps, a logical if not justifiable (to some) step beyond the pooled vote option. Eliminating superdelegate votes on the first ballot circumvents the non-voting problem for some but not all superdelegates by applying it to all superdelegates on a vote -- the first ballot -- that has settled every Democratic nomination since 1952.

Now, there are arguments on the merits against the elimination option, but FHQ will save that for a separate post. Suffice it to say, however, there are three main options that are before the RBC that can be roughly arranged from complicated (alternate vote option) to easy to explain. The need for the latter was made apparent during a nearly hourlong back and forth around the three ideas at the winter meeting RBC gathering. There is some desire within the group to not only devise a set of rules to address the superdelegate perception problem, but one that is easy to describe/more easily understood by the rank-and-file of the party.

And that is a different discussion than Clinton-Sanders. It involves that divide; it is influenced by it. But it is not the same cleavage. As this process moves forward, it might be best to bear that in mind. There are really three main cleavages to consider:

    1) Clinton-Sanders (internal v. external):
Yes, the Clinton-Sanders divide remains a part of this discussion, but it is more a function of external pressure -- outside of the RBC¹ -- weighing on the decisions of the group.

    2) perception problem/status quo (balancing process v. legitimacy):
It is evident the RBC sees a perception problem and is seeking to deal with that. And it should be noted that past iterations of the group have dealt with similar assaults on the superdelegate system. There was a more robust defense of the system following its maiden voyage in 1984 that, nonetheless, led to alterations thereafter. And after the close 2008 nomination race, the committee also moved to revise the role of superdelegates.² But the same perception problem existed throughout, bringing, at its worst, the legitimacy of their inclusion and the process into question. The RBC has been sensitive to those questions in its past tinkering. Yet, that superdelegates can but have not overturned the will of the primary/caucus voters through the era of their inclusion fuels the discontent with them even further. The RBC, then, seems willing to test the system with fewer unpledged delegates in 2020 than at any time since before 1984. That seems to be the consensus on the RBC and does not necessarily match the divide described in #1 above; not exactly in any event

    3) options: eliminate on first vote, pooled vote, alternative vote (easy to complicated):
Finally, it is worth drilling down and focusing on the options the committee is considering. That way lies the functioning lines of demarcation on the RBC. This, too, overlaps some with both #1 and #2 above, but again, not perfectly. The bottom line here is over whether the answer to a complex problem can or should be parsimonious or demand further complex rules-making.

As the RBC, and ultimately the DNC, continue to work toward a resolution on superdelegate and other rules for the 2020 process, the above frames all should be considered and combine to give us a better picture of what is going on than repeatedly dipping back into the Clinton-Sanders well of explanations.

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¹ This is outside the RBC in terms of outside groups but also members of the DNC (those not on the RBC) who nonetheless want to see a curbing of if not end to the superdelegate role.

² Add-on superdelegates were moved from unpledged to pledged and the total base number of delegates was raised from 3000 to 3700, reducing the percentage of superdelegates in the process.

Skipping Early States, 2020 Edition

Edward-Isaac Dovere at Politico reports on the strategizing among the nascent campaign team in former Vice President Joe Biden's orbit:

"...a tight circle of aides has been brainstorming a range of tear-up-the-playbook ideas for a White House run, according to people who’ve been part of the discussions or told about them. 

On the list: announcing his candidacy either really early or really late in the primary process so that he’d define the field around him or let it define itself before scrambling the field; skipping Iowa and New Hampshire and going straight to South Carolina, where he has always had a strong base of support; announcing a running mate right out of the gate and possibly picking one from outside of politics; and making a pitch that he can be a bridge not just to disaffected Democrats, but to Republicans revolting against President Donald Trump."

It is kind of early in the cycle for the "skipping states" discussion, but with 2020 giving all indications (at this time) of being a wild nomination cycle on the Democratic side, perhaps it is an idea worth exploring anew.

The premise remains the same: pick a spot on the calendar/state contest where you are more likely to succeed, win then/there, and keep winning on the way to the nomination. Simple, right?

In reality, that has proven easier said, or maybe strategized, than done. It did not go as planned when Al Gore focused on the Southern Super Tuesday states in 1988, and it did not work for Rudy Giuliani twenty years later when he attempted to resurrect a similar strategic path by putting everything on the late January Florida primary. Both campaigns foresaw their respective foci as springboards. Gore from a delegate haul in his home region that would give him enough of a lead to make it difficult for others to catch up. And Giuliani from a winner-take-all Florida win into a series of contests a week later when half the country would be voting.

Both lost.

Gore split the South with Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, leaving behind his natural base of support and with no delegate advantage to show for it. Giuliani lost Florida to John McCain and the Arizona senator -- winner in New Hampshire and South Carolina -- used that series of wins to effectively wrap up the nomination a week after Florida on Super Tuesday.

Now, FHQ does not want to make too much of just two cases, but they are instructive with respect to the prospective "Biden to skip Iowa and New Hampshire" strategy in 2020.¹ Nominees -- or frontrunners in real time during the primaries -- do not skip states. Those campaigns do not cede wins, delegates, and attention to their opponents for a month.

But the allure of South Carolina to Biden is clear and under a rationale much like those above. A win in the Palmetto state with its heavily African American primary electorate would serve as an important hypothetical precursor to wins across the South. And many of the states of the region -- with similar primary electorates -- vote just a week later. That would be an extension of the Clinton success story from 2016. Wins fueled by African American support across the region built the delegate advantage by which the former secretary of state claimed the nomination. Actually, that is the surest path to the modern Democratic nomination.

But skipping Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada is no way to start any march to the nomination even with the "South Carolina gateway to the rest of the South" as the centerpiece. That lowers expectations in any of the first three states to zero and raises expectations on anyone camping out waiting in South Carolina. However, expectations can be lowered or rather tempered without ignoring the first three of the carve-outs.

Romney's "keep Iowa at arm's length" strategy in 2012 is a decent guide. There was a lot of talk of the former Massachusetts governor skipping Iowa in 2011 to focus on New Hampshire, but while he did not spend a ton of time and effort there, Romney was there. That is lower expectations, but not to zero, not ceding the state to the competition.

In a supposedly wide open race, candidates cannot give away anything. And on the Democratic side, get to 15 percent and qualify for and claim whatever delegates you can. Now, if Biden can do that without so much as looking Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada's way, then bully for him. But activists and volunteers, not to mention voters in those states will likely not be receptive to such a snub.

The skipping strategy throws the baby out with the bathwater.

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Quickly, about that entering/announcing late strategy:
Biden may announce late, but if the campaign seeks to do this properly, then the announcement will not really come as a surprise.

Why?

Campaigns have to raise money and hire staff to run the operation. That is groundwork that has to be laid well in advance, and the public will see signs of progress (or lack thereof) during the invisible primary regardless of any announcement. To wait on building that campaign infrastructure is to, again, cede it to the competition. Biden stayed on the sidelines too long in 2015, and though the chatter of a possible run was there, donors and campaign operatives were not. They had signed on elsewhere and were not willing to switch.

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Betting at home?
Biden announces early and plays in all of the carve-outs to some extent if he plays at all.

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¹ The Politico article is another cut in the death by one thousand cuts that the Nevada caucuses continue endure. Presumably, if a Biden campaign is skipping Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on South Carolina, then they are skipping third in the order Nevada as well.

South Carolina Democrats Are Not Getting Snubbed

Democrats in the Palmetto state may feel like they are getting snubbed by the candidates vying for the party's presidential nomination, but they aren't.

The National Journal's Adam Wollner digs into some of the theories floating around South Carolina -- Clinton has a big lead in the polling conducted in the state mainly -- to explain the deficit. Collectively, however, they fall short of providing the context necessary to understand what is happening in the first in the South primary state.

Apples to Oranges comparisons
Comparing the state of play in the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination race to the 2016 Republican process or the 2008 Democratic battle is imperfect. Partly that is a function of the varying levels of competition in those respective nomination races, but another contributing factor is that there just are not as many candidates fighting for the 2016 Democratic nomination as there were in the 2008 race or are in the 2016 Republican primary. More candidates yield more visits. And that trend is enhanced when there is also a comparatively higher level of competition among a larger group of candidates.

Context and Iowa
One way to shoot down the perception that South Carolina is getting snubbed and to highlight the above point is to compare the attention South Carolina receives from the candidates to that which Iowa receives (within cycles). In other words, compared to Iowa, what is the share of attention -- candidate visits -- South Carolina is receiving?

During the competitive 2004 Democratic primary race -- one that was both contested and had more candidates involved than is the case in 2016 -- South Carolina had 183 visits (see Ridout and Rottinghaus 2008). Iowa was visited by the Democratic candidates 860 times. South Carolina, then, had approximately one-fifth the number of visits that Iowa did in 2004. Four years later, South Carolina had 143 Democratic visits as compared to 1214 to Iowa (see Putnam 2009). In 2008, South Carolina had roughly 10% of the visits that Iowa received.

In 2016?

As Wollner points out, so far this year, Iowa has had the Democratic candidates come calling 91 times. South Carolina has only had the candidates on the ground campaigning for just 19 days. That is a ratio that is comparable to the one South Carolina visit for every five in Iowa witnessed in the 2004 cycle.

Looking at the just the raw numbers, visits are down for both (and across the board for all states for that matter). But, again, that is a function of the number of candidates involved in the race and how competitive it is.

There is one other factor that feeds into the perception of being snubbed in the Palmetto state. Democrats there and elsewhere have not seen a competitive primary race since 2008. None of them really like the prospect of sitting on the sidelines in 2016. In South Carolina, Democratic activists and voters see Bernie Sanders doing quite well in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire and that that has not translated down South. Again, those folks do not want to be on the sidelines for four or eight more years awaiting a competitive presidential nomination race. They want a piece of the action that Iowa and New Hampshire are getting.

But the thing is, neither the Hawkeye state nor the Granite state are really getting the attention either. There just are not enough candidates involved nor is the race competitive enough (see polling, endorsements and fundraising).

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It also bears mentioning that of all the carve-out states, South Carolina is the least competitive in the general election phase of the presidential election process. If the Clinton campaign has one eye on the general election, then that May also push her to Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada more. That does not appear to be the case at this point, however.

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