The story from the Times-Picayune.
--
A couple of notes:
1. Louisiana, as the story notes, has already moved its presidential primary for the 2016 cycle. Moving again would be fairly atypical. States, if they move at all, usually only move once per cycle. Double moves happen, but they are rare and recent occurrences. Both California and New Jersey moved twice ahead of 2008.1
2. This would likely be a wise move on Louisiana's part. A Saturday, March 5 primary would be proximate enough -- regionally and on the calendar -- to the proposed SEC primary on March 1 to benefit from the regional attention. However, being on a separate date means that Louisiana would be less likely to be lost in the shuffle among larger neighboring states (with more delegates) on March 1. During the following week, March 8 is also a point on the calendar that is sparsely populated with contests. That is particularly true if Alabama and Mississippi move up a week; leaving only Ohio and the Hawaii Republican caucuses. Such a line up is unlikely to pull the campaign immediately out of the South following March 1.
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1 California moved from March to June before moving into February. New Jersey first moved up to late February before bumping the Garden state primary up a few more weeks to early February.
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Showing posts with label SEC primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEC primary. Show all posts
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
A Couple of Reasons the 2016 Texas Presidential Primary Isn't Going Anywhere
There's been a nice call and response between James Hohmann at Politico and Patrick Svitek at the Houston Chronicle over the 2016 presidential primary in Texas the last few days.
Hohmann's deep dive on the proposed SEC primary sharing a date with primaries in Texas and Florida included this side note:
FHQ tends to agree with Texas Republicans for a few reasons. I don't know who the GOP (RNC?) insiders Hohmann spoke to, but the proportionality rule has not played out at all as an enticement to larger states moving back to later dates on the primary calendar. [The statement seems more like wishful thinking than theory of presidential primary movement.] State-level actors have not reacted by both moving back and adopting winner-take-all allocation rules. States may shift the dates of their primaries and caucuses around. However, most state parties tend to choose the path of least resistance when it comes to their method of delegate allocation. Most of the time that translates to states not changing the rules they used the last time unless they are forced to.
States that move back are not forced to adopt a winner-take-all allocation method. Those states do, however, have that option. They just tend to stick with what they had allocation-wise the previous cycle, though.
Look no further than Texas in 2012. Had the redistricting process not gotten bogged down in the courts, the Texas presidential primary would have been the first Tuesday in March (as called for by Texas law). Since the redistricting battle dragged into 2012, the Texas primary got forced back into May. The shift did not come with a switch to winner-take-all rules. In fact, Texas Republicans kept the true proportional method of allocation the party passed in late 2011. Once that change was made, Texas Republicans were resistant to changing it, mainly because the state party rules prevented them from making a change outside of a state convention setting.1
Of course, Texas delegate allocation methods are not the only area of the delegate selection rules where Texans have been slow to react over the years. This also extends to the state government moving the primary date around. This is something that Texas Republican National Committeeman, Robin Armstrong in Stivek's piece seems to be projecting onto states that are part of the SEC primary proposal: state legislatures derailing a potential move. Texas moved its primary to the second Tuesday in March for the 1988 cycle -- the Southern Super Tuesday. That was the date used for the presidential primary in the Lone Star state through the 2004 cycle. Then, when other states were moving up into February -- when it was still allowed by both parties -- for 2004 and 2008, the Texas legislature managed to bump the primary up to the only the first Tuesday in March; just a week earlier.2
So, FHQ is not of the opinion that the Texas presidential primary is going anywhere in 2016. No one has been eager to jump back on the calendar in order to get winner-take-all rules and Texas has had a history of resisting these sorts of changes (calendar and delegate allocation).
There is also an additional reason, but I'll save a discussion of that for a separate post in the next week or so.
--
Let me also weigh in on Armstrong's theory that only a couple of states will move into this SEC primary slot on March 1. That has always been likely. Georgia has the flexibility to move there because the secretary of state in the Peach state sets the date. Additionally, Alabama and Mississippi seem likely to move as well. Arkansas has conflicts as FHQ has discussed previously and Louisiana has already shifted its primary up to an earlier Saturday in March than it used in 2012. The Pelican state is unlikely to move again.
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1 There is an exception for emergencies, but a switch to winner-take-all rules is not necessarily an emergency.
2 The move to that date had been made before and for the 2004 cycle, but redistricting kept that from coming to fruition for 2004. 2008 was the first cycle that law was implemented. Redistricting then pushed the primary date back to May during 2012.
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Hohmann's deep dive on the proposed SEC primary sharing a date with primaries in Texas and Florida included this side note:
Some GOP insiders believe that Florida and Texas will opt to push back their primaries until later in March. Under the new RNC rules, states that wait until March 15 can have “winner take all” primaries, with the candidate receiving the most votes collecting all of a state’s delegates. The potential presidential candidates from Florida and Texas are likely to prefer that.The response from Texas Republicans was a mix of "meh" and "we're not moving' (from March 1)".
FHQ tends to agree with Texas Republicans for a few reasons. I don't know who the GOP (RNC?) insiders Hohmann spoke to, but the proportionality rule has not played out at all as an enticement to larger states moving back to later dates on the primary calendar. [The statement seems more like wishful thinking than theory of presidential primary movement.] State-level actors have not reacted by both moving back and adopting winner-take-all allocation rules. States may shift the dates of their primaries and caucuses around. However, most state parties tend to choose the path of least resistance when it comes to their method of delegate allocation. Most of the time that translates to states not changing the rules they used the last time unless they are forced to.
States that move back are not forced to adopt a winner-take-all allocation method. Those states do, however, have that option. They just tend to stick with what they had allocation-wise the previous cycle, though.
Look no further than Texas in 2012. Had the redistricting process not gotten bogged down in the courts, the Texas presidential primary would have been the first Tuesday in March (as called for by Texas law). Since the redistricting battle dragged into 2012, the Texas primary got forced back into May. The shift did not come with a switch to winner-take-all rules. In fact, Texas Republicans kept the true proportional method of allocation the party passed in late 2011. Once that change was made, Texas Republicans were resistant to changing it, mainly because the state party rules prevented them from making a change outside of a state convention setting.1
Of course, Texas delegate allocation methods are not the only area of the delegate selection rules where Texans have been slow to react over the years. This also extends to the state government moving the primary date around. This is something that Texas Republican National Committeeman, Robin Armstrong in Stivek's piece seems to be projecting onto states that are part of the SEC primary proposal: state legislatures derailing a potential move. Texas moved its primary to the second Tuesday in March for the 1988 cycle -- the Southern Super Tuesday. That was the date used for the presidential primary in the Lone Star state through the 2004 cycle. Then, when other states were moving up into February -- when it was still allowed by both parties -- for 2004 and 2008, the Texas legislature managed to bump the primary up to the only the first Tuesday in March; just a week earlier.2
So, FHQ is not of the opinion that the Texas presidential primary is going anywhere in 2016. No one has been eager to jump back on the calendar in order to get winner-take-all rules and Texas has had a history of resisting these sorts of changes (calendar and delegate allocation).
There is also an additional reason, but I'll save a discussion of that for a separate post in the next week or so.
--
Let me also weigh in on Armstrong's theory that only a couple of states will move into this SEC primary slot on March 1. That has always been likely. Georgia has the flexibility to move there because the secretary of state in the Peach state sets the date. Additionally, Alabama and Mississippi seem likely to move as well. Arkansas has conflicts as FHQ has discussed previously and Louisiana has already shifted its primary up to an earlier Saturday in March than it used in 2012. The Pelican state is unlikely to move again.
--
1 There is an exception for emergencies, but a switch to winner-take-all rules is not necessarily an emergency.
2 The move to that date had been made before and for the 2004 cycle, but redistricting kept that from coming to fruition for 2004. 2008 was the first cycle that law was implemented. Redistricting then pushed the primary date back to May during 2012.
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Monday, November 10, 2014
"SEC Presidential Primary" Back on the Radar for 2016
Jim Galloway and Greg Bluestein at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report that Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp (R) is still working on a southern regional primary for March 1, 2016:
A few things either mentioned or neglected:
1) Kemp seems focused on that March 1 date for the Georgia presidential primary in 2016. The secretary has signaled more than once now that this is a likely destination for the primary in the Peach state. That is a change from the 2012 cycle when the date of the Georgia primary was an unknown through much of 2011 after the state legislature ceded the date-setting authority to the secretary of state.
2) Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama are the low hanging fruit of potential presidential primary moves for 2016. Here's the calendar. Tennessee is already on March 1 (as Galloway and Bluestein mention) and Louisiana is now locked into a Saturday, March 5 primary date after legislation moving the primary up by two weeks was signed into law this summer. That will be as far as Louisiana moves up; the same week as the other southern states. Alabama and Mississippi are already slated for primary dates just a week later on March 8. Those states bumping their dates up by a week is not all that heavy a lift. Arkansas is a different matter. Having gotten lost in the early state shuffle during the Southern Super Tuesday in 1988 and the Titanic Tuesday of 2008, state legislators moved the presidential primary back to the traditional May date in the immediately subsequent cycles. However, Republicans now have unified control of the state government in the Natural state after the 2014 midterms and may be more receptive to such a move.
3) Perhaps more importantly, it should be noted that the two biggest SEC states -- Florida and Texas are already positioned on March 1. It leaves one to wonder if this version of a Southern Super Tuesday plays out the same way as it did in 1988, but in reverse. Spurred by the action of Southern Democratic action, most southern states moved up to the second Tuesday in March in 1988. There was a split decision on the Democratic side with Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson all laying some claim to having won the day. While Democrats had a split decision across the South, George HW Bush swept the region. Such a reversal may be less about the decisions throughout the South to cluster primaries on the same date than how the Republican and Democratic nomination races are shaping up at this point in late 2014. Still...
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"Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s efforts to build what he calls an “SEC” presidential primary in 2016 appear to be proceeding apace.
"Kemp is working with his counterparts in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama to arrange a coordinated, regional primary for the first Tuesday in March 2016.
"In a letter to six Southern secretaries of state, Kemp confirmed that he intends to set March 1 as the date for Georgia’s presidential primary:--
'It is my hope that our region will participate together that day and that the voters of the Southeast will have a major impact in the selection of the presidential nominees of both parties.'"
A few things either mentioned or neglected:
1) Kemp seems focused on that March 1 date for the Georgia presidential primary in 2016. The secretary has signaled more than once now that this is a likely destination for the primary in the Peach state. That is a change from the 2012 cycle when the date of the Georgia primary was an unknown through much of 2011 after the state legislature ceded the date-setting authority to the secretary of state.
2) Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama are the low hanging fruit of potential presidential primary moves for 2016. Here's the calendar. Tennessee is already on March 1 (as Galloway and Bluestein mention) and Louisiana is now locked into a Saturday, March 5 primary date after legislation moving the primary up by two weeks was signed into law this summer. That will be as far as Louisiana moves up; the same week as the other southern states. Alabama and Mississippi are already slated for primary dates just a week later on March 8. Those states bumping their dates up by a week is not all that heavy a lift. Arkansas is a different matter. Having gotten lost in the early state shuffle during the Southern Super Tuesday in 1988 and the Titanic Tuesday of 2008, state legislators moved the presidential primary back to the traditional May date in the immediately subsequent cycles. However, Republicans now have unified control of the state government in the Natural state after the 2014 midterms and may be more receptive to such a move.
3) Perhaps more importantly, it should be noted that the two biggest SEC states -- Florida and Texas are already positioned on March 1. It leaves one to wonder if this version of a Southern Super Tuesday plays out the same way as it did in 1988, but in reverse. Spurred by the action of Southern Democratic action, most southern states moved up to the second Tuesday in March in 1988. There was a split decision on the Democratic side with Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson all laying some claim to having won the day. While Democrats had a split decision across the South, George HW Bush swept the region. Such a reversal may be less about the decisions throughout the South to cluster primaries on the same date than how the Republican and Democratic nomination races are shaping up at this point in late 2014. Still...
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Thursday, March 6, 2014
An SEC Primary in 2016? Not so fast… (Part II)
A couple of weeks ago FHQ examined the likelihood that the states most closely associated with Secretary of State Brian Kemp's (R-GA) southeastern regional primary proposal would be able to implement a presidential primary move. That was more of an internal look at what may affect the calculus in each state. The post touched on outside factors that may affect that decision-making process, but only in passing. Obviously, there are other matters that may intervene to complicate things.
There is some history here. The idea of a southern regional primary is not a new one. Barely a year after the reformed presidential nomination process got its first trial run in 1972, Jimmy Carter was out laying the groundwork for a nomination bid on the Democratic side in 1976 but was also trumpeting the strategic virtues of holding a collective southern regional primary. The benefits seemed clear. The South would speak with one voice and propel a more moderate-to-conservative candidate to the Democratic nomination who could, in turn, better compete in the general election.
As it turned out, it took the states of the South a decade and a half to coordinate this, bringing the idea to fruition. It took some cajoling from the Carter folks ahead of the 1980 renomination run against Ted Kennedy to convince legislators in Florida to hold pat in March and legislators in Alabama and Georgia to move up to coincide with the primary in the Sunshine state. That subregional primary was to serve as a counterweight to the delegate gains Kennedy was likely to win in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.1
Four years later, several southern and border states adopted caucuses for the competitive Democratic nomination race, joining Alabama, Florida and Georgia in March, though not all on the same date. Only the Oklahoma Democratic caucuses were on that same second Tuesday in March date. Caucuses in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Carolina followed later in the month. Collectively the South spoke with something approximating a single voice, but the result was not support for a more moderate candidate.2 Rather, it was support for Walter Mondale.
There was, then, no alignment between the notion of a strong, unified regional voice in the process and a homegrown, southern, moderate-to-conservative candidate. The former seemed more likely with a southern bloc of contests, but that did not happen until the 1988 invisible primary. Even then -- with everything lined up -- the South did not speak with one voice in the 1988 Democratic primary. The unintended consequence was that three Democratic candidates emerged from the Southern Super Tuesday with a claim to victory -- Dukakis in the populous South (Florida and Texas), Gore in the peripheral South and Jackson in the Deep South -- all while George HW Bush used a sweep of the region on Super Tuesday to consolidate his hold on the Republican nomination.
--
The dynamics of any given nomination race matter and it is difficult to gauge ahead of time -- as a decision-maker on the state level -- what those dynamics will look like in, say, two years time. That is the cautionary tale for those thinking of coordinating primaries in 2016. That past repeated itself to some degree in 2008 on the Democratic side (though not in a regional sense). Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton roughly split the logjam of national contests on Super Tuesday while John McCain significantly stretched the delegate lead he had established during the January contests.
What are the dynamics FHQ is talking about?
The candidates who run combined with the sequence of primaries and caucuses and the rules of delegate allocation are basics. And all are unknown at this point in time to those state-level decision-makers. There is a baseline calendar for 2016, but the question is how state actors view that terrain in light of the national party rules on (national convention) delegate selection. Actually, this constitutes several questions:
None of this is happening in a vacuum. These decisions to move a primary or caucuses are not independent of one another. The answer to question #1 depends on the willingness and ability of the state to move based on structural factors. FHQ has already discussed that for the states potentially involved in this retro-southern regional primary concept proposed by Georgia Secretary of State Kemp. Nothing in that proposal suggests that any of the southern go rogue, so the states of the South will avoid penalty so long as the Democratic National Committee retains a similar calendar to the Republican National Committee.
But there is something to questions #3-5 posed above. Partnering with other states in a region has its advantages, but it seems that that exercise has diminishing returns for the states involved as more states sign on. This needs a deeper examination, but one could argue that the most successful regional primaries have been subregional primaries; smaller clusters of contests at a point on the calendar that provides that group of states with the spotlight and is also earlier than the point at which 50% plus one of the delegates has been allocated to one candidate (effectively ending the nomination race). Contrast the 1988 Southern Super Tuesday with the 2008 Potomac Primary (Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC), for example.
The former was a mega-primary that allowed candidates to pick and choose their spots (as on the Democratic side in 1988). One could also just as easily see such a contest giving advantage to an unintended beneficiary (as on the Republican side in 1988). That is, someone of the party opposite the dominant partisanship of the region or a front-running candidate with the resources to compete in such a large number of states. Alternatively, the latter, if shrewdly scheduled (in this case a week after a rush of more than 25 contests in 2008), can draw candidates into a small area of competition with similar issues. Again, that was true in 2008 with the Potomac Primary, but one could also consider the Alabama/Mississippi cluster the week after Super Tuesday in 2012 another of these. Many have argued that those contests were evidence of Romney's poor showings in the South, but while the former Massachusetts governor lost in both, he emerged at near parity with Santorum and Gingrich in the delegate count in each. In other words, it was competitive; something a subregional cluster would desire.
This is actually an idea that the DNC attempted to nurture in 2012: clusters of primaries. Neighboring groups of three or more states that held concurrent primaries in or after April on the calendar a 15% delegate bonus. That was viewed as a way of matching up state and candidate interests but also for giving incentive to later primary and caucuses dates.
Broadly speaking, though, this is an hypothesis that needs some additional research. Is there at point of diminishing returns in terms of what states and candidates get out of a Super Tuesday pile up of contests. Smaller, distinct (date and regional proximity) clusters may be better able to accomplish this. That seemed to be part of the lesson that states seemed to have learned after 2008. Part of the motivation many states had in moving back was a change in national party rules (the February to March transition of the post-carve-out window), but the other part was that a number of states herded to Super Tuesday in 2008 and got nothing out of it.
Those are the competing interests facing those states willing to move around for the 2016 cycle: 1) Learn the lesson of 2008 and attempt to pick and choose a spot on the calendar (either alone or as a small cluster of subregional states) or 2) Move en masse to the earliest date allowed by the parties -- the first Tuesday in March.3 Those two options are not mutually exclusive. It could be that a group of southern states, for instance, cluster on March 1 (fulfilling the first option with the exception maybe of the small cluster) and that has the effect of triggering a rush on the date by other states. That reactionary group of states would be operating under the rationale -- as was the case before 2008 -- that if they do not move they will run the risk of falling after the point in the races where enough of the delegates have been allocated to have singled out a presumptive nominee.
There may also be the added layer of indirect involvement from the national parties as well; coaxing some states to move around. And this goes both ways; not Democratic and Republican so much as moving up and back. In 2012, there was some talk about national Democrats urging some states to move back to negatively affect the Republican process. Northeastern states would move back, making the front half of the calendar more southern and conservative. That would, in turn, hypothetically hurt Romney. The result was something of a mixed bag. Romney had a somewhat rough path to the nomination, but that was not a function of a conservative first half of the calendar. There was a good regional mix of early contests even if a group of mid-Atlantic/northeastern states moved back into late April. The real culprit for the drawn out Republican contest was the dispersion of contests across the entire calendar.
Assuming we witness some movement on Secretary Kemp's southern regional primary on March 1, we could see Republicans (nationally or the RNC quietly) urge just the opposite of what Democrats wanted in 2012. The idea of a southern regional primary isn't new as discussed above, but neither is the idea of a regional primary in this cycle. It was just last November that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was talking about a midwestern regional primary. If contests in the South begin moving up to March 1, there could very quickly be a quiet yet concerted effort to find a group of contests to serve as a counterbalance on the Republican calendar either on March 1 or not long after. Ohio is already scheduled for that week after Super Tuesday.
--
States once were slow to react to primary/caucuses movement in other states. A move in one cycle was met with a move in a the next subsequent cycle (if a state was compelled to move at all). That process has sped up over the last several presidential election cycles and reaction time had decreased. Since California moved its presidential primary from June to March in the 1996 cycle -- shifting with it the center of gravity in terms of the balance of delegates allocated over time across the primary calendar -- states have begun reacting within cycle. In other words, moving to a date that looks ripe for the taking now does not necessarily mean that that same date will not be jam packed with a number of other contests in the near future.
This hypothesis fits well in the policy diffusion literature. It also is something that FHQ has explored to some extent in a regional context. If one state moves its primary or caucuses, does that increase the likelihood that a neighboring state moves as well? What we found across a limited dataset -- the 2004 and 2008 cycles -- was the exact opposite: That if a neighboring state moved up, it decreased movement in surrounding states. At this point, FHQ is willing to chalk that up to a limited number of observations in just primary states across just a couple of cycles. It bears further research.
--
Again, it is easy to look at the surface issues here and move on if you are a state-level actor. Move up, bring along some regional partners, get more attention and affect the nomination. Under that surface, though, there is a lot to think through. It can quickly become a complicated series of unknowns. The changes to the Republican delegate selection rules have limited the world of possibilities by adding some penalties with teeth, but that does not mean that there are not 50 states -- some with multiple actors involved -- that are attempting to reduce uncertainty, game the system and gain an advantage for themselves (in terms of gaining attention and influencing the process). One move by a state or a series of states can set off any number of possibilities in reaction.
That's the take home message in this jumbled mess: unintended consequences. One move begets another move that may negate your original move. And there usually is not a rejoinder to the response. There isn't time.
--
1 As it turned out, Carter won New Hampshire and all three southern states in the 1980 primaries and it was not until later in the calendar that Kennedy began to close the delegate gap. Even that was too little too late.
2 Jesse Jackson's win in South Carolina and Gary Hart's in Oklahoma were the only two holes in an otherwise unified South. Those exceptions were early (March) contests and undercut the idea of the South collectively influencing the process by backing one candidate.
3 There is a third option as well. States could simply hold their ground and stay where current state law has the primary scheduled. Many states will do this as well.
There is some history here. The idea of a southern regional primary is not a new one. Barely a year after the reformed presidential nomination process got its first trial run in 1972, Jimmy Carter was out laying the groundwork for a nomination bid on the Democratic side in 1976 but was also trumpeting the strategic virtues of holding a collective southern regional primary. The benefits seemed clear. The South would speak with one voice and propel a more moderate-to-conservative candidate to the Democratic nomination who could, in turn, better compete in the general election.
As it turned out, it took the states of the South a decade and a half to coordinate this, bringing the idea to fruition. It took some cajoling from the Carter folks ahead of the 1980 renomination run against Ted Kennedy to convince legislators in Florida to hold pat in March and legislators in Alabama and Georgia to move up to coincide with the primary in the Sunshine state. That subregional primary was to serve as a counterweight to the delegate gains Kennedy was likely to win in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.1
Four years later, several southern and border states adopted caucuses for the competitive Democratic nomination race, joining Alabama, Florida and Georgia in March, though not all on the same date. Only the Oklahoma Democratic caucuses were on that same second Tuesday in March date. Caucuses in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Carolina followed later in the month. Collectively the South spoke with something approximating a single voice, but the result was not support for a more moderate candidate.2 Rather, it was support for Walter Mondale.
There was, then, no alignment between the notion of a strong, unified regional voice in the process and a homegrown, southern, moderate-to-conservative candidate. The former seemed more likely with a southern bloc of contests, but that did not happen until the 1988 invisible primary. Even then -- with everything lined up -- the South did not speak with one voice in the 1988 Democratic primary. The unintended consequence was that three Democratic candidates emerged from the Southern Super Tuesday with a claim to victory -- Dukakis in the populous South (Florida and Texas), Gore in the peripheral South and Jackson in the Deep South -- all while George HW Bush used a sweep of the region on Super Tuesday to consolidate his hold on the Republican nomination.
--
The dynamics of any given nomination race matter and it is difficult to gauge ahead of time -- as a decision-maker on the state level -- what those dynamics will look like in, say, two years time. That is the cautionary tale for those thinking of coordinating primaries in 2016. That past repeated itself to some degree in 2008 on the Democratic side (though not in a regional sense). Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton roughly split the logjam of national contests on Super Tuesday while John McCain significantly stretched the delegate lead he had established during the January contests.
What are the dynamics FHQ is talking about?
The candidates who run combined with the sequence of primaries and caucuses and the rules of delegate allocation are basics. And all are unknown at this point in time to those state-level decision-makers. There is a baseline calendar for 2016, but the question is how state actors view that terrain in light of the national party rules on (national convention) delegate selection. Actually, this constitutes several questions:
- Do we want to move our delegate selection contest up (to an earlier point on the calendar)?
- Does a new position mean incurring a penalty from one or both national parties?
- Does a new position mean conducting an election on the same day as a number of other regional partners?
- Does a new position mean conducting an election on the same day as a number of other states with no one dominant region?
- Does moving to a new position to create a regional primary (question #3) mean that other states (or regions -- see question #4) will herd toward that date; typically in the post-reform era, the first date allowed by both national parties (the first Tuesday in March in 2016)?
None of this is happening in a vacuum. These decisions to move a primary or caucuses are not independent of one another. The answer to question #1 depends on the willingness and ability of the state to move based on structural factors. FHQ has already discussed that for the states potentially involved in this retro-southern regional primary concept proposed by Georgia Secretary of State Kemp. Nothing in that proposal suggests that any of the southern go rogue, so the states of the South will avoid penalty so long as the Democratic National Committee retains a similar calendar to the Republican National Committee.
But there is something to questions #3-5 posed above. Partnering with other states in a region has its advantages, but it seems that that exercise has diminishing returns for the states involved as more states sign on. This needs a deeper examination, but one could argue that the most successful regional primaries have been subregional primaries; smaller clusters of contests at a point on the calendar that provides that group of states with the spotlight and is also earlier than the point at which 50% plus one of the delegates has been allocated to one candidate (effectively ending the nomination race). Contrast the 1988 Southern Super Tuesday with the 2008 Potomac Primary (Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC), for example.
The former was a mega-primary that allowed candidates to pick and choose their spots (as on the Democratic side in 1988). One could also just as easily see such a contest giving advantage to an unintended beneficiary (as on the Republican side in 1988). That is, someone of the party opposite the dominant partisanship of the region or a front-running candidate with the resources to compete in such a large number of states. Alternatively, the latter, if shrewdly scheduled (in this case a week after a rush of more than 25 contests in 2008), can draw candidates into a small area of competition with similar issues. Again, that was true in 2008 with the Potomac Primary, but one could also consider the Alabama/Mississippi cluster the week after Super Tuesday in 2012 another of these. Many have argued that those contests were evidence of Romney's poor showings in the South, but while the former Massachusetts governor lost in both, he emerged at near parity with Santorum and Gingrich in the delegate count in each. In other words, it was competitive; something a subregional cluster would desire.
This is actually an idea that the DNC attempted to nurture in 2012: clusters of primaries. Neighboring groups of three or more states that held concurrent primaries in or after April on the calendar a 15% delegate bonus. That was viewed as a way of matching up state and candidate interests but also for giving incentive to later primary and caucuses dates.
Broadly speaking, though, this is an hypothesis that needs some additional research. Is there at point of diminishing returns in terms of what states and candidates get out of a Super Tuesday pile up of contests. Smaller, distinct (date and regional proximity) clusters may be better able to accomplish this. That seemed to be part of the lesson that states seemed to have learned after 2008. Part of the motivation many states had in moving back was a change in national party rules (the February to March transition of the post-carve-out window), but the other part was that a number of states herded to Super Tuesday in 2008 and got nothing out of it.
Those are the competing interests facing those states willing to move around for the 2016 cycle: 1) Learn the lesson of 2008 and attempt to pick and choose a spot on the calendar (either alone or as a small cluster of subregional states) or 2) Move en masse to the earliest date allowed by the parties -- the first Tuesday in March.3 Those two options are not mutually exclusive. It could be that a group of southern states, for instance, cluster on March 1 (fulfilling the first option with the exception maybe of the small cluster) and that has the effect of triggering a rush on the date by other states. That reactionary group of states would be operating under the rationale -- as was the case before 2008 -- that if they do not move they will run the risk of falling after the point in the races where enough of the delegates have been allocated to have singled out a presumptive nominee.
There may also be the added layer of indirect involvement from the national parties as well; coaxing some states to move around. And this goes both ways; not Democratic and Republican so much as moving up and back. In 2012, there was some talk about national Democrats urging some states to move back to negatively affect the Republican process. Northeastern states would move back, making the front half of the calendar more southern and conservative. That would, in turn, hypothetically hurt Romney. The result was something of a mixed bag. Romney had a somewhat rough path to the nomination, but that was not a function of a conservative first half of the calendar. There was a good regional mix of early contests even if a group of mid-Atlantic/northeastern states moved back into late April. The real culprit for the drawn out Republican contest was the dispersion of contests across the entire calendar.
Assuming we witness some movement on Secretary Kemp's southern regional primary on March 1, we could see Republicans (nationally or the RNC quietly) urge just the opposite of what Democrats wanted in 2012. The idea of a southern regional primary isn't new as discussed above, but neither is the idea of a regional primary in this cycle. It was just last November that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was talking about a midwestern regional primary. If contests in the South begin moving up to March 1, there could very quickly be a quiet yet concerted effort to find a group of contests to serve as a counterbalance on the Republican calendar either on March 1 or not long after. Ohio is already scheduled for that week after Super Tuesday.
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States once were slow to react to primary/caucuses movement in other states. A move in one cycle was met with a move in a the next subsequent cycle (if a state was compelled to move at all). That process has sped up over the last several presidential election cycles and reaction time had decreased. Since California moved its presidential primary from June to March in the 1996 cycle -- shifting with it the center of gravity in terms of the balance of delegates allocated over time across the primary calendar -- states have begun reacting within cycle. In other words, moving to a date that looks ripe for the taking now does not necessarily mean that that same date will not be jam packed with a number of other contests in the near future.
This hypothesis fits well in the policy diffusion literature. It also is something that FHQ has explored to some extent in a regional context. If one state moves its primary or caucuses, does that increase the likelihood that a neighboring state moves as well? What we found across a limited dataset -- the 2004 and 2008 cycles -- was the exact opposite: That if a neighboring state moved up, it decreased movement in surrounding states. At this point, FHQ is willing to chalk that up to a limited number of observations in just primary states across just a couple of cycles. It bears further research.
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Again, it is easy to look at the surface issues here and move on if you are a state-level actor. Move up, bring along some regional partners, get more attention and affect the nomination. Under that surface, though, there is a lot to think through. It can quickly become a complicated series of unknowns. The changes to the Republican delegate selection rules have limited the world of possibilities by adding some penalties with teeth, but that does not mean that there are not 50 states -- some with multiple actors involved -- that are attempting to reduce uncertainty, game the system and gain an advantage for themselves (in terms of gaining attention and influencing the process). One move by a state or a series of states can set off any number of possibilities in reaction.
That's the take home message in this jumbled mess: unintended consequences. One move begets another move that may negate your original move. And there usually is not a rejoinder to the response. There isn't time.
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1 As it turned out, Carter won New Hampshire and all three southern states in the 1980 primaries and it was not until later in the calendar that Kennedy began to close the delegate gap. Even that was too little too late.
2 Jesse Jackson's win in South Carolina and Gary Hart's in Oklahoma were the only two holes in an otherwise unified South. Those exceptions were early (March) contests and undercut the idea of the South collectively influencing the process by backing one candidate.
3 There is a third option as well. States could simply hold their ground and stay where current state law has the primary scheduled. Many states will do this as well.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
An SEC Primary in 2016? Not so fast… (Part I)
Last week at the National Association of Secretaries of State meeting in Washington, Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp (R), rolled out a proposal for the alignment of southern presidential primaries on the first Tuesday in March in 2016. And Secretary Kemp has gotten some "positive feedback" on the plan from others in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.1
That's all well and good, but let's have a bit of a look under the hood on this thing. In the first part, FHQ will look at those states named above that have expressed an interest in the possibility of a southeastern regional primary.
The date that Secretary Kemp has proposed for what has been affectionately called the SEC primary is March 1. That is the first date on which states other than the four carve-outs -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- can hold delegate selection events under the actual (RNC) or expected (DNC) rules. In other words, that may be an attractive landing point for any number of states (see Super Tuesday on February 5, 2008). As of now, March 1 already has a southern flavor. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia are scheduled for that date according to current state laws in each. Adding Georgia to the mix gives the South the clearest and strongest regional voice on that date. That would make five out of the eight states southern with Massachusetts and Vermont serving as only a token regional counterweight.
But what is the likelihood that others (from the South) join those four (or five if one counts Georgia) on March 1?
Georgia is unique in that the state legislature ceded the authority to set the date of the Peach state presidential primary to the secretary of state in 2011. That makes Georgia like New Hampshire in that regard. Basically what that transfer of power means is that Georgia, like New Hampshire, is better able to move its presidential primary around without the potential for gridlock or just inaction on the part of a state legislature. Getting Georgia to March 1, then, is an easier task than it will be for other states.
And there will be something of a dilemma in the other states to whom that Secretary Kemp has reached out. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi will have push a date change through their legislatures. Secretaries of state in each of those states can (attempt to) initiate the legislative process on such moves, but that is no guarantee that there will actually be any shifting. The reason there is no guarantee is that such a proposal raises questions about the expected utility of a move. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are already in March.
What difference does it make to move up a week (as is the case in Alabama and Mississippi) or two-ish (for Louisiana's now customary Saturday primary)?
In Alabama and Mississippi, the expected cost or benefit of a move may or may not be financial. Both are already in March, so the trade-off is more a matter of going with a larger group of southern states and risking getting lost in the shuffle or sticking with a smaller subregional primary on a date a week later when they may collectively and effectively counterbalance the Ohio primary on the same date. That is a tougher question to answer when both dates -- the first and second Tuesday in March -- are potentially attractive landing points on the calendar for a number of states. Getting lost in the shuffle may be a foregone conclusion when it is all said and done and the calendar is finalized in late 2015.
The gamble is similar in Louisiana in that the internal debate is a function of choosing between a date where they may have a greater share of the spotlight later on (if the nomination races are still going in late March) and a date when many other southern states hold their contests; a proposition the nets the Pelican state some regional clout but not necessarily direct attention from the candidates. The situation in Louisiana is complicated by the fact that the state has utilized a Saturday primary the last two cycles. Part of that is designed to reserve a spot on the presidential primary stage where Louisiana stands alone or with other smaller and/or caucuses states. The spotlight favors them.
Legislators in Arkansas face a slightly different calculus. First of all, the new RNC rules almost force Arkansas to consider moving up. Currently scheduled for the next to last Tuesday in May, the Arkansas primary falls at a point on the calendar after the cutoff for when primaries will need to be held to accommodate a late June or early to mid-July Republican convention. But that only adds to the classic late state dilemma: move everything up (presidential primary, state and local primaries and all) or create a separate presidential primary that is easier to move around (but also costs the state additional election funds)? Arkansas has twice gone the latter route (1988 and 2008) and twice has gotten essentially no bang for its buck, the extra expenditure got the state nothing in the way of advertising dollars or candidate attention. How ready and willing is Arkansas going to be to repeat that pattern? The alternative -- moving a consolidated set of primaries to an earlier date -- has its own pitfalls. Such a move impacts state legislators tasked with making the move in the first place. Moving a consolidated primary up lengthens a state legislators general election campaign. It also potentially means that the primary campaign overlaps with the state legislative sessions which means the primary phase campaigning will be happening during the state legislative session. Both potentially make legislators' decisions that much more difficult.
Despite officials being open to the idea of a regional primary in the southeast, that does not necessarily mean that it will be enough to overcome the questions that will be raised during state legislative efforts to move primary dates for 2016 around. Those questions represent potential roadblocks in the legislative process that could derail movement to earlier positions on the primary calendar.
Of course, that is not all that complicates the potential effectiveness of this proposal or its intended implementation. FHQ will examine the other issues attendant to this proposal that may pop up in the intervening period between now and 2016 in part two.
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1 Below is the press release from Secretary Kemp's office yesterday:
That's all well and good, but let's have a bit of a look under the hood on this thing. In the first part, FHQ will look at those states named above that have expressed an interest in the possibility of a southeastern regional primary.
The date that Secretary Kemp has proposed for what has been affectionately called the SEC primary is March 1. That is the first date on which states other than the four carve-outs -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- can hold delegate selection events under the actual (RNC) or expected (DNC) rules. In other words, that may be an attractive landing point for any number of states (see Super Tuesday on February 5, 2008). As of now, March 1 already has a southern flavor. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia are scheduled for that date according to current state laws in each. Adding Georgia to the mix gives the South the clearest and strongest regional voice on that date. That would make five out of the eight states southern with Massachusetts and Vermont serving as only a token regional counterweight.
But what is the likelihood that others (from the South) join those four (or five if one counts Georgia) on March 1?
Georgia is unique in that the state legislature ceded the authority to set the date of the Peach state presidential primary to the secretary of state in 2011. That makes Georgia like New Hampshire in that regard. Basically what that transfer of power means is that Georgia, like New Hampshire, is better able to move its presidential primary around without the potential for gridlock or just inaction on the part of a state legislature. Getting Georgia to March 1, then, is an easier task than it will be for other states.
And there will be something of a dilemma in the other states to whom that Secretary Kemp has reached out. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi will have push a date change through their legislatures. Secretaries of state in each of those states can (attempt to) initiate the legislative process on such moves, but that is no guarantee that there will actually be any shifting. The reason there is no guarantee is that such a proposal raises questions about the expected utility of a move. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are already in March.
What difference does it make to move up a week (as is the case in Alabama and Mississippi) or two-ish (for Louisiana's now customary Saturday primary)?
In Alabama and Mississippi, the expected cost or benefit of a move may or may not be financial. Both are already in March, so the trade-off is more a matter of going with a larger group of southern states and risking getting lost in the shuffle or sticking with a smaller subregional primary on a date a week later when they may collectively and effectively counterbalance the Ohio primary on the same date. That is a tougher question to answer when both dates -- the first and second Tuesday in March -- are potentially attractive landing points on the calendar for a number of states. Getting lost in the shuffle may be a foregone conclusion when it is all said and done and the calendar is finalized in late 2015.
The gamble is similar in Louisiana in that the internal debate is a function of choosing between a date where they may have a greater share of the spotlight later on (if the nomination races are still going in late March) and a date when many other southern states hold their contests; a proposition the nets the Pelican state some regional clout but not necessarily direct attention from the candidates. The situation in Louisiana is complicated by the fact that the state has utilized a Saturday primary the last two cycles. Part of that is designed to reserve a spot on the presidential primary stage where Louisiana stands alone or with other smaller and/or caucuses states. The spotlight favors them.
Legislators in Arkansas face a slightly different calculus. First of all, the new RNC rules almost force Arkansas to consider moving up. Currently scheduled for the next to last Tuesday in May, the Arkansas primary falls at a point on the calendar after the cutoff for when primaries will need to be held to accommodate a late June or early to mid-July Republican convention. But that only adds to the classic late state dilemma: move everything up (presidential primary, state and local primaries and all) or create a separate presidential primary that is easier to move around (but also costs the state additional election funds)? Arkansas has twice gone the latter route (1988 and 2008) and twice has gotten essentially no bang for its buck, the extra expenditure got the state nothing in the way of advertising dollars or candidate attention. How ready and willing is Arkansas going to be to repeat that pattern? The alternative -- moving a consolidated set of primaries to an earlier date -- has its own pitfalls. Such a move impacts state legislators tasked with making the move in the first place. Moving a consolidated primary up lengthens a state legislators general election campaign. It also potentially means that the primary campaign overlaps with the state legislative sessions which means the primary phase campaigning will be happening during the state legislative session. Both potentially make legislators' decisions that much more difficult.
Despite officials being open to the idea of a regional primary in the southeast, that does not necessarily mean that it will be enough to overcome the questions that will be raised during state legislative efforts to move primary dates for 2016 around. Those questions represent potential roadblocks in the legislative process that could derail movement to earlier positions on the primary calendar.
Of course, that is not all that complicates the potential effectiveness of this proposal or its intended implementation. FHQ will examine the other issues attendant to this proposal that may pop up in the intervening period between now and 2016 in part two.
--
1 Below is the press release from Secretary Kemp's office yesterday:
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