A Winner-Take-All Primary in New Hampshire?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• FHQ will say it: Nevada Republicans did not "jump" South Carolina on the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Well, they did not in the sense that close observers of the calendar might talk about the jockeying in this cycle's early calendar. It is different this time. Here is why: All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Emerson had a new survey out yesterday checking the pulse of voters in the Granite state on the Republican presidential nomination race among other things. The consensus take away from the results at the presidential level was that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had surpassed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

And while that is true, it also was not what caught FHQ's eye. Here is what did:

1. I have spent a fair amount of time over the course of 2023 charting the positioning of DeSantis in the various polls that have been released both nationally and on the state level. And it is not a mystery that the Florida governor's fortunes have followed a particularly downward trajectory. That has implications for winning delegates in primaries and caucuses next year. First DeSantis flirted with 20 percent in some polling on the race. Then it hovered around 15 percent. If a candidate is going to have any prolonged success in taking delegates in 2024, he or she will have to hit 15 if not 20 percent to stick around. Otherwise, such a candidate is very likely to be shown the door. Actually, failing to hit those marks will be  the manifestation of being shown the door. 

But now DeSantis has dipped below 10 percent in New Hampshire. Yes, it is just one poll. Yes, his average standing in the race there is marginally higher than that: 14 percent. But it tracks with the pattern of slipping support that has dogged DeSantis since the spring. 

2. By why does 10 percent matter? It matters because 10 percent is the threshold candidates have to hit statewide to qualify for delegates in the New Hampshire presidential primary. No, candidates are not necessarily contesting New Hampshire in order to win delegates. There are not that many to find in the Granite state after all. Instead, most are chasing a win or at the very least positioning to avoid having increased winnowing pressure heaped on them. Third probably gets DeSantis through, but it does not exactly speak to future success in winning subsequent contests much less winning delegates in big numbers once the calendar flips to March and the focus shifts to the delegate game. 

But the biggest footnote lurking in this particular Emerson survey is that even though Christie leapfrogged DeSantis, he did not break in to the delegates either. That means that Trump -- at 49 percent -- would hypothetically win 11 of the 22 delegates at stake in New Hampshire, leaving 11 unallocated delegates in the proportional method Republicans in the Granite state use. 

What happens to unallocated delegates in this scenario? They do not become unbound. No, under state law, any and all unallocated delegates in New Hampshire are awarded to the statewide winner. Mitt Romney tacked on an extra two delegates in New Hampshire that way in 2012. Donald Trump added three unallocated delegates to his total in the state in 2016. But in this hypothetical case, there are a lot more unallocated delegates. And they would all go to Donald Trump. 

Even in a state that uses proportional delegate allocation rules. 

Even in a state where the former president would have received less than a majority of the vote statewide. 

Incidentally, this is exactly what happened in the 2020 New Hampshire Republican primary. Trump won a considerably higher share of the vote (as compared to above), but Bill Weld just missed the 10 percent threshold and the remaining unallocated delegates all went to Trump. 

3. Folks, this is one poll. FHQ does not want to read too much into it. Plus, it is worth pointing out that both Christie and DeSantis are close to the 10 percent threshold in the Emerson survey and there are 13 percent of respondents who were undecided. Some of those may come off the fence and support Trump, but there is a good argument that if one does not already support the former president, then it is unlikely that he would gain their support in the primary. Would that 13 percent automatically go to Christie and/or DeSantis? Maybe, maybe not. But enough would likely jump into their columns to push them north of 10 percent. 

Hypothetically. 

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Over at Tusk, Seth Masket argues that the pivot (away from Trump) is not coming and it is all about the ebbs and flows of factional power within the broader Republican Party. Good piece.

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From around the invisible primary...

• Indiana Senator Todd Young has already unendorsed Donald Trump for 2024. And like other Republicans, he doubled down in the wake of the latest indictment against the former president. Only, Young reiterated that the party needs to move on from Trump. Obviously, the opposition to Trump stands out, but at some point leaders within the Republican Party who want to chart a different path in 2024 are going to have to line up behind some alternative (or alternatives). But Young is keeping his powder dry for the time being. 
• Also in the midwest, former Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin says that the "Trump fever needs to be broken." [See Masket above] He is not alone in Illinois. Other Republicans in the Land of Lincoln stand against Trump and some have even endorsed other candidates. Also from the Sun Times piece: "Last month, I reported on the call from Illinois National Committeeman Richard Porter to move on from Trump. State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris — the deputy Republican leader in the state Senate — like Porter, backs GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. Ron Gidwitz was the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Belgium and the acting envoy to the European Union. In 2016, Gidwitz was the Illinois finance chair for the Trump Victory fund. He’s supporting Christie." But the state party remains firmly behind the former president. And Durkin, like Young in Indiana, has not thrown his support behind a non-Trump candidate yet. Those un- and non-endorsements matter. And they matter a lot in this race when they are not expressly affiliated with a Trump alternative. 

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Recent posts:

Effectively Winnowed

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

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[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription newsletter. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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From Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits:

But the plan is a gamble for Trump and the state party for different reasons:

Did FHQ not just discuss California delegate allocation rules?

Yup. 

But the California Republican Party executive committee jettisoned that widely circulated (and panned) plan in favor of an alternate version, a version that seemingly balances the party’s desire to draw candidates into the Golden state and the Trump campaign’s push to maximize its delegates in the contest next year. Those benefits are clear enough on the surface, but neither is guaranteed. 

And that means the revised delegate allocation scheme for 2024 is a gamble of sorts. For California Republicans and for Trump. Delegate allocation rules can be a zero sum game and the friction that developed in and around the Executive Committee meeting on Saturday, July 29 from multiple sides was evidence of the high stakes involved. 

What changes did the California Republican Party make? And what does that mean for the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination?

The adopted changes

The initially proposed changes offered by the California Republican Party set up a plan with a few notable features:

• A proportional allocation of the 13 at-large (and automatic/party) delegates based on the statewide vote with no qualifying threshold and no winner-take-all trigger (should one candidate win a majority of the vote statewide). 

• A proportional allocation of the 3 delegates in each of the 52 congressional districts based on the results within each congressional district. The top finisher in a congressional district vote would receive two delegates and the runner-up would receive the remaining delegate. Like the allocation of the at-large delegates described above, there would be no winner-take-all trigger should one candidate win a majority of the vote within the district. 

That method differs from the system the state party utilized in 2020 and it is also different than the plan adopted on Saturday. The newly adopted plan — the allocation plan California Republicans will use in 2024 — shed the separate allocation scheme for at-large and congressional district delegates and returned to a system that resembles the 2020 plan with one big exception: there is no qualifying threshold. But exactly like the 2020 delegate allocation among Golden state Republicans, the 2024 system will have the following provisions:

• All 169 delegates, including at-large, automatic/party and congressional district delegates, will be pooled (meaning they will all be allocated as one bloc). Again, that is just as it was for 2020.

• All 169 delegates will be allocated proportionally based on the statewide results. That, too, is just the same as under the 2020 rules. 

• If any candidate wins the California primary with more than 50 percent of the vote, then all 169 delegates will be allocated to that candidate. Just like the 2020 plan, California Republicans have included in their 2024 rules a winner-take-all trigger or winner-take-all threshold. 

However, unlike 2020, more candidates will likely be eligible for some share of the 169 delegates available because there will no longer be a 20 percent qualifying threshold, the highest bar allowed under Republican National Committee rules. That is a big difference. 

How big? 

The impact of 2020 versus 2024 rules

Pretty big.

Using the results from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary with the 2020 and 2024 California Republican Party allocation rules highlights the scale of the change.¹

With no qualifying threshold, as under the 2024 rules, five additional candidates would have been allocated delegates as compared to the 2020 rules. And candidates with as little as two percent support would have claimed at least some share of the pool of 169 delegates.² But importantly, the top two candidates — the only two who would have cleared the 20 percent threshold to qualify for delegates under the 2020 rules — would have lost a significant chunk of delegates in the transition from 2020 to 2024 rules. Sanders would have lost 34 and Biden, 26. 

Now, imagine that Sanders pulled in closer to half of the voters in the last California primary. Pretend Elizabeth Warren was not in the race and that the 13.2 percent the Massachusetts senator won went to Sanders instead. Under the 2020 California Republican allocation rules, Sanders would have won 108 delegates compared to 84 delegates according to the 2024 plan. What is clear is that Sanders would pay a price in delegates won without a qualifying threshold. 

FHQ raises the second scenario because Trump is currently hovering around the 50 percent mark in polling both nationally and in California. The penalty for not hitting the winner-take-all threshold, which is in the 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules, would be significant, but it will be greater in the absence of a qualifying threshold. It makes strategic sense to secure the former threshold, but it is a gamble. 

If Trump does not hit it, then the price is steep and the net delegate advantage coming out of the California primary would likely differ very little from the original 2024 rules proposal that Republicans in the Golden state floated. However, if Trump does eclipse the 50 percent barrier and trips the winner-take-all trigger, then it is clearly close to a death knell for his opposition. A +169 is tough to overcome even if Super Tuesday’s results are mixed and states with truly winner-take-all rules lie ahead on the calendar. 

It is not that there are not advantages for Trump in this change (either relative to 2020 or the alternate 2024 proposal), but the new rules do place a great deal of pressure on the campaign to make it happen.

 

But why is there not a qualifying threshold?

That is the gamble the state party is making. 

If more candidates are eligible for delegates, then that may be enough of a carrot to lure candidates of all stripes into the state to campaign and spend money. In theory that makes sense. But in practice, the cost/benefit analysis may not work in the favor of California Republicans who are championing this revised plan. 

The candidates will go to California. They always do to raise money. But turning around and spending that money (in a variety of ways) in the Golden state may not offer as much bang for the candidates’ buck as it might in other states. Yes, California is the most delegate-rich state out there — and promises 169 delegates to anyone who can clear 50 percent in the primary — but it is also prohibitively expensive to reach voters and in turn win votes/delegates. And as long as Trump is threatening to hit the winner-take-all trigger, it may be enough to ward off concerted investment in the state. 

But where this plan is clever is in the fact that it potentially motivates all of the candidates. It draws the Trump campaign in to expend resources in the state to win all of the delegates. Yet, it potentially entices other candidates to take a risk to keep Trump under the majority mark and minimize the former president’s net delegate advantage coming out of California and Super Tuesday. 

And that is just it. Much of the above discusses California in isolation. But the California primary is not an isolated event. It falls on Super Tuesday when roughly a third of the total number of delegates will be allocated. Few may be able to run a truly national campaign leading up to March 5. And few may choose to incorporate California directly into their investments for Super Tuesday.³ The options may be better (and cheaper) elsewhere. 

Still, the Trump campaign is calling the change in California a win for them. And it may be. But only if the former president can win a majority. And that is not a sure thing.

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¹ FHQ is using the 2020 Democratic results because the California Democratic primary was both early (as the 2024 primary is) and competitive. The 2020 Republican primary in California was also on Super Tuesday but uncompetitive, and the 2016 Republican primary in the Golden state was later and fell after Donald Trump’s viable opposition had withdrawn from the race. 

² That allocation outcome depends to some degree on how California Republicans choose to round. All fractional delegates are rounded up starting with the top vote-getter and progressing from there in descending order of vote share. Under different (and more conventional) rounding rules, even more candidates would have qualified for delegates (and with less than one percent support).

³ Candidates may choose to indirectly hit California through national ad buys instead.

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Recent posts:

Is Trump rewriting the delegate rules or defending them?

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

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Is Trump rewriting the delegate rules or defending them?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• Alabama Republicans are set to vote on and adopt delegate allocation rules for the Super Tuesday presidential primary. But where is the state party taking them? Making it easier to win delegates? Harder? Maintaining the status quo. One thing is clear: the party does not have much room to make them harder. All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Politico makes a contribution to the Trump and the 2024 delegate rules storyline that has periodically been touched on by most major national news outlets in 2023. And there is some nice color to Rachael Bade's story, but FHQ does not know how much it is actually adding to what is already known. Generally, candidates seek to influence the state level delegate selection rules, and Trump, in particular, is making some attempt at creating even more frontrunner-friendly rules in the Republican process this cycle. That was established at least as early as February.

And in some respects the Trump campaign has been very active in the process to craft rules at the state level that play to the former president's advantage. But the scope of that activity has been less rewriting -- the headline writer's word, not Bade's -- than it has been playing defense. Because as Bade describes in the piece...

The wonky-yet-important effort underscores just how politically savvy the Trump operation — once caught flat-footed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s attempted delegate mutiny at the 2016 Republican National Convention — has become. And it exposes how Trump’s aides have been running circles around his rivals, with only one of them — Ron DeSantis and his allies at the Never Back Down super PAC — even putting up a fight.

Again, that is consistent with what has been reported thus far in 2023. Yet, in context, this maneuvering is an extension of what the equally savvy, yet, far less opposed Team Trump did in 2019. Like this cycle, the RNC rules for the 2020 cycle carried over, largely unchanged. That confined any effort at massaging the rules -- within those national party guidelines -- to those on the state level. And the Trump campaign set out to do just that, pushing the bar so high for also-ran candidates in the 2020 cycle that it was nearly impossible for them to win any delegates. 

That was the baseline that Team Trump established for 2024. And honestly, the campaign then gave the campaign now very little additional room to maneuver. It is not that they cannot make any further changes to make delegate allocation harder for other candidates, but that there just are not that many places where they can lobby to turn the knob up even higher (within RNC rules). 

Consequently, most of what the Trump campaign has done in 2023 is play defense. They did so in California, warding off an alternate plan that would have eroded the gains there from four years ago. The same seems true of Alabama. At the end of June, there was talk of DeSantis World having some potential success in nudging the qualifying threshold for delegates there lower. But again, Trump has been playing defense in the Yellowhammer state. The Massachusetts Republican Party chair recently suggested that the party was considering dropping its winner-take-all threshold altogether. Bade seems to indicate that Trump is playing defense there as well. 

And then there are Colorado and Louisiana, sites of Cruz success in the behind-the-scenes delegate battle against Trump in 2016. Both are pretty much maxxed out in terms of delegate allocation barriers allowed under RNC rules, but Team Trump has been fixated on completely ending any thought of a possibility of unbound delegates in either. Proposals in each would have delegates bound through two ballots at the national convention. That might be overkill, but it also fits the pattern of the former president's campaign playing defense with the rules established for 2020, not allowing them to ebb much if at all. 

This will continue. It will continue all the way up to October 1, the deadline by which state Republican parties are to submit their delegate selection plans to the Republican National Committee. And as October 1 approaches, it is important to consider these efforts in this context. Trump is mostly defending the high water mark created in 2019 and smoothing over any other rough edges that they missed then for this cycle. That is the story here. 

 

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From around the invisible primary...

• NYT/Siena finds Trump ahead in Iowa, but lagging behind the pace he has established in national surveys. In a Mondale versus Hart sort of way -- wins relative to expectations -- maybe that matters, but a Trump win in the caucuses in January is one less opportunity for someone else to break through (if no one has by that point).
• Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin received another big contribution to his political action committee, the one geared toward success in the off-year state legislative races in the Old Dominion, from Thomas Peterffy, who had previously given to Ron DeSantis.
• Former Vice President Mike Pence is slowly but surely gaining on debate qualification, pulling in donors after his strong comments about Trump following the former president's third indictment.
• In the endorsement primary, Ron DeSantis was endorsed by another 35 state lawmakers and local officials in South Carolina. The inclination of some may be to shrug endorsements like this off, but with all the big endorsements in the Palmetto state already behind Trump or running themselves, these sorts of endorsements matter. The Florida governor recently also rolled out a wave of sheriff endorsements in Iowa. 
• In Ohio, Trump won the endorsements of Reps. Bill Johnson and Troy Balderson as well as state Treasurer Robert Sprague. And ahead of his address to Alabama Republicans, the former president received the endorsements of the six member Republican US House delegation from the state. 
• In the travel primary, Trump will trek to Alabama tonight, South Carolina tomorrow and New Hampshire early next week. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum was in the Granite state earlier this week. 
• The Quad City Times had a local look at Iowans kicking the tires on South Carolina Senator Tim Scott's campaign. 
• Stand for Freedom PAC, the super PAC aligned with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, has placed a $6.2 million ad buy for Iowa and New Hampshire over the next nine weeks. 
• In more from the money primary, Florida donors continue to be a financial lifeline for DeSantis.

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Recent posts:

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

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Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster 

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

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• California Republicans have new delegate selection rules for 2024. And it seems like some folks are racing to score the change as a win for Trump. It might be! But that is not guaranteed. There are some California-sized caveats, but CAGOP may be the big winner. All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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FHQ will level with you. I have found the Washington Post's coverage of the evolving Republican delegate selection rules to have been fabulous all year. Reporters there have done a fantastic job of digging up state-level changes, large and small, and have furthermore done well in contextualizing them for a unique 2024 Republican nomination race. Look, the Post has a much larger, much broader audience than FHQ, and the stories are crafted with such an audience in mind. 

They do not necessarily get down in the weeds. And they do not have to! Leave that to niche sites like FHQ with equally niche audiences. Hey, we are happy to fill the void. 

And while that overall view of WaPo coverage has not changed, FHQ did find their article on delegate selection rules following the change in California from this past weekend lacking. And some of this is just cranky blogging, pet peevish stuff for FHQ. But there were also some nuggets in the piece that left me shaking my head, stuff simply not backed up by the facts. So let us endeavor to set the record straight on a Monday. 

Winner-take-all by congressional district

Right out of the gate, Maeve Reston and Michael Scherer hit readers with this:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign notched a major victory Saturday when members of the California Republican executive committee voted to parcel out convention delegates based on the statewide vote next year — doing away with the state’s longtime system of awarding them by congressional district, which had been perceived as a more level playing field for lower-tiered candidates.

Okay. That is a loaded clause highlighted there. And some of it is technically correct even if it glosses over the nature of delegate selection rules changes made by California Republicans in recent cycles. It is true that California Republicans have had a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation scheme for most of the 21st century. And it was still on the books until its death sentence was signed this weekend (technically for 2024 and for good afterward). 

However, that allocation method was overridden in 2019 for the 2020 cycle with a contingency provision that called for the proportional allocation of the entire California Republican delegation. [Yes, that sounds an awful lot like what the Republican Party in the Golden state just adopted. It is quite similar.] That temporary condition was added in 2019 because the Republican National Committee rules prohibit winner-take-all by congressional district methods of allocation before March 15. Therefore, the state party had to make a change because the 2020 primary fell on Super Tuesday, before March 15. 

But again, that was a temporary contingency that expired at the beginning of 2021, leaving California Republicans with the same default winner-take-all by congressional district method in place. Time passed and the RNC carried over the same winner-take-all prohibition for the early calendar into the 2024 rules. So that was never going to be the method Golden state Republicans used in 2024. Look, California Republicans were not going to give up the one feather in their cap in this process. Theirs is the most delegate-rich state on the Republican calendar. The state party was not going to give up half its delegation -- the penalty for using an unsanctioned winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method in an early March primary -- to keep that method. They just were not. 

That brings the timeline to May of this year when the LA Times had an article describing how California Republicans were going to have this strategically unique delegate allocation method for 2024. The method? Winner-take-all by congressional district. Yes, the very same noncompliant method detailed above. FHQ raises the LA Times piece because it set a baseline that has subsequently poisoned the discourse on these changes that California Republicans have actually made for 2024. 

It was that article that made it seem as if California Republicans were going to use that noncompliant method when all it ever was was a placeholder until the state party set rules for 2024 this summer (just as the party did in the summer of 2019). Indeed, before the new plan was adopted over the weekend, there was an alternative proposal that called for a proportional districted method of allocation. Still districted, but proportional and compliant.

Moreover, that baseline set in the LA Times piece from May has led subsequent news accounts to compare changes relative to what was never going to be a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method. In reality, the comparison should have been to the rules used by the state party in 2020, rules that were compliant. Yes, those rules expired, but to better understand the nature of the change for 2024, the 2020 rules are the better comparison and the better encapsulation of the state party's thinking on how to craft compliant rules for an incumbent cycle (2020) versus a competitive one (2024). 

The press has dropped the ball on this one. 

Fortunately, the newly adopted 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules sunset at the end of next year. Not just the subsection detailing the compliant proportional allocation, but the whole section including the legacy winner-take-all by congressional district method. Make note of that now. Hopefully that means we all will not be talking about these same noncompliant rules in California in 2027. No one should be comparing any changes then to that method anyway. 

To circle back to the WaPo reference to "the state’s longtime system of awarding them [delegates] by congressional district," it really was not necessary. That is a false point of comparison for the new method. And it is one that did not need to feature as prominently as it did in that story or the similar story about the rules change from the LA Times. 

Did the winner-take-all by congressional district method warrant a mention somewhere in either story? Sure, but the endless parade of quotes from Republicans in California seemingly pining for the "old system" just made those folks look out of touch. To repeat, the California Republican Party was not going to sacrifice half of their delegates to allocated delegates the old way (2016 and before). 

Okay. FHQ got that one off its chest. What else? 

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Looking for Part Two? Find more of the discussion over at FHQ Plus.

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Recent posts:

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster 

It is not a national primary, but...

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On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• California Republicans were always going to have to do something with their delegate selection plan to bring it into compliance with national party rules. But under those RNC rules there are variations in the proportional methods required before March 15. And consequentially, Republicans in the Golden state are planning to use a different proportional in 2024 than they did in 2020. All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Look, I thought the AP story on Trump and the delegate battle now and ahead was a good and informative read. It did well in pulling together a number of disparate pieces to tell a story about how the Trump campaign has done well playing defense on the delegate rules it established in 2020 and even some of the offense it has played on a smaller scale. 

It is an important story. There have been more wins -- as measured by status quo maintenance -- for the former president than losses, and that is no small thing as the invisible primary pushes deeper into the third quarter of 2023. Whether this 2024 Republican presidential nomination race develops into an actual delegate battle or not is colored to a great degree by how the frontrunner (or front-running campaigns if there are multiples) shuts the door now on opponents in the delegate rules and across the various other invisible primary metrics (fundraising, endorsements, staff, etc.).

Yes, the polling support could collapse for Trump at some point, but for now the former president has some built-in advantages that insulate him to some extent. It is not the incumbency advantage, but this [understatement alert] has not been the typical competitive nomination cycle either. 

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Still, it can be tough for me not to read accounts like the AP's with anything other than a critical eye. There are a couple of things FHQ would highlight:

1) On Michigan Republicans' and the process they have laid out for delegate allocation and selection in 2024...

"In Michigan, where the state GOP has become increasingly loyal to Trump, the party’s leadership this year voted to change the state’s longtime process of allocating all its presidential delegates based on an open primary election. Under a new plan widely expected to benefit Trump, 16 of the state’s 55 delegates will be awarded based on the results of a Feb. 27 primary. The other 39 will be distributed four days later in closed-door caucus meetings of party activists."

There will be a congressional district caucus process in Michigan at some point, but it is not clear whether that will fall on March 2, four days after the state-run primary. Yes, that plan was adopted last month, but the caucus scheduling hit a snag with the RNC earlier in July.

2) On California Republicans and their plans for 2024...

"One potential opening for a challenger like DeSantis could be California, which has 169 delegates to dole out, more than any other state. 

"Thanks to changes passed by Democrats in the state Capitol, California’s primary contest will be on March 5, requiring the state GOP to change its delegate plan in order to comply with national GOP rules for early contests. 

"The changes, which the state’s Republican Party is set to consider and approve late this month, are set to award delegates proportionately to the candidate’s share of the vote, rather than award all delegates to the winner. 

"That could give a candidate trailing in second place a chance to make up ground—especially someone like DeSantis, who has made a point of campaigning in the state."

Democrats in Sacramento did change the primary date to Super Tuesday. 

...in 2017. 

California Republicans had to make a change to the winner-take-all by congressional district system -- NOT truly winner-take-all -- used before then for the 2020 cycle. The problem was that the changes to the CAGOP bylaws in 2019 were only temporary and reset to the same noncompliant winner-take-all by congressional method after 2020. That Republicans in the Golden state have to change back to a more proportional system for 2024 is a condition of their own making. There is really no need to place the blame on Democrats in 2017.

And FHQ does not know if a second place finisher in California is going to make up ground in the delegate count. They will lose less ground than if it were winner-take-all by congressional district, but they will not make up ground. 

There is much more on the proposed California Republican delegate allocation and selection plan at FHQ+.

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the money primary, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are doing well raising funds back home in the Palmetto state. [Nice map by the P&C breaking it all down across South Carolina.]
• Over in the endorsement primary, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has thrown his support behind Donald Trump.
• Early state polling from FOX in Iowa and South Carolina shows Trump way out in front. There are stories to be told about that second tier, but there is a lot of meaningful distance between the frontrunner and the rest of the pack. 
• Tim Scott may be ready for his turn in the discovery, scrutiny, decline ride.
• In the travel primary, Trump is on the cusp of opening an Iowa headquarters in Des Moines later this week. DeSantis is set to see the Hawkeye state by bus this week (among other future events laid out by Never Back Down). Mike Pence will deliver an address to the National Conference of State Legislatures next month in Indianapolis. 
• The staff shake up continues on Team DeSantis.
• A month out from the first Republican debate in Milwaukee, six candidates appear to have qualified.

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Recent posts:

[From FHQ Plus] A second state-run primary option in New Hampshire?

Another way to look at current support for the First-in-the-Nation primary in New Hampshire

A twist in the 2024 Republican endorsement primary

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[From FHQ Plus] Yes, Iowa still matters

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription newsletter. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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From Yes, Iowa still matters:

Iowa Republicans have set a caucus date for 2024. That got some folks thinking about the caucuses place in the presidential nomination process:

“What if Iowa doesn't matter?”

That was a question Chris Cillizza recently posed. And FHQ gets the point. Cillizza is suggesting that either Trump will win the lead-off caucuses next January or will lose and do what he did in 2016, cry foul at the process before moving on to a more hospitable format -- a primary -- back east in the Granite state. 

And that point is well taken. It is a narrower variation on the 2024 is a repeat of 2016 line that has become standard in the discourse of the Republican presidential nomination race this time around. However, that does not mean that it is off base. It may be!

But where FHQ parts ways with Cillizza is on a broader distinction perhaps.

Of course Iowa matters. 

Of course Iowa will matter. Win or lose, things may play out with Trump in the lead role just as Cillizza suggests, but it does not mean that the caucuses will not matter. They will matter in the way that they always do. The caucuses will winnow the field.

But how will Iowa (and New Hampshire) winnow the field? That may be the more operative question heading into primary season next year. Do the early contests literally winnow the field, forcing candidates from the race or do they effectively winnow the field, significantly diminishing the chances of candidates outside the top tier (however that is defined at the time) to near-zero levels?

We may never get a good answer because often, at least in recent cycles, it has been a little bit of both. Viable, office-seeking candidates, like Kamala Harris or Cory Booker on the Democratic side in 2020, who do not want to be winnowed by Iowa or New Hampshire -- those who see the writing on the wall during the invisible primary -- will drop out before the calendar even flips over to the presidential election year. Others, call them the all the eggs in the Iowa or New Hampshire basket candidates, such as Chris Christie in 2016, are among those left to "force" out at that point. 

Often, however, candidates do not neatly fit into one or the other of those categories. While Harris and Booker bowed out in 2020, other viable candidates soldiered on through Iowa, New Hampshire and into or through the other early window states in the Democratic order leading up to Super Tuesday. And that is a story as much about field size as it is about money available to keep those campaigns afloat. 

Yet, it is also a story of zombie candidates, effectively winnowed but still in the race and gobbling up not only vote shares in subsequent primaries and caucuses but potentially (depending on the rules) delegate shares. And that is where these early contests matter. They shape or do not shape the field left to fight over votes and delegates on down the line. No, some to a lot of those candidates-turned-zombies after Iowa or New Hampshire may not even qualify for delegates, but their presence affects how and how many delegates the candidates who do qualify end up being allocated. 

So, no, Iowa may not matter in identifying the eventual Republican nominee in 2024 (not Cillizza's point) and it may not matter where Trump (and/or the winner) is concerned. But it and any other early contests, not to mention the invisible primary, will shape the field that moves forward and how. It will affect the way subsequent rounds of the delegate game are played. That is important. That matters.

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

DeSantis and Trump battle to influence state-level delegate rules for 2024

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• There may be some missing pieces at this point in the invisible primary, but there is a general idea about where the 2024 presidential primary calendar will end up. However, what about filing deadlines? When do candidates and their campaigns have to clear hurdles to get on the ballot in the various primaries and caucuses next year? All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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It is not exactly news that Donald Trump and his campaign have been working state parties in order to assemble as advantageous a set of state-level delegate selection rules for the former president as possible for 2024. The Washington Post ran a story in February that covered similar ground and also brought up Idaho and Michigan as battlegrounds on that front. 

But that is not to say that there is nothing (or nothing new) in the story about Team Trump pushing for rules changes on the state level up at Reuters today. One just has to dig and parse a bit to get at it. 

Yes, Nevada is in the mix, but questions about whether the early contest in the Silver state would be a primary or a caucus are not new. In fact, the primary calendar filling out still hinges on that decision to some degree. A lesser degree than before South Carolina Republicans weighed in recently, but the decision Nevada Republicans will make still matters. 

And Missouri is a bit of a wildcard as well. The legislature's inability to restore the presidential primary for 2024 in the Show-Me means that there is some mystery in -- if not jockeying by the candidates to influence -- what rules Missouri Republicans settle on in the coming weeks and months. 

Those states make some sense. Each was, has been or will be up for grabs in terms of what the delegate selection rules will look like. 

But Alabama? 

That is an interesting one. It is one that the DeSantis campaign is eyeing and over the threshold to win delegates. Importantly, Alabama Republicans have used a system that requires candidates to win 20 percent in order to qualify for delegates in recent cycles. [The Yellowhammer State was a truly winner-take-all state before 2012.] Yet, 20 percent is the maximum at which a state party can set the qualifying threshold. If there is any change there, then it will be to a lower level than 20 percent. 

That is noteworthy and hints at some underlying strategic direction from Team DeSantis that has not really been adequately explored out there. Part of that lies in the qualifying thresholds that the Florida governor is flirting with in some cases. But another is the assumption that caucuses are good for Trump. That could turn out to be the case. The former president did not necessarily excel in the format in 2016, but the complexion of state parties have changed some in the time since, moving toward Trump in some respects. And that suggests that there may be a real battle in caucus states like the above once the calendar flips to 2024. Until then -- or October 1 anyway -- the lobbying continues.

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The headlines today all seemed to read that Trump had expanded his lead in first-in-the-nation New Hampshire. And indeed the former president pulled in just south of 50 percent in a pair of new polls released from the Granite state. But FHQ scrolled down a little further to see where everyone else was. 

Why?

Delegates are on the line. No, the New Hampshire primary has never been about delegates. There will only be 22 at stake there some time in January next year. But here is the thing: Trump has a sizable lead, and it is just the former president and DeSantis who qualify for delegates. Even with a fairly low 10 percent qualifying threshold, no one else would be in the running for delegates out of the Granite state. Trump would take somewhere in the range of 16-17 delegates and DeSantis would take the rest. No, it is not about the delegates in New Hampshire, but even Jeb Bush got three in 2016. 

And this is yet another illustration of just how much oxygen the pair are taking up in the race for the Republican nomination. It is crowding others out even though it is somewhat lopsided at this moment in the invisible primary. 

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the endorsement primary, DeSantis received the support of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, a group that was aligned with President Trump in 2020. 
• Team Pence has a campaign manager, Steve DeMaura, a former New Hampshire Republican Party executive director. 
• Both Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have accepted invitations from Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson to appear at the Republican congresswoman's barbecue in the first-in-the-nation caucus state in August. 

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On this date...

...in 2011, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann officially launched her bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. 

...in 2019, Democratic presidential candidates gathered for the second of two consecutive nights of debates in Miami, the initial primary debates of the 2020 cycle. 

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

South Carolina's move greatly reduces uncertainty on the 2024 presidential primary calendar

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• A thorough contextualization of the decision by South Carolina Republicans to schedule the party's presidential primary for late February next year, plus another envelope-pushing Republican delegate selection plan that quietly slipped under the radar over the weekend. All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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The big news out of the Palmetto state over the weekend was that the Executive Committee of the South Carolina Republican Party voted to schedule the 2024 presidential primary for February 24.

That significantly lowers the temperature on 2024 calendar “chaos” moving forward. With the South Carolina Republican primary in place toward the end of February, that gives Nevada Republicans a substantial runway to land somewhere in the first three weeks of the month. That also means one less contest to potentially compete for calendar space with Iowa and New Hampshire in January. 

There have been those outside of this site who have built up the notion of looming uncertainty with respect to the 2024 calendar, but breathless stories of rogue calendar maneuvering just has not made chaos materialize. It has not. That is not to say that there will not be drama down the stretch as the last calendar pieces fall into place, but it will be muted and all hinges on basically one question: 

On what date does the Iowa Democratic vote-by-mail presidential preference vote end? 

It could be in violation of DNC rules in February and still not affect the beginning of the Republican calendar. That preference vote could end on or after Super Tuesday and it would not change what seems likely. It is only in the event that the Iowa Democratic preference vote ends in January (and probably specifically either on in-person caucus night or merely ahead of the spot New Hampshire is eyeing) that things would turn problematic. 

In any event, there is so much more over at FHQ Plus about the South Carolina move and the early calendar options ahead.

And that triggered a giant update to FHQ's 2024 presidential primary calendar. Both are well worth checking out.

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Seth Masket does a great job in laying out the balance national parties attempt to maintain in cycles when their incumbent president is seeking reelection. It is a nice departure into the the Democratic race over at Tusk.

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From around the invisible primary...

Speaking of the nomination race on the incumbent president's side, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s scheduled attendance at PorcFest, a festival of the libertarian-minded New Hampshire Free State Project has drawn a response from New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley. 

Kennedy and Williamson have one play in the contest with Joe Biden: win a rogue New Hampshire presidential primary and hope for the best. But one of those two winning in the Granite state next year either outright or relative to expectations against each other (with Biden not on the ballot) is still less likely to hurt Biden than it is to affect the future of the New Hampshire primary in the Democratic Party's early calendar lineup.

It is an outcome that the New Hampshire Democratic Party does not want. So when friction pops up between Kennedy and the state Democratic Party, it is noteworthy. 

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Recent posts:

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

Sunday Series: What exactly are Nevada Republicans up to on delegate rules for 2024?

Nevada is, to a great degree, the redheaded stepchild of the early primary calendar. 

It almost always has been since the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2006 added the Nevada caucuses to the lineup for the 2008 cycle. Those caucuses in the Silver state were to have been between Iowa and New Hampshire under the rules adopted by national Democrats, but then Florida and Michigan crashed the party, pushing into January and setting off a domino effect on the rest of the early calendar. 

The Michigan move to January 15 forced the primary in New Hampshire, under state law, up two weeks, earlier than prescribed in the DNC rules. But Nevada Democrats hung back, keeping the party's caucuses at the point on the calendar consistent with the national party guidelines, 17 days before Super Tuesday. 

Thereafter, the Democratic rules institutionalized Nevada in the third position in the calendar order rather than in the second slot. 

Things were different on the Republican side of the ledger. Never intended to be a part of the early Republican calendar for 2008, Nevada Republicans, nonetheless, aligned their caucuses with the precinct meetings of Silver state Democrats in the middle of January. That had the benefits of moving the Republican caucuses into the mix and not ceding the early organization in the state to Democrats. But it also ultimately meant the Republican caucuses would be scheduled on the same date as the Republican primary in South Carolina.

However, because the 2008 delegate allocation in Nevada was not bound to the results of those caucuses, Republicans in the state skirted national party penalties on the timing of primaries and caucuses. After all, it was the DNC that had added Nevada to the early calendar for 2008. National Republicans had not. In fact, the Republican National Committee (RNC) did not exempt Nevada in their rules until the 2010 series of amendments were added to the rules adopted at the 2008 national convention in St. Paul. And even then, the Nevada Republican precinct caucuses did not elect, select, allocate or bind delegates to the national convention in 2012. Ron Paul ultimately controlled that delegation in Tampa.

Regardless, the Nevada caucuses had been added to the list (in the rules) of carve-out states the RNC allowed to hold contests before Super Tuesday. But the implementation of the caucuses in both 2008 and 2012 was problematic enough that it never seemed as if Nevada Republicans and the caucuses were on solid ground on the early calendar. Although no overt threats to Nevada's position ever really materialized, the legacy of the reluctant Republican adoption of Nevada as a part of the early presidential primary calendar has persisted. It has been ingrained in the fabric of how presidential campaigns have approached the state in the intervening years. 

Unlike Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the caucuses in Nevada were not and have not long been a featured part of the early Republican calendar. And it shows. Nevada often goes unmentioned in stories of candidate trips to the early states and when candidates do show up in the Silver state, the state is often talked about as a forgotten (or not focused upon) aspect of the beginnings of the nomination process. 

But is that about to change or is it in the process of changing? 

Winner-take-all?

No, FHQ does not mean the DeSantis visit to the Silver state this weekend is a change. Rather, it is something else oddly buried in the next to last paragraph in an NBC story about it. 

But, [former Nevada Republican Party executive director, Zachary] Moyle noted, Nevada does present a “massive opportunity” to candidates because of its “winner-take-all” system, in which all of its delegates are awarded to the candidate who carries the state.

This is actually news that either is big or deserves a fact check. Nevada conducting a primary or (likely) caucuses with winner-take-all rules in the early window of the Republican process is or would be a big deal. Sure, there are only roughly 25 delegates at stake, but if they were all to be allocated to the winner statewide, then that could prove to be a bigger net delegate margin than in a much larger state with far more delegates on the line under a more proportional system. Nevada could punch about its weight and deliver a fairly major victory early in the process. 

But is Nevada winner-take-all? 

Maybe?

According to Zachary Moyle, yes. But the standing rules that are posted on the Nevada Republican Party web page as of this writing suggest no:

In accordance with the Rules of the Republican National Committee, in Presidential election years, the Nevada Republican Party chooses that its National Delegates and Alternates shall be allocated proportionally based on the final results of the Nevada Presidential Preference Poll, the Alternative Presidential Preference Poll or the Presidential Primary Election, as appropriate, rounded to the nearest whole number.

Granted, those rules date to June 2020 after the Alternative Presidential Preference Poll (APPP) of the last cycle, a contest where President Trump won all of the delegates from the Silver state. But the APPP is not necessarily designed to be a winner-take-all contest. It is a contest that is triggered by an incumbent Republican president seeking reelection. But other candidates are eligible under the rules and can gain access to the ballot with the signatures of 20 members of the Nevada Republican Party State Central Committee. None did in time for the 2020 vote among the members of the NRPSCC, so Trump was the only name on the ballot. And by extension, he won all of the available Nevada delegates. 

But in a competitive cycle in a Nevada Presidential Preference Poll (caucuses) or a Presidential Primary Election, the allocation would be proportional. 

However, maybe those rules are obsolete. They could be. It may just be that the Nevada Republican Party has adopted new rules for 2024 in the time since June 2020 and the web page has simply not been updated. This is entirely possible.

But winner-take-all? In February?

Assume for a moment that the currently posted rules are wrong. They are outdated and a new version detailing the winner-take-all allocation rules for 2024 have not replaced them. Well, that does raise an interesting question. 

Are states with contests before March 15 not prohibited from using truly winner-take-all rules, where a plurality winner statewide wins all of the delegates? Yeah, actually that is true. But here is the thing: under Rule 16(c)(1) Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are exempt from both the winner-take-all restrictions and (for the most part) the timing restrictions barring states from holding contests before March 1. 

So...

If the Nevada rules have been changed and are now winner-take-all, then technically, that is compliant under RNC rules. And that is a reality that is flying under the radar for A LOT of people, including the campaigns. A winner-take-all Nevada is a Nevada that more candidates would be flocking to. They are not. ...at least not yet. 

What about that Nevada Republican Party lawsuit against the new presidential primary?

That may be the funny thing here. The lawsuit may actually point toward the posted rules being outdated. 

Why? 

A cursory dig through those rules turns up this section:

§ 7.0 Primary Election Contingency.
Should state law be amended to provide for a Presidential Primary Election, the provisions of this chapter regulating a Presidential Preference Poll shall be null and void, but all other provisions not related to the Poll otherwise regulating Precinct Meetings shall remain in force.

Read that section. It seems receptive to a presidential primary. It defers to any newly amended law providing for a presidential primary in the Silver state. If the Nevada Republican Party has not changed the rule, then that conflicts with the stated intent of the lawsuit. If the rule has been changed or stricken, then the recent presence of such a rule undermines lawsuit to some degree. Look, parties have the freedom of association under the first amendment and a party can alter the rules that govern it. Nevada Republicans are on firm ground there. But it is not a good look if the current rules give (or recently gave) a thumbs up to the presidential primary and the state party is suing to get out of it. That would not suggest good management at the party. 

But again, the rules may be different. They could have been altered since June 2020 and the new version not posted. It happens. But the questions now are this:

1) Are there different rules in place for 2024 than the ones posted, dated June 2020?

2) What are those rules? Do they include a truly winner-take-all allocation method in the early window? Do those changes eliminate the presidential primary contingency? 

If Nevada is actually winner-take-all in the Republican process, then that is a big deal that deserves a lot more discussion than it has received to this point in the invisible primary. It certainly begs for a more prominent position than the next-to-last paragraph in a story. 

But if the rules are the same, then why did that winner-take-all reference from Moyle go unchecked?

A lot of questions. Not a lot of answers. Not yet anyway.

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Recent posts:

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Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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