Showing posts with label proportional rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label proportional rules. Show all posts

Thursday, May 28, 2026

Filibuster threat was the undoing of Missouri presidential primary bill

There is one last footnote to the latest failed attempt in Jefferson City to restore the Missouri presidential primary. From Rep. Rudy Veit (R-59th, Wardsville), summing up his work during the 2026 session of the General Assembly to constituents in the local paper:
Unfortunately, my presidential primary bill failed during the final week of session after one senator announced plans to extend floor debate or filibuster the measure, effectively ending any opportunity to move it forward before adjournment. The bill had broad bipartisan support among both Republican and Democratic party organizations and passed overwhelmingly in the House. To be quite honest, the bill has been routinely blocked by individuals who know that they stand to gain from having a closed primary. It seems to me that there is no reason to have a closed presidential primary except to reduce the number of people who are able to participate in the process, particularly people who work, have families, or other commitments. This especially deprives people like our military service members, firefighters, police officers, teachers, and other professionals who cannot easily take off work to go vote in a closed primary. If you see someone opposing an open presidential primary in Missouri, you can safely assume that they want nothing more than to increase their own power and clout at the cost of your ability to participate in our elections.

Ultimately, my position is simple: we should always strive to have a voting system that promotes citizen participation, and that any limitation on when you vote or who you vote for should be scrutinized to the highest degree. Unless limitations on voting are absolutely necessary, such as being able to identify yourself, they should not exist. I do not think this should be controversial in a democratic society.

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Noteworthy: The Missouri Senate has been where these efforts to revive the presidential primary have gone to die. That is, if they make it through the state House. A few bills have managed to navigate through the lower chamber -- and this session's moved the closest to full passage of any of the measures over the last four sessions -- but the Senate continues to be a backstop against the primary efforts. And leaving the primary open remains the final obstacle. The Veit/Banderman bill in 2026 ultimately addressed all of the other concerns that have been raised by opponents in recent years.




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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Monday, May 18, 2026

The close of the 2026 legislative session kills the latest attempt to restore Missouri's presidential primary

The 2026 session of the Missouri General Assembly adjourned on Friday, May 15. One bill that died in the process was HB 2387/2480, a measure that would have reestablished a state-funded presidential primary in the Show-Me state for the first time since the 2020 cycle.

The legislation passed the state House with broad bipartisan support and made it through the committee stage on the Senate side. However, in the waning days of the session in Jefferson City, the bill was never brought up on the floor of the upper chamber.  

And thus ended another chapter in the ongoing effort to restore the presidential primary election in Missouri.

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Noteworthy: Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And since the Missouri presidential primary is neither of those, this bill getting further into the legislative process than any of the other measures attempting to restore the primary since the election was eliminated by an act of the General Assembly in 2022, it does not count for much. But the incremental progress across the 2023, 2024, 2025 and now 2026 sessions suggests that 1) there will be another push in 2027 and 2) there is just one more hurdle -- Senate passage -- left to clear in the legislature. 

But the Missouri Senate has proven to be particularly cumbersome obstacle over the last four sessions. That there is just one roadblock left to clear, then, does not speak to the level of resistance among majority Republicans in the upper chamber. And none of this, of course, says anything about how receptive the governor would be to the idea. Both, however, remain a story for 2027. 

[It is unlikely that there is enough urgency to bring the presidential primary up in any special session that may be convened in the interregnum before the 2027 session gavels in in Jefferson City.]  




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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Super Tuesday presidential primary bill clears committee hurdle in Missouri Senate

The reinstatement of Missouri's presidential primary inched one step closer to reality on Wednesday morning, May 6, 2026. The state Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee convened to consider HB 2387/2480 among other bills and unanimously voted (8-0) in favor of the measure with a "do pass" instruction for action on the Senate floor. 


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Noteworthy: This should be the last step at the committee stage on the Senate side, clearing the legislation for consideration by the full Missouri State Senate. It also marks the furthest a presidential primary restoration bill has advanced in the legislative process in Jefferson City since the preference election was eliminated as part of an omnibus elections bill during the 2022 session of the General Assembly.

Despite the $9 million price tag on the resumption of the presidential primary, the bill saw little resistance among the membership of Fiscal Oversight. There was no debate, just the regular parliamentary procedures to raise a bill and then pass it within the hearing. That was it.

The Missouri legislature is due to adjourn next week. 



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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Missouri Senate committee gives Super Tuesday presidential primary bill the thumbs up

The Missouri Senate Local Government, Elections and Pensions Committee convened on Monday, May 4, 2026 and entered executive session to take up and consider a number of bills, including HB 2387/2480. The measure in its amended form would reestablish a state-funded and -run presidential primary election in the Show-Me state, schedule the election for Super Tuesday and legally bind the delegates to the national convention based on the results of the preference vote. 

By a 5-1 vote, the legislation was then passed by the committee with a "do pass" recommendation. Three Republicans were joined by the panel's two Democrats in moving the bill along.


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Noteworthy: The bill will not move directly to the floor for consideration by the full Senate. Instead, it will first divert through the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee. This may or may not be a formality, but the price tag associated with funding a newly reinstituted election -- estimated at $9 million -- has created snags with similar legislation that has worked its way through the General Assembly in recent sessions and it stands out as perhaps the biggest remaining hurdle for this session's version. 

The largest looming issue remaining is that time on the 2026 session is dwindling. The General Assembly is statutorily required to adjourn by May 15. A year ago, the 2025 session gaveled out with a House-passed elections bill (with presidential primary provision) similarly sitting in the queue in committee on the Senate side. 

Does HB 2387/2480 get bottled up in Fiscal Oversight? The handful of remaining legislative days will determine that. Importantly, four of the yes votes from the Local Government, Elections and Pensions Committee also sit on the nine member Fiscal Oversight Committee.



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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Wednesday, April 29, 2026

"Missouri Senate committee debates plan to reinstate presidential primary for 2028"


"Missouri would join at least 14 other states with a 'Super Tuesday' presidential primary in 2028 under a bill that would also bind the state’s delegate on the first ballot at national political conventions.

"During testimony Monday to the state Senate Local Government, Elections and Pensions Committee, leaders of the state’s two largest political parties agreed that restoring the primary would increase participation and elevate the state’s national political profile.

“'In 2024 we received just a ton of complaints from probably every legislative district in the state because we only got about 23,000 people participating' in the caucuses that replaced the primary, said Miles Ross, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party.

"The Democratic Party held a private primary in 2024 with voting confined to a Saturday morning. Holding a state-run primary on the first day the two major parties will recognize as valid would attract candidates and money to the state, said Russ Carnahan, chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party.

“'We’d like Missouri to be relevant again,' Carnahan said.

"The committee did not vote on the bill. State Sen. Mike Henderson, a Republican from Desloge and chairman of the committee, said after the meeting that he was uncertain when, or if, he would bring the bill up for a vote."


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Noteworthy: Look, FHQ listened to this hearing live. To call it a debate is misleading. To call it a debate among the members of the committee is just plain wrong. In fact, the only commentary from the members of the Local Government, Elections and Pensions Committee other the instructions from the chair was from a Republican senator asking a follow up of Miles Ross, the state GOP executive director. And that certainly did not spur a lively back and forth.

To the extent there was a "debate," it was among the folks testifying for and against the measure to restore the state-run presidential primary in the Show-Me state. And that functioned more as a Cliff's Notes version of the discussions on the House side in committee. Monday's hearing was as close to a non-event as it could get. 

But there are a few things to take from this latest hearing for HB 2387/2480:
  1. The Senate finally acted on the bill, more than two weeks after the House passed it.
  2. Importantly, the chair of the committee was noncommittal about ever bringing up the legislation for a vote (to clear it for consideration on the floor). 
  3. There is little more than two weeks left in the 2026 session of the Missouri General Assembly. The last day is slated for May 15. 
Relatedly, this is not the only presidential primary bill to make its way out of the House only to be stymied in the state Senate. A provision to restore the primary was part of a mini-bus elections bill in 2025 that was in the queue in committee on the Senate side on the final day of the session, but was not acted upon.

This latest version, which addresses many of the problems that have derailed past efforts (binding of delegates, etc.), may meet the same fate in Jefferson City. 



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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Thursday, April 9, 2026

Missouri House passes Super Tuesday presidential primary bill

During the morning session of Thursday, April 9, the Missouri House took up for a third reading and passed HB 2387/2480 by a vote of 116-23.1 The measure would reestablish a state-run presidential primary in the Show-Me state, schedule the election for the first Tuesday in March (Super Tuesday) and proportionally bind the delegates from the state to the national convention based on the results of the preference vote. 

The legislation now moves on to the state Senate where the upper chamber will have a little more than a month to consider it before the General Assembly adjourns on May 15.


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Noteworthy: In some ways this is déjà vu all over again in Jefferson City. The House passed legislation to restore the presidential primary in 2025 only to see the bill die in committee on the Senate side at adjournment. 

The 2026 version may yet meet the same fate. But 2026 is different for a couple reasons. First, the legislation from previous sessions in 2023, 2024 and 2025 offered different paths to resolution and/or were part of broader elections bills encompassing factors outside of the presidential primary as well. If that combination did not slow things down in the House first, it weighed heavily on the Senate's consideration, typically late into the session.

Second, while the progress on HB 2387/2480 was perhaps slow through committee process, reinstituting the presidential primary was not controversial on the floor during either the amendment phase or later upon passage. That maybe has something to do with the newly added language binding the delegates, a sticking point in consideration of past iterations of this legislation. But the measure being focused on the presidential primary and the presidential primary alone may also have contributed to the general lack of controversy. 

Together, that may or may not pay dividends as the bill shifts over to the Senate. But the path has been different this time in the House, it also has buy in from both state parties and the binding language checks out with the national parties. It is likely the best bet to restore the primary in Missouri since omnibus elections legislation eliminated the election in 2022. 

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1Of the votes in opposition, 22 of the 23 were Republicans, roughly a fifth of the current Republican majority in the lower chamber. 


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This action has been added to the annotated 2028 presidential primary calendar over at our sister site, FHQ Plus.


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Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Missouri House clears Super Tuesday presidential primary bill for final passage

The Missouri House on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 took up HB 2387/2480 for perfection (amendment) and after amending the title passed the measure on a voice vote, clearing it for a final vote by the body. 

The legislation would not only restore the presidential primary eliminated in 2022, but schedule the state-funded election to take place on Super Tuesday -- the first Tuesday in March -- and bind the delegates to the national convention based on the results. The latter has been a sticking point for detractors during consideration of similar legislation stretching back to 2023.

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Noteworthy: While some initial Republican opponents on the Election Committee spoke in favor of the legislation on the House floor, that may or may not carry weight with the remainder of the chamber on the future vote on passage. These presidential primary bills have passed the Missouri House in the past only to be stymied once they got to the state Senate. The battle, then, may be less intra-chamber than inter-chamber as the 2026 session in Jefferson City draws to a close. 



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Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Super Tuesday presidential primary bill gets the green light from second Missouri House committee

Late last week, the Missouri House Rules (Legislative) Committee voted 8-4 in favor of legislation restoring a presidential primary election in the Show-Me state. That measure, HB 2387/2480, was subsequently reported out of that committee at the end of March with a "do pass" recommendation from the panel. 

This bill would not only reestablish a state-run presidential primary in Missouri, but would also schedule the election for Super Tuesday and legally bind the allocation and selection of delegates to the national convention based on the results of the primary. 

The second committee should clear the bill for consideration by the full Missouri House (if the body opts to bring it up).

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Noteworthy: Interestingly, the Rules Committee vote on HB 2387/2480 was largely along party lines. Eight of the nine Republicans on the panel voted in favor while the three Democrats were joined by the committee's Republican vice chair in opposition. That is a partisan reversal of sorts as all three Democrats present for the Elections Committee vote earlier in the month supported the amended measure. One representative, Rep. Keri Ingle (D-35th, Lee's Summit), even flipped from supporting the amended version in Elections to voting against in Rules. The bill was not further amended in Rules. The second panel passed the same version that made it out of Elections.



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Thursday, March 5, 2026

Missouri House Elections Committee reports amended Super Tuesday primary bill "do pass"

The story of the 2026 legislative session in Jefferson City thus far has been one of obstacles to legislation intended to restore the Show-Me state's presidential primary. Two broad elections bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, saw provisions to reestablish the presidential primary and schedule the election for Super Tuesday removed at the committee stage. Another measure calling for a slightly later March presidential primary sits idle in the upper chamber. 

But the remaining two presidential primary bills in the House -- HB 2387 and HB 2480 -- have been merged in executive session of the House Elections Committee and reported out with a "do pass" recommendation. Additionally, during that March 3 hearing, the committee adopted an amended version of the legislation, dropping sections in the introduced bill pertaining to no-excuse absentee voting in the primary and adding language binding national convention delegates based on the results of the primary. 

The latter change was spurred by feedback the bill's sponsor on the committee got during a February 3 hearing for the bill. It was in that early February hearing where some familiar themes were once again raised by opponents of the primary. In fact, much of the opposition echoed comments from an earlier hearing for the omnibus House elections bill that ended with the presidential primary section being stripped from the legislation.

HB 2387/2480 passed the House Elections Committee as amended by a 10-2 vote in favor.

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Noteworthy: While the adopted committee substitute for HB 2387/2480 addressed the binding concerns of some opponents, it did not also include one of their other sticking points that has emerged not only in 2026 but in past sessions in Missouri: closing the open primary system to registered members of a party. But the bill that now moves on to the House Rules Committee for consideration does include language allocating national convention delegates on a proportional basis and binding those delegates based on the primary results for through the first ballot vote at the national convention. 

Update (4/7/26): During the amendment phase for HB 2387/2480 on the House floor, Ranking Minority member Rep. LaKeySha Bosley (D-79th, St. Louis), noted that Democrats' opposition to the bill was due to an oversight, confusing it with other elections-related legislation. In further comments on the floor, the representative backed the bill and urged the House to support the measure.



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Wednesday, August 16, 2023

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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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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Monday, July 31, 2023

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.
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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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Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Trump and the 2024 Delegate Allocation Rules

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...
  • South Carolina is unique among states with state-run and funded presidential primaries. In some ways that helped elevate the Palmetto state to the first slot on the 2024 Democratic primary calendar. But quirkiness presents some challenges as well. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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Gregory Korte had a nice piece up at Bloomberg the other day concerning the delegate allocation rules and how the Trump campaign's efforts to massage them in 2020 may pay dividends for the former president in 2024. As he notes, however, there will not be a complete picture of the state-level delegate allocation rules until October 1. That makes it tough to game out the impact of the rules for next year. 

Moreover, the various campaigns are doing the same thing. They are currently trying to plan this out, but they are also simultaneously trying to affect what those rules are to lay the groundwork for advantageous allocation rules next year. And that makes for some potential, if not likely, cross-pressures with which state-level party officials/committees/conventions making these decision will have to deal. Together that makes for a challenging decision-making environment. FHQ talked about this in setting the 2024 Republican delegate allocation rules baseline back in March:
If decision makers in state parties across the country cannot see a clear advantage to an allocation change one way or the other, then it is more likely that the 2020 baseline method survives into 2024. That theoretically helps Trump. ...if he is the frontrunner. But if Trump is not the frontrunner once primary season kicks off, then any shift away from the 2020 baseline -- a baseline with the knobs turned toward incumbent defense (or frontrunner defense) -- may end up helping a candidate other than the one intended. 

Another factor adding to this uncertainty is how decision makers view a change playing with rank and file members of the party. If elected officials or other elites in the party are wary of endorsing one Republican candidate or another, then they may also be less willing to make an allocation change for fear that it would be viewed as helping or hurting Trump. In other words, it looks like they are putting their thumb on the scale one way or the other. That is the sort of view that augurs against change. And again, the status quo likely helps Trump (if current conditions persist). 

Basically, the bottom line is this. Allocation changes are tough. They are tough to make because there is uncertainty in the impact those changes will have. It is much easier to see the potential impact of moving a primary to an early date for example. It could help a favorite son or daughter candidate. But an earlier primary or caucus definitely better insures that the state influences the course of the nomination race. If a contest falls too late -- after a presumptive nominee has emerged and clinched the nomination -- then that contest has literally no impact. Some impact, no matter how small, is better than literally zero impact. The same is true with respect to the decision to conduct a primary election or caucuses. There are definite turnout effects that come with holding a primary rather than caucuses. And greater participation in primaries typically means a more diverse -- less ideologically homogenous or extreme -- electorate.

Things are less clear with allocation rules changes. 
There is much more in that post. FHQ will be drawing from it throughout the remainder of the invisible primary if not into primary season in 2024. Go read it. But in the meantime, a couple of additional things:
  1. Yes, more truly winner-take-all states help Trump at this time. But they would help any frontrunner. These are, after all, frontrunner rules. They help build and pad a delegate lead once the RNC allows winner-take-all rules to kick in on March 15, entering 50-75 rule territory.
  2. But Team Trump is likely looking toward (and looking to maintain) the other rules changes from 2020 for an earlier-on-the-calendar boost. An earlier (technical) knock out for a 2024 frontrunner may come from states earlier than March 15 with winner-take-all triggers. If a candidate wins a majority of the vote statewide and/or at the congressional district level, then that candidate wins all of the delegates from that jurisdiction (or all of a state's delegates available if the delegates are pooled). Alternatively, if no other candidates hit the qualifying thresholds (set to their max of 20 percent in most proportional states in 2020), then the winner is allocated all of the delegates in some states even if they do not have a majority. And the name of the game here is not necessarily winning all of the delegates, but maximizing the net delegate advantage coming out of any given state. All of the Republican campaigns are asking how much they can improve on a baseline proportional allocation, and picking spots on the map and calendar where they can do. Well, campaigns are doing that if they know what they are doing anyway.

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In the travel primary, former Vice President Mike Pence will be back in New Hampshire on Tuesday, May 16. And it looks at if a super PAC has formed around his before the end of June presidential launch. The interesting thing is less the formation of an aligned super PAC and more about some of the staff primary hires the new group has made. There are folks from the orbits of a former Republican presidential nominee (Scott Reed, former campaign manager of the 1996 Dole campaign), a once talked-about possible 2024 aspirant who declined to run (Mike Ricci, former spokesman for former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan) and a still-talked about possible 2024 candidate who says he is not running (Bobby Saparow, former campaign manager for current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp). In total, that makes for an interesting mix of old school Republican politics and new school Trump resistance within the party. That may not represent a winning path in the Republican nomination race, but it is indicative of a unique course forward for Pence relative to his competition.


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Endorsement Math. Yesterday, FHQ raised the sizable number of Iowa state legislative endorsements Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rolled out before his weekend trek to the Hawkeye state. And on Monday, Never Back Down, the super PAC aligned with DeSantis, released another 49 new endorsements from fellow early state, New Hampshire. [That is 51 endorsements minus the previously revealed support of New Hampshire House Majority Leader Jason Osborne and the double endorsement -- of both Trump and DeSantis -- from Juliet Harvey-Bolia.] Three of those DeSantis endorsements in the Granite state are from representatives who have supported Trump in the past.

But the math is different across both of those waves of DeSantis endorsements from Iowa and New Hampshire. The 37 state legislative endorsements from the Hawkeye state accounted for more than a third of all of the possible Iowa Republican legislators -- House and Senate. In New Hampshire, those 50 endorsements, all from members of the state House, register differently. They make up just a quarter of the total number of possible endorsements from the lower chamber alone. Yes, that may be splitting hairs, but it is also a long way of saying the pool of endorsements is bigger in New Hampshire. Others will be vying for the support of the remaining 150 Granite state House members. 


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On this date...
...in 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace, a day after being shot campaigning in Maryland, won primaries in the Old Line state and in Michigan. 

...in 2000, long after becoming the presumptive nominees of their parties, George W. Bush and Al Gore won the Oregon presidential primary.

...in 2019, long shots, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rocky de la Fuente, respectively entered the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination races. 



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Thursday, May 11, 2023

A reminder about Iowa Republican Delegate Allocation

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...
  • Missouri's presidential primary comeback remains in limbo and Pennsylvania could be a primary calendar wildcard deep into 2023. 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...
...
FHQ is not going to make much of poll of potential Republican caucus-goers in Iowa eight months away from the lead off caucuses. But I will do that thing that I do as a reminder. Trump's 54 percent to 24 percent advantage over DeSantis in the poll would net him just more than half of the delegates available in the Hawkeye state in 2024. Trump hypothetically pulling more than half of the support of those caucusing would not trip a winner-take-all trigger in a state that is strictly proportional with no official qualifying threshold to win delegates. 

But recall that under current Republican Party of Iowa rules, those delegates are only proportionally allocated during primary season. If there is only one name placed in nomination at the national convention in Milwaukee next year, then all of the delegates from Iowa will be bound to that candidate on the first ballot. That caveat makes the Iowa delegate allocation -- or the binding of those delegates, really -- akin to the National Popular Vote plan that would award a state's electoral college votes in the presidential election to the national winner rather than the state winner. But again, that is only if there is just one name placed in nomination for the roll call vote as has become the custom. If there is a break in that trend, and more than one candidate makes the ballot, then the proportional allocation from primary season would carry over to the roll call vote. 

File that one away for later.


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There are very few candidates, of either party, in nonincumbent races who were near or north of 50% in the national primary polls this early on. Those included Republicans Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000, and Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. All of those candidates won their party’s nominations, and none of those races were particularly close.
The interesting extension of that is what an early prohibitive favorite for a nomination does to the resulting field of candidates. Bush, Clinton and Gore all avoided a great number of opponents, viable or otherwise. Dole may have held an early lead in 1995 but that Republican nomination race drew more than a few candidates into the competition who had the conventional characteristics of successful nominees even if they did not ultimately take off (Phil Gramm or Lamar Alexander, for example). 

But as with many other things, Trump is unique. The former president's legal wranglings create just enough doubt about 2024 as to lure some folks that might otherwise pass on a run against an internally (intra-party) popular former president into the race. Just yesterday I drew a parallel between the size of the 2016 Democratic field and that of the emerging 2024 Republican field. And while there is some truth to that, it will likely not be a field that is quite as small as the 2016 Democratic group or without conventionally qualified competition. The 2024 Republican presidential nomination race is likely to feature a field of candidates that is smaller than the 2016 Republican race, but with more concentrated quality (a former vice president, a former governor/UN ambassador, a well-funded senator and a popular governor and rival from the same state as Trump) than existed on the list of 1996 Republican aspirants. 


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Quick hits:

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On this date...
...in 1976, as a marker of how different the early cycles of the post-reform era were, contests remained competitive in both parties nomination races. President Gerald Ford and former California Governor Ronald Reagan split primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia. Reagan took the former, the only seriously contested primary of the day. On the Democratic side, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter narrowly won caucuses in Connecticut, but lost to Idaho Senator Frank Church in Nebraska and to favorite son, Senator Robert Byrd in West Virginia. 

...in 2004, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry swept the primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia. 

...in 2011, former Speaker Newt Gingrich officially joined the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.



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