Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Running for 2024

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Ron DeSantis staked out a position yesterday on the Ukraine war, calling it "not a key US interest." That places him closer to Donald Trump's position on the issue than other Republicans officially in the race or seemingly running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. This is not an insignificant part of the invisible primary. In a battle among participants with the same letter (R) next to their names, carving out a differentiated, if not unique, position can be important as candidates jockey for support among the primary electorate. 

But something Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted in the context of this story highlighted a continued misunderstanding about the progression of the invisible primary:
And after avoiding talking about foreign policy for weeks, including at the Reagan Library in any expansive way, DeSantis weighing in is tantamount to acknowledging his presidential campaign is in the offing
A presidential candidacy is very much about the rollout and the announcement. Those things matter. But DeSantis weighing in on Ukraine is not "tantamount to acknowledging his presidential campaign is in the offing." It is not. Not in and of itself anyway. Now, that is not to say that the Florida governor's candidacy is not in this gray area between a lot of people, elite Republicans, media folks and otherwise, saying he is running (or will run) and a formal announcement. It is. And this Ukraine position is another datapoint in that gray area. But it is one datapoint among many -- travel, a warchest busting at the seams, meaningful donors lining up behind him, etc. -- that all point in basically the same direction: DeSantis is running. He is running and has been running for the 2024 Republican nomination. And he is very well positioned because of polling (to this point) and all the other relevant metrics mentioned above to be running in 2024 as well. 

There is no need to dance around that reality. That is how it works.


...
The Trump campaign suggested that it is actively hiring a campaign team "especially in these early states," but has not shown the staff primary goods outside of a previously announced Iowa leadership team. It is a foregone conclusion that Trump will not be in the dominant position he was in four years ago as an incumbent president seeking nomination, but the question remains -- and it is an important one -- where he and his campaign are on the spectrum that runs from 2019-20 on the very prepared/organized/disciplined scale on the high end to 2015-16 on the low end. He was able to pull out the 2016 nomination despite being on the low side of that scale, but 2023-24 is not 2015-16.


...
California Republicans held their spring state convention over the weekend. The delegates in attendance were still very Trump-favorable. That matters. It matters because those delegates are potentially in a pool of possible national convention delegates in 2024. It matters because these conventions will decide on the rules of the delegate allocation/selection process for the 2024 cycle at the state level. And while much of the attention at these gatherings this winter/spring has been on the chair elections -- whether they are skeptical of the 2020 election results or not -- some attention should be paid to the rules for 2024. This is when those decisions are being made. And for the record, California Republicans made no changes to their national convention delegate allocation/selection process at this most recent state convention.


...
On this date...
...in 1972, George Wallace won a lopsided plurality in the Florida presidential primary, his first of six primary wins that cycle.

...in 1984, George McGovern pulled out of the race for the Democratic nomination, the day after Super Tuesday. 

...in 1996, Steve Forbes withdrew from the Republican presidential nomination race, the last major challenger to Bob Dole to drop out during primary season. Pat Buchanan held out until the national convention. Both Forbes and Buchanan saw early success, winning a combined six contests, but nothing after March 9.

...in 2000, a cluster of six southern states, the remnants of the 1988 Southern Super Tuesday, held primaries, but were of little consequence in deciding the races. A frontloaded calendar meant that Super Tuesday a week earlier had already forced Bill Bradley and John McCain from their respective races, sealing the nominations for Al Gore and George W. Bush. Both Gore and Bush captured enough delegates on March 14, 2000 to become presumptive nominees.

...in 2008, the tapes of Jeremiah Wright's controversial comments on race resurfaced at the beginning of a long gap in the primary calendar before the Pennsylvania primary in late April. 

...in 2019, Beto O'Rourke formally entered the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

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Monday, March 13, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Blue States Matter in the Republican Nomination Process, but so do Blue Districts

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Alan Greenblatt has a good reminder up at Governing about the role blue states play in the Republican presidential nomination process. But while there are also delegates to chase in Democratic states, the underlying math offers some interesting twists. 

Take California. The Golden state, as Greenblatt notes, is a solidly blue state but remains the largest delegate prize in the Republican process. Yet, how California Republicans decide to divvy up all of those delegates matters. More often than not, California has been a winner-take-all by congressional district state, meaning that, not only do the results statewide matter, but so too do the results in each of the state's 50-plus congressional districts. A candidate would need either a big win statewide or a win fairly evenly dispersed across all of those districts to sweep all or most them.

Of course, one difference between the Republican and Democratic delegate apportionment -- how the national parties distribute delegates to the states -- is in how each treats congressional district delegates. The Republican National Committee (RNC) apportions three delegates to every congressional district while Democrats weight them. The more Democratic a district has been (in terms of past voting), the more delegates it receives. Democratic districts -- where the Democrats are -- mean more in the math for candidates. But that is not true on the Republican side. They are all the same. Overwhelmingly Republican districts are the same as supermajority Democratic districts. As such, the relatively small number of Republicans in those solidly Democratic districts carry a bit more weight than a larger number of them packed into a Republican-leaning district. 

And there is an efficiency to all of this as well. Many of those Democratic districts are clustered in urban areas that can be reached more easily in person and/or on the air. There was some evidence of this in metro Atlanta in the 2016 Republican race. Marco Rubio was able to peel off a few Democratic districts there to gain some delegates. As that example illustrates, however, focusing solely on Democratic districts is no substitute for doing well in Republican areas as well (not unless there are a number of evenly matched candidates). But, as always, the rules matter.

[Incidentally, California Republicans dropped the allocation method described above for the 2020 cycle. An earlier primary forced the state party to abandon the winner-take-all by congressional district method because it would not have been compliant under RNC rules. But the change made minimized the congressional district and at-large delegate distinction. All of the delegates were pooled and all allocated based on the statewide results. If no candidate received a majority of the vote statewide, then the delegates were proportionally allocated. With majority support a candidate would win all of the delegates. But again, the rules matter.]


...
Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein has one on the current time of choosing for Republicans. The possible indictments former President Donald Trump faces means that Republicans are going to have to stake out positions on the matter one way or the other. And that has consequences for the 2024 invisible primary. On one end of the spectrum, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R), who is considering a White House bid of his own, has already suggested that Trump should drop out if he is indicted. And while it is not necessarily indictment-related, Mike Pence continues to break with Trump and more forcefully now. Other candidates will have decisions to make as this story develops.


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Speaking of Trump, the former president drops in on Iowa today for the first time since announcing his third presidential run.


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The political science literature tells us that the impact of political advertising is small and short-lived. But that has stopped super PAC spending on ads promoting President Biden's economic accomplishments. Yes, this is more of an attempt to frame the matter than to sway votes still 20 months away. ...but still, it is early.


...
On this date...
...in 1984, it was Super Tuesday, a date that saw Walter Mondale and Gary Hart split contests in the Democratic presidential nomination race. Like 1992, the Super Tuesday of 1984 paled in comparison to the southern-dominated Super Tuesday of 1988. But the break in support in 1984 foreshadowed the pattern that would repeat itself to some degree in 1988. Mondale took contests in the Deep South while Hart took Florida and the two primaries in the northeast. But while Mondale rode those victories in Alabama and Georgia to the nomination, in 1988 Michael Dukakis filled the Hart role while, winning the peripheral South and the northeast as Jesse Jackson and Al Gore split the bulk of the former confederacy.

...in 2012, it was the day of the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, two contests Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich needed in their longer term efforts to keep Mitt Romney from reaching the magic number of delegates to claim the Republican nomination. Romney was kept out of the winner's circle in each, but the delegate splits among the three candidates did not provide his challengers with the net delegate advantages they needed. This series of contests also garnered some attention because of Romney's "cheesy grits" comments.

...in 2019, Miramar mayor Wayne Messam (D) formed an exploratory committee for a presidential run. Messam formally joined the race later in the month, but withdrew before primary season and ultimately received no votes in the process. 

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Sunday, March 12, 2023

Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Updated (March 2023)

One electoral reform that FHQ has touched on in the past and has increasingly popped up on the presidential primary radar is ranked choice voting (RCV). And let us be clear, while the idea has worked its way into state-level legislation and state party delegate selection plans, widespread adoption of the practice is not yet at hand. 

However, there has been some RCV experimentation on a modest scale in the delegate allocation process primarily in small states. And that has opened the door to its consideration in a broader swath of states across the country. States, whether state parties or state legislators, are seeing some value in allowing for a redistribution of votes based on a voter's preferences to insure, in the case of presidential primaries, that every voter has a more direct say in the resulting delegate allocation. 

That is apparent in legislation that has been proposed in state legislatures across the country as they have begun convening their 2023 sessions. Again, RCV is not sweeping the nation, as the map below of current legislation to institute the method in the presidential nomination process will attest. There are a lot of unshaded states. But if RCV was adopted across those states where it has been passed (Maine), where it has been used in Democratic state party-run processes (Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota), and where it is being considered by legislators in 2023 then it would affect the allocation of nearly a third of Democratic delegates and a little more than a quarter of Republican delegates. That is not nothing. 



Since the last update in late January, an additional 11 bills have been introduced in seven states -- Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont -- to establish RCV in at least presidential primaries. Only one bill to create RCV among all of those introduced has even passed a chamber, and that was one of the handful of bills in Hawaii. It passed with an effective date in the year 3000. That is not a typo. It was purposefully set for well into the future to spur further conversation about the measure in the state Senate.

The 2023 session remains young, but there has not been a lot of legislative momentum behind the efforts establish RCV. 

However, there has been some negative momentum. Several pro-RCV bills ended up bottled up in committee and are either dead or effectively so. That includes the four bills in Virginia and the two considered in New Hampshire. In addition, legislation to ban RCV has found limited but greater success than the measures that have sought to create RCV systems. The South Dakota bill to prohibit RCV winded its way through the legislature and is on the governor's desk for consideration. Other ban bills have been passed by their chamber of origination in Idaho and Montana and another measure to stop RCV usage has been introduced in West Virginia. 

The legislative efforts nationwide continue to have a partisan tint to them. Legislation to create the infrastructure to implement RCV is more likely to be introduced in Democratic-controlled states and if not in blue states, then by Democratic legislators. Introduced measures to ban RCV have been exclusively introduced in Republican-controlled states and by Republican legislators. 




A few notes on bills included and excluded from consideration:

1. The intent was to highlight legislation that would affect presidential primaries. That includes bills that would exclusively cover presidential primaries and those that would impact all or most primaries, including presidential primaries. 

2. FHQ was probably a bit more inclusive than necessary. A handful of the bills listed above while currently active, would not take effect until after 2024. The New York and Oregon legislation is that way. The 2022 New Jersey RCV bill that carried over to the second session in 2023 would not take effect until the January 1 twelve months following the point at which the secretary of state in the Garden state had determined all voting machines were operable for RCV. New Jersey and New York together account for a significant chunk of delegates on the Democratic side and none of those would be impacted by this legislation in 2024. [The newly added Oregon bill falls into this category as well.]

3. Some bills were not included. There is an RCV ban bill in North Dakota as well. But there is no state-run presidential primary in the Peace Garden state. That is true of the efforts in Alaska to repeal RCV there. If the state-run RCV process were to end, the Democratic Party could still utilize the practice in a state-run presidential nominating contest. Similarly, ban legislation that sought to prohibit RCV only in local elections -- as in Minnesota -- were also excluded. Finally, if RCV was tethered to a broader push to move to a nonpartisan primary like in New Mexico, then that was also left out. It should also be noted that Nevada was left unshaded on the map above. The state Democratic Party used RCV in the early voting portion of the caucuses in 2020, but not across the entire process.

4. Hawaii technically fits two categories on the map. Democrats in the Aloha state used RCV in their party-run primary in 2020, but have legislation that combines a switch to RCV and the use of a state-run presidential primary as well as separate legislation to establish a presidential primary and move to RCV in all elections (including any presidential primary that may be created). 

Kansas and Maine also fall into two categories. Kansas Democrats used RCV in their party-run process in 2020, and there is also legislation to add RCV to all primaries in the Sunflower state. That would only matter in the presidential arena if separate legislation creating a presidential primary passes the legislature and is signed in to law. Moreover, there is legislation to return to plurality voting in Maine, but it faces an uphill climb in the Democratic-controlled Pine Tree state.



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Saturday, March 11, 2023

Indications Rhode Island Will Re-explore Presidential Primary Date

The Providence Journal reports that Rhode Island, too, may shift the date on which the Ocean state's presidential primary falls in 2024 because of a conflict with the Passover holiday.
Rep. Rebecca Kislak, D-Providence, has quietly raised the issue behind the scenes with the secretary of state's office and Democratic Party Leadership. She said Thursday she is "confident that over the next days or weeks" she will be able to introduce legislation to move the date.  
...
"We are exploring the possibility of moving the primary," echoed state Rep. Joseph McNamara, the state Democratic chairman. House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi said Kislak had briefed him on the problem, and he was open to a legislative fix. 

Secretary of State Gregg Amore also told The Journal: "Yes. It needs legislative action."
Legislators in Maryland are already moving legislation to push the primary in the Old Line state back into May, and in a change prompted not by the Passover conflict, two bills in Pennsylvania (also in conflict with Passover) would shift the primary in the Keystone state up to mid-March. If all of those changes occur, that would leave Delaware alone on the fourth Tuesday in April in 2024, the lone remnant of a subregional mid-Atlantic/northeastern primary that has existed in one form or another since the 2012 cycle. 

Connecticut has also been a part of that group but because there are five Tuesdays in April in 2024, the differing language of the laws in these states matters. The states with primaries conflicting with Passover specify the fourth Tuesday in April whereas the Connecticut law sets the date of the presidential primary in the Nutmeg state for the last Tuesday of April, the 30th in 2024. That difference has not mattered until now.

In a mark of just how quiet things have been on the calendar front in 2023 (relative to previous cycles), it may be that the Passover conflict could be the impetus for most of the calendar changes in the 2024 cycle. 

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Friday, March 10, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Presidential Primary Runoffs?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

My former UGA colleagues, Charles Bullock and Loch Johnson, have an interesting take on the presidential nomination process up over at The Bulwark. Runoffs in Georgia are out of vogue these days after two consecutive electoral cycles with high profile Senate overtime elections, but that has not stopped Bullock and Johnson from suggesting that adding runoff elections to the presidential nomination process might help to provide some guardrails against novice and/or extremist candidates. Maybe. 

But the whole concept is premised on the idea that the Republican presidential nomination process is winner-take-all; that a candidate can win a mere plurality by just one vote and still win all of the delegates from a state. It is not. There were 19 truly winner-take-all contests in the 2020 Republican presidential nomination process, meaning that 37 other primaries, caucuses and conventions had some other form of delegate allocation rules. And sure, Bullock and Johnson discussed all of this in the context of Trump's 2016 victory, not 2020. But there were ten fewer truly winner-take-all contests then. 

Look, there may be something to requiring a candidate to win a majority in a primary or caucus in order to win delegates (not to mention broaden a candidate's appeal). But a separate runoff is not necessary in order to accomplish that. In fact, there are already rules on the Republican National Committee (RNC) books that do that and have been in place since the 2012 cycle. Under the rules, states can circumvent the ban on truly winner-take-all rules before March 15 by using a baseline proportional allocation method with a winner-take-all trigger. Candidates have to hit 50 percent of the vote statewide in order to activate that trigger. There were 17 such proportional states in 2020 before and after March 15.

What's more Bullock and Johnson suggest ranked choice voting (RCV) as a means of avoiding the administrative and financial strain a subsequent presidential primary runoff election may place on states. The irony, of course, is that the RCV alternative they propose is the same one that Republican state legislators across the country are considering banning during this current state legislative season. [FHQ really needs to update the 2023 RCV legislation post. But it is the ban legislation that is actually moving through legislatures rather than the bills to institute RCV.]


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Republican county chairs prefer DeSantis over Trump. This piece was built on survey work that Seth Masket has been doing this cycle. Masket undertook a similar endeavor four years ago in the midst of the Democratic process. His work continues to be invaluable. 


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Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) doing a CNN town hall will do little to quell the presidential chatter that has quietly operated on the fringes of the Republican invisible primary for some time. That said, some donors have not viewed him as an "all-in candidate" in recent days. That is not to say that the governor cannot rev things up in the money primary at some point, but he would likely have to make that transition to "all-in" first. ...at the very least in the eyes of the donors.


...
On this date...
...in 1992, it was Super Tuesday, but a less super Super Tuesday than the Southern Super Tuesday of the 1988 cycle. Much of the southern states held together again in 1992, but Georgia moved earlier (as allowed under DNC rules that cycle) and states like Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina moved back to consolidated dates later in the process.

...in 2000, a western subregional primary of sorts was held. Rare Friday primaries in Colorado and Utah and Republican caucuses in Wyoming occurred on March 10. 


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UPDATED: Maryland Bills Would Resolve Presidential Primary Conflict with Passover...

...but the possible resolutions take different routes. 





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Thursday, March 9, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Doing the things that prospective candidates do

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

One of FHQ's typical bits of invisible primary advice is to look at actions not words when trying to divine what it is that candidates or prospective candidates are up to in the early going. Only, in 2023 on the Democratic side, there is something of an exception to that rule. President Biden is doing all of the things that a prospective candidate for reelection does. While he has drawn a challenger, all of the arguably most viable alternatives are not readying for long and divisive bids. In fact, many of them have already signed on to advise the president in his quest for reelection. Those around the president are suggesting he is running and the president has hinted at it himself. The only thing he has not done is say, "I'm running."

But that has not stopped a steady stream of stories in recent days from reporting on planning going on in the event that he does not throw his hat in the ring or speculation about the field of candidates that could line up to seek the nomination in his stead. All of this, of course, belies the reality presented above.  And races involving the incumbent are usually boring. The same things happened four years ago on the Republican side. But then it was stories about Weld, Sanford and Walsh, how Trump was going to play the delegate game and Republican state parties opting out of contests. It is the same thus far in 2023. But replace those Republican stories from four years ago with stories about Biden's (similarly weak) challengers and the primary calendar shake up (which is also being spun as an incumbent defense). 

There may be some there there in the Democratic presidential nomination process in 2024, but it is a relatively small there. Actions, not words.


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In the travel primary, T-minus one day until DeSantis descends on Iowa for the first time. And there is a Las Vegas stop in early primary (caucus?) state, Nevada, on Saturday as well.


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The contests in four states conflict with Passover next year. [Yep.] One of those states, Maryland is on top of it: 
The Maryland House speaker and Senate president both came out in favor of changing the date for next year’s primary. A spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, told JI on Tuesday that he “supports moving next year’s primary Election Day so it does not fall on Passover.”
[Yep.]

But the Jewish Insider goes on...
In Pennsylvania, no such effort is yet underway. 
[Uh, well...]

Actually, there is an effort to move the Pennsylvania presidential primary. Two of them, in fact. Passover may not be the impetus for that change, but there is a change in the works. Oh, but JI goes on...
There is currently another push in Pennsylvania to change the Democratic presidential primary date for 2024. Democratic legislators introduced a bill to move the Democratic presidential primary next year a month earlier, to March 19, to give Pennsylvania a bigger say in the party’s nominating contest. If it were implemented, that bill would not affect the Republican primary — still set for April 23 — or other statewide primaries set to take place on that date.
That is not how this works. States may move a consolidated primary up. [And that is what is happening in the two bills proposed in Pennsylvania.] They may split a presidential primary off from the rest in order to schedule it earlier. But rarely does a state split up a consolidated primary and then schedule two separate presidential primary elections. That is just too expensive for most states. South Carolina stands out as the only state with two separate, state-run presidential primaries; one for each party. But the Palmetto state is the exception to the rule.

...
On this date...

...in 1976, Jimmy Carter bested George Wallace in the Florida presidential primary, seen as a southern elimination contest after Carter's victories earlier on the calendar. Wallace had won the primary in the Sunshine state in 1972.

...in 1980, John Connally (R-TX) pulled out of the Republican nomination race, raising and spending a lot of money along the way to win one delegate.

...in 1992, Tom Harkin (D-IA) withdrew from the Democratic nomination race following wins in the Iowa, Idaho and Minnesota caucuses.

...in 2000, it was the day of the South Carolina Democratic firehouse primary. It was the last cycle that South Carolina Democrats held a contest after Super Tuesday. It was also the day that both Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) gave up bids for their respective nominations after big Super Tuesday losses. 

...in 2004, it was (again) the day of the Florida presidential primary. The contest in the Sunshine state had not moved from that second Tuesday in March position on which it had been conducted since the beginning of the post-reform era. Florida, infamously, was not in that same position in 2008.

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Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Winner-take-most, please

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) continues inching toward a presidential bid. No decision is on the horizon in the near term, but initial hiring has taken place and super PAC infrastructure is taking shape. Former Senate colleague, Cory Gardner (R-CO) heads one such entity, and Rob Collins, who was involved with the super PAC, Future 45, during the 2016 cycle, is in the fold as well. Future 45 often gets pegged as a Trump-aligned group but most of the money it took it in was spent against Hillary Clinton rather than for Trump in that cycle. In the staff primary of 2024, Collins' support of Scott is noteworthy but it seems more like just that -- Scott support -- rather than a defection from Team Trump.


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Douglas Schoen has an op-ed up at The Hill assessing the state of the Republican presidential race. And that is fine. But this section violated a major pet peeve of FHQ's:
The design of the Republican Party’s winner-take-all delegate system also inherently benefits a candidate like Trump, whose devoted base comprises roughly 35 to 40 percent of the primary electorate. This is far from a majority but is enough to carry him to the nomination, as it did in 2016.
Technically, this is right. There is a "winner-take-all design" to the Republican presidential nomination process. But when one describes it in this manner without all the important caveats, it just ends up perpetuating the myth that the Republican allocation process is ALL winner-take-all. It is not. 

Look, it takes a lot to explain all of the caveats. Truly winner-take-all rules, where one candidate can win all of a state's delegates if he or she wins a small plurality even by just one vote, are prohibited before March 15. But states can be proportional with a winner-take-all trigger, where if a candidate wins at least a majority of the vote statewide, he or she wins all of the state's delegates, before March 15. And states after March 15 can still adopt a variety of rules. They are not all winner-take-all after that point. 

The answer to this should be pretty simple. So, for 2024, call the Republican delegate allocation process winner-take-most and be done with it. Winner-take-most encompasses the full range of proportional (winner-take-more), hybrid and winner-take-all rules without having to get down in the weeds about the caveats to all the different plans. This holds when comparing the Republican process to that of the Democrats as well. The latter mandates proportional rules while the former allows a variety of winner-take-most rules. 


...
Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein has a good one on how an organized Trump campaign in 2024 might be able to exploit the divorce between delegate allocation and selection in the Republican process and use it to his advantage even in the event he doesn't win a majority of allocated delegates. A few things on this one:

1. There may be some tinkering at the margins that brings some delegate allocation in line with the allocation process on the state level, but it is probably too late in the 2024 process to mount a full scale effort to change the rules. The national party rules are already locked in for the cycle and have been since April of last year. But there may be some efforts on the state level to alter state rules on the matter. 

2. Still, there is reason to think that those efforts will be limited. As Bernstein notes, delegates on the Democratic side have to meet the approval of the candidates/campaigns they will represent at the national convention. That is not necessarily the case on the Republican side. But there was an attempt to add candidate approval to the rules that were to come out of the 2012 Republican National Convention. Here is the FHQ dispatch from Tampa at the time and the relevant excerpt from a proposed rules change that did not make the cut: 

Proposed Rule 15(b):
For any manner of binding or allocating delegates permitted by these Rules, no delegate or alternate delegate who is bound or allocated to a particular presidential candidate may be certified under Rule 19 unless the presidential candidate to whom the delegate or alternate delegate is bound or allocated has pre-certified or approved the delegate or alternate delegate.

Analysis of Change:
This is the rule that has drawn so much backlash from Paul supporters, Santorum supporters and other state party officials and has threatened to throw the convention into a floor fight. Honestly, this change has the potential to be the proportionality requirement of of 2016: an overhyped rule with no real impact on the process. At the heart of the conflict is the notion that delegates being approved by candidates is a power grab at the expense of a state party's right to choose how it allocates its delegates. Further, it takes a grassroots activity meant to build the party and turns it over to the candidate or candidates. FHQ gets the rationale, but I struggle to see what fundamental impact the change will have.

Actually, I do see the impact it will have. Together with Rule 15(a) the candidate approval mechanism altogether ends the possibility that a statewide vote can be overturned in subsequent steps in a caucus process by enthusiastic and organized supporters of a candidate that did not comprise a majority or plurality of the statewide vote. We can call it the Ron Paul issue. It isn't a problem because the Paul folks and their supporters were behaving well within the confines of the rules laid out for the 2012 cycle. It is, however, perceived as a problem by the national party. It takes what has been an orderly process and leaves the order up to chance every cycle; opening the door to discord within the party and a less than cohesive national convention that could hurt the presumptive nominee for the party.

The backlash was pretty severe and was seen as another in a series of power grabs by the national party orchestrated by Ben Ginsberg who was running the show for the Romney team on the convention Rules Committee at the time. I mean, conversations about the Ginsberg power grab and the true grassroots of the party took place among RNC members for years after this. State parties are loathe to make changes that shift the balance of power away from them. Most will resist efforts to change the linkage (or lack thereof) between the delegate allocation and selection processes. 

The bottom line here is that Trump has in 2023 an institutional advantage that he and his campaign did not have in 2015. That is important.


...
On this date...

...in 1988, it was Super Tuesday. Well, not only was it Super Tuesday, it was Southern Super Tuesday, the first real concerted effort at a regional primary date. I have put 3/8/88 into a lot of datasets a lot of times over the years. It is burned into that gray matter.

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Pennsylvania House Bill Would Move Presidential Primary from April to March

A group of five Republicans led by Rep. Keith Greiner (R-43rd, Lancaster) has introduced legislation to shift the Pennsylvania general primary, including the presidential primary, to the third Tuesday in March. 


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Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Hawaii Senate Passes Super Tuesday Presidential Primary Bill

The Hawaii Senate on Tuesday, March 7 passed legislation creating a presidential primary in the Aloha state and scheduling the stand-alone election for Super Tuesday.






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