And Another Thing About Those Winner-Take-All Primaries

In the car yesterday, I was thinking again about the possibility of the Democratic Party utilizing winner-take-all primary rules in some states in 2012. And killjoy that I am, I was probing the idea for unintended consequences. [I had plenty of time.] Perhaps you've noticed that the problems with the current system are the unintended consequences of its piecemeal construction and evolution over the last nearly forty years. Everything from frontloading to the proportional allocation of delegates on the Democratic side to the proliferation of primaries has developed in that span of time.

Anyway, it occurred to me that there is already a line of demarcation drawn between early states and late states and that that line has become quite a problem over time. In actuality, though, I suppose that the line between early states and earliest states is the one that is more problematic. However, that raises an interesting question: Instead of two classes of states based on when a state's primary or caucus is held (something that just recently led to Florida and Michigan going rogue), could the line between proportional states and winner-take-all states similarly set up two classes of states? And do the Florida and Michigan examples from 2008 make that more likely in the future?

Let's take a state like Georgia as an example. The Peach state is already situated on Super Tuesday (February 7, 2012 and every other first Tuesday in February from then on) and is a nicely-sized state from a delegate standpoint. But Georgia is stuck behind the Californias and New Yorks of the world on that particular date. "Fine, the Democrats are allowing winner-take-all rules in some cases (the later states), says the Georgia Democratic Party (because that would be the decision of the state party and not the state legislature). "Why don't we adopt those rules and differentiate our state from the pack?"

Why, indeed? Georgia would certainly provide a much larger delegate cushion with a winner-take-all format than other delegate-rich states using a proportional method of allocation.

Of course, there are a couple of caveats here. First, this sort of delegate allocation difference between states has been the norm in the Republican nominations for quite a while and has gone on without incident. It is, after all, an intra-party issue (between the national and state parties). Theoretically then, the national party should hold some sway over the state party. Florida and Michigan, however, demonstrated that that is not necessarily the case on the Democratic side. And that's the difference. The enforcement mechanism is not as strong for the Democrats as it seemingly is for the Republicans.

Secondly, I find it somewhat hard to fathom a situation where a state (party) like Georgia would buck the national party on the newly changed delegate allocation rules and not go ahead and challenge the party on the scheduling issue as well. If you're going to break the rules, go ahead and break the rules. In other words, why not have a winner-take-all primary that challenges Iowa and New Hampshire on the calendar?

Again, the enforcement mechanism would have to be prohibitive on this point. The backtracking the Democratic Party did on the Florida/Michigan matter was not helpful to its cause (as a national party); both states ultimately got their delegates back. States, then, are certainly less likely to take the party's word on it in the future. [Why not move forward if the party's just going to give our delegates back?] However, the candidate sanctions the Democratic Party used in 2008 kept the candidates (or most of them) out of both states. Yet, the candidates are not operating in a vacuum and would potentially be less likely to follow those rules in 2012 or 2016. The underlying issue is the same for the candidates as it is for states: If we can get a competitive advantage by campaigning here/moving forward, then why not go for it?

And that is the real point. Sure, allowing for winner-take-all primaries may open the door to a new form of rules violation, but the conundrum for the Democratic Party is determining a way of keeping states and state parties in line. The Change Commission is about superdelegates and caucuses and the 2012 calendar, but what lies under the surface is the idea that the national party has to have everyone on board. Their recommendations may represent the new rules structure, but that has to trickle down and be implemented by the state parties. They are the entities charged with structuring and submitting delegate selection plans to the national party for approval. But all of this is an intra-party struggle unlike the court battles witnessed over similar issues between the parties and state governments. The party took precedent in that case, but in a state party versus national party debate, legal challenges are of a different breed.

This is the real issue to be looking at as the Democratic Change Commission continues its work.


Recent Posts:
Happy July 4th! No More 'Politics as Usual' Palin Edition

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Could Open Primaries Actually Help the GOP in 2012?

Happy July 4th! No More 'Politics as Usual' Palin Edition

First off, FHQ wants to wish everyone out there a Happy Independence Day.

Good, now that that's out of the way, we can get down to the real business of the holiday weekend: Sarah Palin's surprise (Is it still a surprise today? Yeah, I think it is.) announcement that she's not only not seeking re-election to her current position as Alaska governor, but that she will be resigning the post altogether toward the end of July. Half a day later, I'm still trying to make sense of the move. Of course, in retrospect, it may be futile to try and make sense of it.

Is she running for president?
Some think so.

Is she running for senate?
That idea has been thrown out there.

Is she done with politics for good?
That, too, is on the table. I couldn't say I'd blame her.

Could it be all three? Well, it couldn't be (not if she's done "for good"). But let's assume she's just taking a break* and that she and Lisa Murkowski have a "deal" to basically switch places. Palin runs for Senate and Murkowski comes home to run for governor in 2010. Is it far-fetched? Sure. Lt. Governor Sean Parnell will certainly have a claim to the governor's office at that point. However, Murkowski would start out with name recognition in the state; an understatement considering her father, Frank, served as the state's governor earlier this decade (not to mention a senator for two decades prior to that.).

Well, why would Palin quit her current job to do this? I'd argue that a backroom deal such as this proposed political switch is a direct challenge to the "politics as usual" she has been fighting against. Yes, it's still far-fetched, but I'm throwing the idea on to the table.

I'm on the road today (and was yesterday), so I'll be back later with more. In the meantime, consider this an open thread on the Palin issue. I'll move the comments already made (in the New Jersey post) over here later on.

Happy 4th everyone! (Oh, and thanks to Jack for the Mitchell and Cillizza links above.)

*I'll define break as building the organizational infrastructure necessary for a national run.


Recent Posts:
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Could Open Primaries Actually Help the GOP in 2012?

Did Democratic Superdelegates Write Their Own Epitaph?

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (7/1/09)

What is this? A presidential race? Another day brings another new poll in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. There's no real news here other than the fact that Chris Christie is below the 50% mark against Jon Corzine for the first time since his Republican primary victory on June 2. But I'm not reading too much into that. For one thing, Fairleigh Dickinson, if you look across the full list of polls conducted in this race since the first of the year, has been an outlier in terms of the number of undecideds that are revealed in each poll. There's no reason to doubt the FDU results, but it is clear that both Christie's numbers in this poll and the undecided proportion of the responses are different from what we've witnessed in the most recent polling of the race in the Garden state. Oddly enough, Corzine's numbers are fairly close to where they have been in other polls.

Does that mean Christie is being undervalued or that there is some evidence of the "Democrats and independents will come home to Corzine in November" hypothesis in this undecided figure? I'd have to say the former. FDU's final poll of the presidential race in New Jersey last year had Obama up 18 points with about a week to go (which wasn't too far off), but with 10% still undecided. That's a pretty substantial number of undecideds that late in any presidential race, much less 2008 (in a blue state). No other polling organization covering the New Jersey race (other than Strategic Vision) had anything approaching that high a number that late in the contest.

In other words, despite the low total in this most recent poll from Fairleigh Dickinson, Chris Christie is likely still at or above that magic 50% mark. And just for the sake of comparison, the Republican challenger's weighted average only dropped by two tenths of a point from yesterday's update.



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State of the Race: New Jersey (6/30/09)

Could Open Primaries Actually Help the GOP in 2012?

Conservative talk radio host, Hugh Hewitt, had RNC chair, Michael Steele, on his show yesterday and they got into a discussion about the 2012 primaries and the potential for idle Democrats to turn the tables and employ Operation Chaos in the Republican presidential nomination process. Hewitt sees this as a real problem for the GOP in 2012, but I'm not so sure. [In fact, I don't know that these complaints aren't a complete contradiction. But I'll get back to that in a moment.]

First of all, which states even have open primaries or caucuses? In 2008, there were 17 states with an open primary rule on the books and another six states that were semi-open (allowing only Republicans and independents to vote). In the latter category I'm including states like Ohio where the enforcement of the rules that call for voters to vote in the same party's primary as they voted last time are lax.

Well that's about half the country, right? Perhaps Hewitt has a point. Maybe, but we also have to consider when a primary or caucus is being held. Unless the GOP in 2012 is divided in a way similar to the way Democrats were in 2008 (and that's certainly possible), then Super Tuesday is likely to decide who the Republican presidential nominee will be. If, then, a state falls after that point, being opened or closed won't really matter. All that really does is remove Idaho's open primary and the semi-open primary in North Carolina from the equation. I could also strike off Mississippi, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont, but since the most likely outcome of the reform efforts underway in both parties (see posts related to the Democratic Change Commission and the Republican Temporary Delegate Selection Committee for more.) is that the February activity from 2008 gets moved to March in 2012, then those states will be part of a massive group of contests.

That said, what would Democrats need to know to be able to make some noise on the Republican side in 2012? If Democrats with nothing better to do, decided to cross-over and vote in open (or semi-open) primaries, the first bit of information they would need is the identity of the frontrunner. It would also be helpful if said frontrunner was also the Republican candidate seen as the best possible candidate to run against President Obama. Those are the conditions where Democrats-turned-Republican primary voters would have the maximum impact. In essence, they would know who to vote against; just as Republicans cross-overs had the choice of Clinton or Obama in 2008.

The more likely scenario is that there is a nominal frontrunner, making the strategic end of things more difficult for would-be cross-over "Republicans." In other words, the earlier in the process it is, the more likely it would be to have an uncertain outcome. Uncertain outcomes make strategic voting, especially en masse, that much more difficult. Faced with that situation Democrats would either vote for the worst possible candidate, but simultaneously run the risk of having no impact or vote for someone who had a chance of winning the primary contest in question but does the worst against Obama head-to-head.

In the case of the former, envision a scenario where Democrats were idle in 2008 and opted to vote for someone like Duncan Hunter in the New Hampshire primary. I can't see a situation where Democrats outnumbered Republicans in a cross-over vote. The best/worst case scenario (depending upon which side of the aisle you're on) would see Democrats make up approximately 20% of the primary electorate. [Too high? Too low? Sound off in the comments section.]. Even if all those Democrats voted for Hunter, that wouldn't really make much difference. If that figure is layered in with the 2008 New Hampshire primary results, Hunter would have placed third and had no impact. Democrats would have been better served staying home and voting in their own uncontested primary (uncontested in the sense that we are assuming Democrats are crossing over because their nomination battle is either decided or uncontested).*

The alternative would have that faction of Democrats choosing from among the possible winners of the Republican contest, and preferably one who would not do well against their nominee. Let's assume again that Obama was already the Democratic nominee by the time New Hampshire's primary rolled around and that a pick the worst candidate strategy had been eliminated as a possibility for Democrats crossing over. Who do the Democrats vote for? The odd men out among the list of viable candidates at that point were Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson. McCain, Romney and Giuliani could have attacked Obama from the middle better than either Thompson or Huckabee.**

If that's the case, though, wouldn't either of those two have been palatable to the Hewitt crowd; at least more so than, say, McCain? There appears to be a disconnect between choosing "one of our own" and choosing someone who is electable among this group of Republicans. It is an age-old question, but one that seems unanswered in this case. If the answer is, "we want one of our own" (a social conservative), then holding open primaries really doesn't seem to make that much difference. Democrats would actually help Republicans reach that goal; they'd be better off in the general election for their efforts. If hijacking of the nomination by Democrats is a real concern, then, it isn't because they'd select someone like McCain, but because they'd help select someone who social conservatives like, but couldn't get elected.

[Such a coalition isn't unheard of. African Americans and Republicans across the South have worked together on redistricting plans following the last couple of Censuses. The result was that African Americans got an increased number of majority-minority districts and Republicans got more districts of their own. In the process, Democrats lost representation in Congress which, on its face, was perhaps somewhat counter to the interests of the overwhelmingly Democratic African Americans.]

Just for an open discussion/thought experiment, let's discuss how the 2008 Republican nomination would have played out if Obama ran uncontested and Democratic primary voters behaved rationally, as described above: selecting someone who could win, yet fared the poorest against Obama. Here's the 2008 primary calendar and here are the actual results of the primaries to reference. The comments section awaits.

*For Democrats to vote in the New Hampshire primary, though, they have to register as Republicans ahead of time; not on election day. Plus, another factor here is that if the Democratic race was uncontested, all the independents would flock to the Republican contest. That would advantage McCain.
**The Real Clear Politics averages for all the candidates are only marginally different in hypothetical match-ups against Obama in 2008. Huckabee did worst, but essentially trailed by the same margin as both Giuliani and Romney. McCain did best and Thompson proved difficult to locate.


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Did Democratic Superdelegates Write Their Own Epitaph?

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Did Democratic Superdelegates Write Their Own Epitaph?

That's a question I tweeted over the weekend, but would like to explore a bit more. The question finds its root in some of the comments Elaine Kamarck made at this weekend's Democratic Change Commission meeting (from ABCNews):

Touching on what may prove to be one of the more contentious issues considered by the DNC, one presenter, Democratic Party activist and Harvard University lecturer and former superdelegate Elaine Kamarck, suggested that it may be time to completely eliminate superdelegates since most of those party leaders clearly determined their role in 2008 to be one of ratifying the decision made by voters in primaries and caucuses.

"We can probably let go of the superdelegates," said Kamarck.

"Their deliberative role," she added, "has in fact been supplanted by a very very public process."

I hadn't really given this much thought before, but by following the will of the people (voting the way their constituents did), most superdelegates actually undermined their original purpose. The reason superdelegates came into being in the interim period between the 1980 and 1984 elections was to allow the party establishment an increased voice in the nomination process (something they saw as having diminished in the post-McGovern-Fraser reform era). Make no mistake, that is code for giving the party the opportunity to put a check on the decision of the people's choice. And no, that's not necessarily a bad thing. For the Democratic Party that was a strategic decision based on the prevailing conventional wisdom* of the time that primary voters are typically more extreme (or at least further to the left or right) than general election voters. It was a basic electability argument.

Regardless, superdelegates have basically served to ratify the choice of primary voters since 1984. But they operated in the shadows -- in virtual anonymity -- not triggering any controversy until their role appeared consequential to the outcome of the 2008 Democratic nomination. Their role never changed, though -- not the intended role, at least. Technically, superdelegates are/were still unpledged delegates. However, by very visibly coming out in favor of the candidates their constituents voted for in the primaries and caucuses, they (or most of the superdelegates) completely undermined their initial purpose.

And this was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. There was no exit strategy where the superdelegate system was going to emerge unchanged. Either the superdelegates were going to vote with their constituency and risk countering their intended purpose or they were going to vote against their constituents and run the risk of ripping the party in two. [Yes, there are a series of gradations in between, but one of those narratives would have emerged as the dominant theme at some point.] Politically, they made the right move for many reasons. [Not dividing the party and their own re-election prospects would have damaged in the case of the office-holding superdelegates were chief among those reasons.] In the process, though, the role of the superdelegate has likely been rewritten.

The Hunt Commission initially called for superdelegates to comprise approximately 30% of total delegates, but that number was whittled down to 14% by the time the 1984 cycle rolled around. Ever since then, there has been what Democratic Change Commission member Suzi LeVine cleverly called a "superdelegate creep" with that percentage rising as time went on. By 2008 superdelegates made up about 20% of the total number of Democratic convention delegates.

Saying that superdelegates wrote their own epitaph with their actions in 2008 is probably a bit of an overstatement. Will they be eliminated? No, because the Democratic Change Commission membership is about one-third superdelegate and the group the DCC will make recommendations to -- the Rules and Bylaws Committee -- is made up of DNC members who were also superdelegates. They won't be eliminated, but their voice in the nomination process -- the voice of the party establishment superdelegates were created to protect -- will likely be significantly diminished for the 2012 cycle and beyond.

We'll find out a little bit more about how much when the Democratic Change Commission reconvenes in late August.

*This is still being debated in various ways within the political science discipline. Early books by Crotty and Jackson (Presidential Primaries and Nominations - 1985), Marshall (Presidential Primaries in a Reform Age - 1981), Lengle (Representation and Presidential Primaries: The Democratic Party in the Post-Reform Era - 1981), Polsby (Consequences of Party Reform - 1983) and more recent articles (highlighted by McCann 1995) all describe varying levels of differentiation between primary voters and (same party) general election voters while Norrander (1989) and Geer (1988), among others, offer evidence against the ideological extremism argument.


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey (6/30/09)

The Best Inside Account of the First Democratic Change Commission Meeting

Future Democratic Change Commission Meetings

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (6/30/09)

Status quo.

That's all you can really say. As June closes on the New Jersey race for governor, the best you can do to sum things up is to say that Chris Christie won the month. The Republican candidate for governor led in all four post-(June 3)primary polls and cleared the 50% barrier in each of them. If Christie maintains that level of support throughout the summer, it won't matter if Corzine gains the support of all the undecideds down, the incumbent governor will still come up short in his bid for re-election. Of course, there's a long way to go and the campaign has yet to heat up (as it will in the fall). And the Democratic National Committee has entered the fray by trying to repackage the "McCain has a short fuse" narrative for New Jersey voters with Christie as the principal. That's clever, sure, and it is certainly better coming from the DNC than from Corzine at this point, but countering the "Corzine's to blame for the state of things in New Jersey" will be a tough proposition.

Long story short, though, how does the new poll from Public Policy Polling (pdf) affect FHQ's graduated weighted average for the race? As was mentioned already, Christie is still hovering over the 50% barrier in polling, but lost in that is the fact that Corzine is at his highest level of support in any head-to-head poll (against Christie) for all of 2009. It is a high water mark for Corzine, but the governor continues to trail his challenger by about ten points. In other words, Corzine is rising (ever so slightly), but that gain is coming from undecideds and not at the expense of Christie. Again, that won't be a means to an end here. Corzine won't win this race if all he's doing is securing undecideds while taking nothing away from Christie. There is no evidence to suggest that Corzine is pulling in undecideds at any great clip -- it could just be statistical noise between polls at this point. If, though (and this is a big if), Corzine were able to make substantial gains among those undecideds (something that likely will not happen until the fall), then that closing polling margin may put pressure on the "weaker" Christie supporters (I'll define that as independents for the moment.) to rethink things.

That, as I said though, is a big if. Where things stand entering July is that Christie maintains a substantial lead in a potentially anti-incumbent race and that Corzine's chances may hinge on making the race about Christie and not himself. That's easier said than done, though.


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The Best Inside Account of the First Democratic Change Commission Meeting

Last night I linked to Democratic Change Commission member, Suzi LeVine's, blog. She updated her already detailed account of the events that transpired yesterday with insights into the discussions (and Q&A) around each of the presentations. This is THE site (so far) to track the DCC's progress from an inside perspective.

The presentations (and comments)...

• Overview of the Change Commissions Issues

• History of Modern Day Democratic Presidential Nominations

• Presentation on Caucus Systems

• Interests & Goals of the Party, Presidential Candidates & Voters

• Unpledged Delegates (superdelegates)

This is great stuff (...that I'm sure I'm bound to come back to later).


Recent Posts:
Future Democratic Change Commission Meetings

The 2012 Presidential Candidates on Twitter (June 2009)

Winner-Take-All Democratic Primaries?

Future Democratic Change Commission Meetings

Mark your calendars folks. Frank Leone, over at DemRulz, who was at yesterday's first Democratic Change Commission meeting, has the dates for remaining three meetings of the commission. Recall that the resolution that created the commission called for the group to make recommendations to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee by January 1, 2010. All of the following meetings are scheduled accordingly.

August 29 (meeting open to public comment)

October 24

December 5

The latter two are meetings to discuss and decide on proposals for recommendation.


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The 2012 Presidential Candidates on Twitter (June 2009)

Winner-Take-All Democratic Primaries?

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The 2012 Presidential Candidates on Twitter (June 2009)

Last month FHQ (or @FHQ*) joined the ranks of the Twitter nation in order to track not only how the prospective Republican presidential candidates use the service, but to gauge each person's follower level throughout the invisible primary period.

[Click to Enlarge]

The pattern in June looks pretty much as it did a month ago. To put it mildly, Newt Gingrich has either a tremendous head start or just a plain ol' lead over the other potential candidates. That advantage continues to dwarf the others to the point that the differences between them is hardly noticeable. [To add in the likely Democratic nominee, President Obama currently have more than 1.5 million followers.] Before I omit Gingrich in order to better examine the other candidates' followings, let me make a couple of caveats.

First, what you're seeing is a division in the data that isn't necessarily something that provides and apples to apples comparison. The blue portion of the bars is the follower level each candidate had from the creation of their Twitter account through the end of May (Well, May 27 to be exact.) while the red segment represents what the candidates gained since the original data was collected last month. No, that's not directly comparable, but as we continue to add in subsequent data in the months ahead, this start-up issue will lessen to some extent.

Secondly, what's to be done with John Ensign and Mark Sanford? I'm going to leave them both in for the time being despite the fact that their White House aspirations have been extinguished. However, if anything, it will be interesting to see how the two scandal-plagued pols, use Twitter in the continuing aftermath of their respective revelations. That's future omissions, but what about additions? I looked for a Mitch Daniels Twitter feed but the Indiana governor has yet to become a convert. Give it time, Hoosiers.

With that out of the way, let's look at the numbers for everyone but Gingrich, who added about 200,000 followers in June. The other three of the GOP "top four" -- Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin and Romney -- are ahead of the curve. [The top four are given that designation simply because they are the most mentioned candidates for 2012 in addition to being the ones consistently included in the admittedly scant polling on the 2012 race. The phenomenon seems to stretch to Twitter as well.] Though Romney lags behind (We'll get to why in a moment), Huckabee and Palin along with Bobby Jindal, there's still enough distance between the former Massachusetts governor and everyone else to include him in the group of candidates on the upper end of the Twitter follower distribution. Huckabee, Jindal and Romney had modest follower gains in June and Sarah Palin, like Newt Gingrich, had about a 60% increase in those following her in that same span.

[Click to Enlarge]

Of the remaining prospective candidates, no one, at this point, seems to be breaking from the pack to indicate any level of emergence. Ensign and Sanford may see increases, but it is a safe bet that those gains won't be related to folks searching them out because they're interested in the pair's White House chances.

Now, there's one factor that I alluded to last month but didn't delve into that deeply: the idea that a candidate's follower count is a function of how often the candidates are tweeting, not just interest in their presidential ambitions. Mitt Romney, for example, has an impressive list of followers for someone who is tweeting so infrequently. That may tell us something about people's interest in his potential candidacy in 2012. What about the others? Tim Pawlenty, like Romney, likely lags because the Minnesota governor isn't as frequent a tweeter as, say, Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. The latter two tweet a lot and have a significant number of followers to show for it; each averaging over five tweets per day since they opened their Twitter accounts.

[Click to Enlarge]

Mike Huckabee is another candidate that tweets with relative regularity, but the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate is hurt by the fact that he was an early adopter of Twitter (joining last summer). Of the rest, only Mark Sanford clears the one tweet/day barrier. But he's been pretty quiet since his "hike" last weekend.

One to watch? I'd keep an eye on John Thune. No, the support isn't there now, but with Ensign's resignation from the Republican Senate Policy Chair position and Thune's rise to that rank, the South Dakota senator has a higher profile now. Add to that Thune's new web site concerning the Sotomayor confirmation process (something FHQ tweeted), and you have an apparent increased web presence.

But I suppose we'll see in another month.

*And if you're not already following us, click here, sign up and follow. There are often items that are worth a read (and/or beyond the purview of this blog) that get a tweet.


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Winner-Take-All Democratic Primaries?

Wow!

Yes, this was an idea that made the rounds at the Democratic Change Commission meeting on Saturday. Commission member Suzi LeVine has an, and I can't stress this enough, awesome inside account of the events of the day. In terms of primary scheduling, she had this to say:

"From the sessions – one big point I took away was that having a single national primary day would not benefit our objectives – but that it’ll be very difficult without incentives to get the states to voluntarily change their dates, spread the map or move to a same day primary. Two ideas raised were: bonus delegates for later states and allow later states to do a winner take all strategy."

Bonus delegates obviously haven't worked. No state has moved back or stayed put as a means of gaining more delegates since Republicans started the practice in 2000. Those moves (or non-moves) have been a function of structural factors; most specifically whether a state traditionally holds its presidential primary concurrently with its primaries for state and local offices. That, very simply, has been a prohibitive factor.

But this winner-take-all idea is an interesting one. For the Democratic Party to even consider this is an acknowledgment of the sense of urgency behind reforming this process in some way, shape or form. The idea of allowing winner-take-all primaries is likely a hollow one though. The whole thing is predicated on there being a close contest coming down the stretch of a presidential nomination race. LeVine rightly points out that we don't know whether 2008 is the "new normal or a complete anomaly," but I strongly suspect it is the latter. And if that is the case and the nomination is wrapped up on Super Tuesday or soon thereafter, then what incentive is that to offer later states what they are going to get anyway: all their delegates going to the one remaining candidate? How is that an incentive?

"Here, move back and we'll make sure that your contest is winner-take-all. That way there will be some interest in your contest ... if there's still a race by that point. Otherwise, the few voters that show up to vote in your primary will vote for the one remaining viable candidate; our nominee."

That doesn't sound like much of an incentive. But let's assume that some nomination race down the road simulates 2008 all over again. In the event that there is another close nomination fight, though, a winner-take-all primary is an attractive incentive for states. That potentially makes a later state or group of later states into kingmakers.

Ah, but there's a catch: the states, in the case of primary states, have to change the primary dates in advance. And how do they know in advance which year's nomintation battle is going to be competitive, so they can begin the legislative process to change the date of the primary. One could argue that states acted in relative short order in 2007 to move their primaries in anticipation of 2008. They did, but that wasn't because the contest seemed like it was going to be close. Hillary Clinton had a sizable lead throughout 2007. States were motivated to move because they didn't want to get left behind in the way they were in 2004 after the Democrats opened their window (period of time in which all non-exempt contests can be held) to allow February contests. To go in March or later seemed like suicide at the time; something for divided state legislatures to quibble over.

So, as interesting as this idea is -- and it is something groundbreaking coming from Democrats -- it is another of those well-intentioned concepts riddled with unintended consequences.

Major hat tip to Matt at DemConWatch for tracking down LeVine's post on this matter.


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