The Democratic National Committee is shaking up its presidential nomination calendar, meaning Iowa could be booted from its position as the first-in-the-nation nominating contest for Democrats.
While it will be months before we know which, if any, substantive changes to the calendar actually take hold, this could overturn customs of how the primary system has worked for decades. And it could theoretically change what kinds of Democratic presidential candidates emerge as viable early on in their bid to win the party nomination.
Iowa seems to have tilted from a purple state to a red one, stripping the state of its value proposition as a solid testing ground for the general election.
As Politico reports, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted on Wednesday to open up the high-profile spots that lead off the primaries to a new application process. The committee said that as it looks over state applications, it’ll consider “factors like racial, ethnic and regional diversity, including a mix of urban and rural voters; access to the ballot, like using primaries — state-run processes with robust absentee and early voting built into the law in most states — instead of caucuses; and states’ general election competitiveness.”
Experts say that a lot of this is a reaction to what happened in Iowa in 2020. The botched vote-counting process during the 2020 Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses caused a major crisis, leaving it unclear for days whether former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg or Sen. Bernie Sanders had won the first and widely watched nominating contest in the race. That error not only confused analysts and voters across the nation as they tried to interpret the results, but also hurt trust in the nomination process as being fair and transparent.
That frustration also bled into a broader critique of the Iowa caucuses that had been brewing for years. The year 2020 saw a new surge in criticism from some Democrats that the racial demographics of Iowa — a state which is 85 percent non-Hispanic white — were not representative of the Democratic Party, and made the state ill-suited for kicking off the party's primaries. Additionally, the already-controversial caucus system came under great scrutiny. Caucuses entail meetings and discussions between voters that can take several hours, and typically require a much greater time commitments than voting in a primary. The issue, critics say, is that voters who don't have that kind of time to spare are excluded from the process. Finally, political scientists point out that Iowa seems to have tilted from a purple state to a red one, stripping the state of its value proposition as a solid testing ground for the general election.
The Iowa caucuses have held an iconic status in the primary season ever since Jimmy Carter successfully used a victory there as a launching pad for his longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. But as David Karol, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, points out, Iowa’s status is ultimately “a historical accident,” since the order of primaries was never deliberately designed or considered significant originally.
Nevada, which was the third state to vote in 2020, might be well-positioned to become number one, given its diversity and status as a battleground state.
Before the 1970s, voting in primaries played a much less significant role in determining the presidential nominee; instead presidential conventions, dominated by party elites, were where most of the real action took place in deciding who would represent the party in its bid for the White House. But rule changes that took place after 1968 to make the nomination process more democratic made the primaries matter far more in determining the nominee. And not too long after presidential candidates — especially outsiders — discovered that winning the early states could be a game-changer in creating momentum for their campaigns.
The early lineup can have huge consequences in shaping political possibility. Consider that Buttigieg won the most delegates in Iowa in 2020, which generated a ton of buzz and ultimately helped him secure a role in Biden’s Cabinet — as well as status as a potential 2024 hopeful. But it’s hard to imagine Buttigieg’s star rising in the same way if the first two states had been Nevada and South Carolina, or any other number of states where the Democratic electorate is far more diverse, given his trouble winning voters of color. A slightly different order, and maybe he’d be considered an overrated flop instead of a wunderkind.
In light of this reality, the early states should be chosen very carefully by the party. (In my opinion, they should all take place at once in a national vote instead of through a staggered schedule so that every voter gets equal say, but unfortunately that seems like a remote possibility for the time being.) In 2020, the first four early states were, in order, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Josh Putnam, an expert on the rules of presidential primaries who runs the political consulting firm FHQ Strategists, told me that Nevada might be well-positioned to become number one, given its diversity and status as a battleground state. He also predicted that Iowa’s ability to cling to its place among the pack of early states will depend in part on what kind of case it makes for itself to the party. (There are questions over whether it will pivot from caucus-style contests to primaries to be more inclusive.) Currently New Jersey, Michigan and Nebraska Democrats are pitching themselves to join the leading batch of states.
It’s unclear whether any state really is ideal for preparing the party for a general election. Primaries tend to be dominated by partisans, and don't necessarily provide insight who swing voters or less enthusiastic voters are going to make a bid for on Election Day. But I see no strong counterargument against rotating the early states and making sure that they represent the diversity of the party and the country. Change in this realm is likely to be a good thing.
