The Great Primary Calendar re-shuffle Megathread

[Mr. Morden]

The Idaho GOP will now be holding a caucus on March 6th (Super Tuesday):

link

I've added that to the calendar.  I've removed the Idaho primary from the calendar, because it'll now be utterly meaningless, with both parties allocating their delegates by caucus.  I'm only listing contests that actually allocate delegates.

[Mr. Morden]

What source do you have for the Washington GOP's caucus date? (I'm hoping it's okay I don't feel like reading 12 pages of this thread to find out!)

It's just a guess from the Green Papers:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/events.phtml?s=c

which I think is just based off of when they held it last time.

[Mr. Morden]

Oh, I see. Well, I believe they previously based it off of the primary, which the state canceled. So I was curious if the state GOP could schedule it at a different date.

The WA GOP can schedule it for whenever they like.  They haven't really scheduled it for real yet.  I think they'll do so in August or something.  I suppose I could move it to "TBD" on the calendar.  When I started the calendar, everything was assigned a date except IA, NH, and SC.

[Mr. Morden]

Move it! Move it! Move it NJ! Let me vote in my primary!

They already moved it back to June. 

Not official yet, as Christie hasn't signed the bill.

[Mr. Morden]

The Arizona primary is scheduled for Feb. 28, but state law allows Gov. Jan Brewer to unilaterally set it earlier than that if she wants, and she's allowed to go as early as she likes, as long as she announces the date at least 150 days in advance.  Well, we now have this:

http://www.ahwatukee.com/news/valley_and_state/article_306e0c1b-229e-5d92-b81f-1e14c78c2c82.html

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If she moves it to Jan. 31, then my guess is that Florida moves to Jan. 24, and you get a domino effect, where the calendar starts out like this:

Jan. 5 IA
Jan. 10 NH
Jan. 21 NV, SC
Jan. 24 FL
Jan. 31 AZ

Or something like that.  Georgia and Michigan might go for late January as well.  Or maybe if enough of the remaining February states move later, they'll figure that there's a void in February that they can fill, and just hold their primaries in Feb.

Because Brewer has to announce this 150 days in advance, if she wants to go for Jan. 31, she'll have to announce it by early September.   Most of the potential early primary states seem headed for some kind of decision time in August or September, so we may actually have a good idea of what the primary calendar looks like on October 1.

[Mr. Morden]

The West Virginia GOP has decided to ditch the 2-step process they did last time, where half the delegates are allocated in a convention, and half in a primary.  Instead, they'll allocate all their delegates in the May primary:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/07/may-8-primary-opposition-emerges.html

So I've taken the convention date off of the calendar in the OP.

[Mr. Morden]

Story in the NYT about the primary calendar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/politics/26primary.html

And here's a useful rundown of the state of play in the remaining January/February states:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/07/primer-on-when-remaining-states-might.html

My main conclusions at the moment are:

-Virtually every state will likely have finalized their primary date by October 1.  We may well know the entire calendar by mid-October.

-Many of the remaining February states will move later, but there will probably be about 5-10 (maybe closer to 5 than 10) states that defy the national parties' wishes, and go earlier than March 6.  (This is not counting IA/NH/NV/SC, who are already allowed to do so.)

-The most likely states to do that are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Minnesota.  (No surprise, if you've been following this thread.)

-The "prime movers" are probably Arizona and Michigan.  They will probably both show their hand by early September, and there's a wide range of dates they might pick.  What they decide to do will influence Florida, and in turn every other early state.

-The Iowa caucuses (and thus the beginning of primary season) will probably be held some time between January 5 and January 16, depending on what happens with the other states.  At least, that's my guess for the most likely range of dates at the moment.

[Mr. Morden]

California has officially moved to June 5:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/07/california-presidential-primary-to-june.html

and I've updated the calendar in the OP.  June 5 will now be the date with the second most delegates at stake, after Super Tuesday (March 6).

[Mr. Morden]

Idk if this was posted before, but Governor Brewer is looking towards moving Arizona's primary up to the last Tuesday in January (the 31st).  She has to make the decision at least 150 days before the new date, so she could potentially delay until early September.  If she wants to move the date back, which according to the article is possible, she can stall a little longer.

http://www.rightspeak.net/2011/07/arizona-gov-jan-brewer-likely-to-move.html

Yes, I posted on this last week:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128721.msg2964713#msg2964713

[Mr. Morden]

Of the remaining February primary/caucus states....

The state legislatures in DE and NJ have already passed bills to move the primary later, and they'll become official once the states' respective governors sign them (which they presumably will).

MO and WI are more likely than not to move to a later date in the end.

My guess is that the majority of the caucus states will end up going later as well.

FHQ says that there is a rumor that rather than move up to Jan. 31, Brewer might move Arizona to Feb. 14, which would be the state's centennial.

Here is my latest very hypothetical guess as to what the early part of the calendar might end up looking like in the end, assuming that many of those states are cooperative and move later.  I'm supposing that many of the early states specifically grab dates for themselves that they won't have to to share with other states:

Mon, Jan. 16: IA caucus
Tue, Jan. 24: NH primary
Tue, Jan. 31: SC primary
Sat, Feb. 4: NV caucus
Tue, Feb. 7: FL primary, MN caucus, ND caucus
Tue, Feb. 14: AZ primary
Tue, Feb. 21: GA primary
Tue, Feb. 28: MI primary
Tue, March 6: Super Tuesday

[Mr. Morden]

I will be shocked if the SC GOP primary is not held on a Saturday, no matter when it is held.  That is the traditional day of the week to hold the Republican Presidential Primary.

You're probably right.  I was just thinking that perhaps if SC was only three days before FL, the SC GOP would be afraid that a few candidates would put less emphasis on SC, figuring that FL would be a few days later anyway, and that might be a bigger deal.  Whereas if it's separated from FL by a full week, that wouldn't be an issue.  So maybe they'll go a full 10 days before FL like last time, though of course that bumps IA and NH up another week.

[Mr. Morden]

A note on the delegate allocation:

As previously mentioned, states that vote in March or earlier have to award their delegates according to some version of PR (though there are loopholes, allowing them to use a hybrid of statewide PR and CD-wide WTA if they wish).  States that vote in April or later are free to allocate their delegates however they like.

While the April-June states can allocate by statewide WTA if they want to, it looks like very few of them intend to do so.  It looks like the only states left that will use statewide WTA will be New Jersey (assuming Christie signs the bill that moves the primary to June), Connecticut, Montana, Utah, and DC.

However, many states (including the biggest delegate prize of all, California) will use WTA by congressional district.  WTA by CD means that the statewide winner can often win the lion's share of the delegates anyway, because if you're winning the state by like 10 points, then you're going to win the bulk of the congressional districts.  In 2008, for example, McCain beat Romney in California by 42.2%-34.6%, and ended up winning about 90% of the state's delegates, because he won nearly every CD.  So for many of the primaries next year, there's going to be an enormous difference between winning a state by 1% and winning by ~8% or more.

[Mr. Morden]

Delaware officially moves to April 24:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/08/delaware-governor-quietly-signs.html

Calendar in the OP has been updated.

[Mr. Morden]

The RNC has decided to defer on the question of whether to impose further punishment on "rogue states" like Arizona and Florida for scheduling their primaries earlier than March 6th:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60682.html#ixzz1U6XvlJhV

The current punishment is that the states lose 50% of their delegates.  However, the RNC can impose further punishment by giving the remaining delegates bad hotels and inferior seating in the convention hall.  But they're not going to make a decision on any further punishments until January, by which time the calendar will be set anyway.

The RNC has basically resigned itself to the fact that some states are going to defy the calendar rules and go early.  At this point, they're probably going to work behind the scenes to simply contain the damage, and least keep states like AZ, FL, and MI in February, so that IA, NH, NV, and SC can vote in January, rather than spill over into Christmas.

[Mr. Morden]

"The Death of Super Tuesday":

http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romney-sarah-palin-012-presidential-race-death-024013923.html

[Mr. Morden]

Here's my question to the RNC: Why can't Florida be the first primary in the country?  First, it is an important swing state, being the biggest one out there.  Second, it has a large Hispanic population, which is important because whoever the nominee is will need to have more of their support than McCain did in 2008.  Third, it is a big state, so it will test who has better fundraising power, an important trait for the general election.  And fourth, Iowa and New Hampshire have dominated the process for so long that their voters almost feel entitled.  Let's shake it up a bit.

Welcome to the forum.

I won't give a full answer to your question here, but I would just point out that, as we're seeing yet again this time around, the RNC's current penalties are in no way sufficient to prevent states from going earlier if they want to.  So, for example, even if Florida went as early as possible under state law (which I believe would be the first Tuesday of January), then Iowa and NH would simply move up to December, because they're determined to go first.  It wouldn't matter if the RNC then imposed a 50% delegate penalty on IA and NH, because they don't care about delegate penalties.

The only way to stop IA and NH from going first is to either: 1) Force them to move later via federal legislation, 2) Have some other state change their laws or party rules, to allow them to go arbitrarily early, and then have that state match IA and NH in brinkmanship, or 3) Convince the candidates to ignore IA and NH (which might be doable with a 100% delegate penalty.....but possibly not even then).

Of course, the above is probably all moot, since neither of the two national parties seem that interested in removing IA and NH from the front of the line, and very few other states seem that interested in usurping them.

[Mr. Morden]

There'd been some talk for a while about the Michigan GOP abandoning the primary in favor of a caucus.  Well, that talk is no more, as the state party voted decisively in favor of sticking with the primary:

http://detnews.com/article/20110813/POLITICS02/108130391/Michigan-GOP-to-hold-primary-for-delegates-in-presidential-nominee-vote

Under current state law, the primary is scheduled for Feb. 28, which puts it one week before Super Tuesday, but not as early as last time.  The state legislature still might change the date, but the most likely scenario is that they simply stick with Feb. 28.  If Michigan sticks with Feb. 28, then they'll be going before Super Tuesday, but after early states like IA, NH, NV, SC, and probably FL, AZ, MN, and a couple of others as well.

[Mr. Morden]

Kansas caucus to March 10th:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/08/kansas-gop-chooses-march-10-for.html

The calendar in the OP has been updated.

[Mr. Morden]

In Michigan, a bill has been introduced in the state senate that would set up a panel to determine the state's primary date, though the panel would only be allowed to choose dates between Feb. 28 and March 6:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/08/legislation-to-create-presidential.html

The panel would have to decide by Oct. 1, which isn't that far away, given that this legislation hasn't even been voted on yet.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks down towards Sept. 2nd.  If Jan Brewer wants to move Arizona's primary date to Jan. 31 as her spokesman suggested she might, she will have to announce it by next week Friday (Sept. 2).  If she does move it to Jan. 31, then it could easily lead to a domino effect that has Iowa voting in the first week of January.  The fate of the 2012 primary calendar rests in this woman's hands:

[Mr. Morden]

It's been almost long enough that all that is needed is for the lower house to meet for the NJ bill to become law without Christie's signature.  (when they first meet on or after August 13)

It's the lower house that has to meet for it to become law without his signature?  Because I believe the state senate met for one day last week, but I don't think the assembly has met recently.

Anyway, here is a mini-update on the confirmed or potential pre-Super Tuesday states:

Arizona

Primary is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 28, but Gov. Brewer can unilaterally move it to an earlier date, as long as she gives at least 150 days notice.  Her spokesman said that she's leaning towards moving it up to Jan. 31.  But she would have to announce that by Sept. 2 (this coming Friday).  If she doesn't announce anything this week, then the rumor is that she would instead move it up to Feb. 14 (the 100th anniversary of Arizona statehood).

Colorado

Caucus is scheduled for March 6, but the CO GOP has said that they might move it up to Feb. 7.  But chances are better than 50/50 that they'll just stick with March 6 (Super Tuesday).

Florida

10 person committee to set the primary date still hasn't been named.  They will have to decide on a date by Oct. 1.  Florida officials have said in the past that they want to go fifth (before every other state except IA/NH/NV/SC), but they may or may not stick to that.  If Arizona goes all the way up to Jan. 31, then I don't think it's a certainty that Florida will go earlier.

Georgia

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State can set the date himself, and every indication is that he wants to go before Super Tuesday.  How much earlier than Super Tuesday is uncertain.  But he probably won't push things any earlier than Arizona and Florida.

Michigan

Currently schedule for Feb. 28.  Legislature will consider legislation to set up a committee that can set the date between Feb. 28 and March 6.  They will have to act fast to get this passed though.

Minnesota

Caucus is scheduled for Feb. 7.  Though my guess is that the candidates will largely ignore it, as there's a favorite daughter candidate (Bachmann), and the caucus results are technically non-binding on delegates.  I doubt that NV, SC, or FL would care if Minnesota goes before them, under such circumstances.

Missouri

Legislature passed a bill to move the primary to March 6, but Nixon vetoed it because of unrelated provisions that he objected to.  The legislature will, some time in the September special session, probably either override his veto or pass a clean bill.  So Missouri will probably move to March 6, but it's not guaranteed.

New Jersey

The legislature has passed a bill to move the primary to June, but Christie has neither signed it nor vetoed it yet.  Once the state assembly meets, it'll become law anyway, unless Christie vetoes it first.

Wisconsin

Bill to move the primary to April has passed one house of the legislature, and will probably pass the other house and be signed by Walker in September.  Not a sure thing though.

Wyoming

The Wyoming GOP met earlier today, and the date of the county conventions was on the agenda.  It was tentatively on the calendar for Jan. 7, but would probably be moved later.  Haven't heard anything about what was decided.

Alaska, Maine, North Dakota, and Washington

Will probably all announce new caucus / convention dates before Oct. 1.  Alaska and Washington are likely to move to March or later.  Maine and North Dakota could go either way.

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina

Nevada already announced Feb. 18 for their caucus date, but will probably end up moving earlier, to get in front of other states.  IA, NH, and SC will wait until every other state announces, and then set their own dates, to make sure they can go first.

[Mr. Morden]

Wyoming county conventions move to March 6-10:

http://trib.com/news/opinion/blogs/capitol/article_9729132e-d28f-11e0-b7b9-001cc4c002e0.html

Calendar in the OP has been updated.

[Mr. Morden]

I think I previously stated that Jan Brewer has until Friday to announce whether she wants to move the primary to as early as Jan. 31.  It's actually Saturday.  Still, she'll probably say something about it on Friday.  Here's her Twitter feed if you must know:

https://twitter.com/#!/GovBrewer

[Mr. Morden]

Brewer speaks: Arizona primary will *not* be held on Jan. 31:

link

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So, to clarify, the primary is still tentatively scheduled for Feb. 28, and Brewer can still move the primary to earlier in February.  But she says she's not moving it into January (and this weekend would have been her last chance to do so).

So, the waiting game continues.  If she wants to keep the primary on a Tuesday, then she has until *next* week Saturday to decide whether she wants to move the primary to Feb. 7, and the Saturday after that to decide if it'll be Feb. 14, etc.  Because whatever the primary date is, she has to announce it at least 150 days in advance.

[Mr. Morden]

The South Carolina GOP chairman says he's been talking to the Florida GOP, and they both intend to hold their primaries earlier than Arizona, no matter what:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/in-2012-the-calendar-is-king-the-note-2/

[Mr. Morden]

At least the prospect of everyone celebrating Christmas at Iowa is now extremely remote.

Dang! I was hoping for an early January caucus!! I knew it wasn't going to happen.  I love the primary season and want to have the ENTIRE year full of elections!!!

It's still absolutely possible.  If Arizona moves to Feb. 7th, or if Missouri sticks with Feb. 7th because they can't get the new primary bill through the legislature or something, then you could have:

Jan. 5 IA
Jan. 10 NH
Jan. 21 NV, SC
Jan. 31 FL
Feb. other states, like AZ, GA, MI, MN, etc.
Mar. 6 Super Tuesday

Depends on any number of things, like how much space SC thinks it needs before Florida, whether Georgia tries to go really early or not, etc.

What I think is off the table though is Iowa voting in December.  Hard to see how that's going to happen now.