The Dem Primaries have a built-in conservative bias.

[Beet]

This is the map of Super Tuesday 2020. Other than California, it's heavily weighted towards the South. Historically, once a candidate gets a delegate lead coming out of Super Tuesday, they never lose it, because another candidate would have to win landslides to make up the deficit delegate, and you the current delegate frontrunner rarely loses in landslides.

I have a hard time seeing any 'progressive' making it out of this map unless the establishment candidates have been essentially eliminated very early on. Just throwing this out there.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

Black woman are the most important voting bloc in these states, and they aren’t necessarily more conservative than the party as a whole. Biden and Warren are in the best spots to win them.

[Mr. Morden]

Historically, once a candidate gets a delegate lead coming out of Super Tuesday, they never lose it, because another candidate would have to win landslides to make up the deficit delegate, and you the current delegate frontrunner rarely loses in landslides.

In both the 2008 and 2016 Democratic primary contests, once you got past the first few states on the calendar (pre-Super Tuesday), there's little evidence that "momentum" in either direction was much of a factor.  Rather, demographics was for the most part destiny, and it was possible to predict the primaries based on the demographics of the Clinton '08 coalition / Obama '08 coalition and then 8 years later the Clinton '16 coalition / Sanders '16 coalition.  (Nate Silver of course became famous in '08 by using demographics to predict the '08 primaries.)

Conceivably, once you get past the pre-Super Tuesday states, the order that the remaining states vote in doesn't matter that much anymore.  And in fact, you could make a case that going later might be better, since you get delegate bonuses for going later.  (I'm not saying definitively that going better is later.  But I'd say it's a closer call than some imagine.)

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

Blame it on the states not having earlier primaries.

[Grassroots]

Who is the "conservative candidate", in the primary?

[John Dule]

I can see a progressive taking California, Minnesota, Utah, Oklahoma, Vermont, Massachusetts, and possibly Virginia, for what would be basically a draw.

[ElectionsGuy]

It is not a bias. These starts are proportioned for how Democratic they are in delegates. All it would take to rebound for moderate losses (say 60/40) in the entire south let's say would be a 55/45 win in the rest of the country. While it may seem unfair that these states go first, there's plenty of time and other states after them for a candidate trailing after Super Tuesday to catch up and take the lead. That just didn't happen with Bernie Sanders in 2016. The problem for less "conservative" candidates is that blacks have been more monolithic in their voting patterns even in Democratic primaries than other groups, leaving the south with usually lopsided victories for one candidate in recent years. Seeing as African Americans are such a large voting group in the Democratic primaries, a candidate cannot be getting wiped 80/20 with this group without large comeback with other demographic groups and regions of the country.

[SInNYC]

Democratic primaries have quite often been biased towards the south, and this was mostly by design since Ds attributed the Mondale/McGovern losses to being too far left. But Ds haven't always nominated a conservative since the southern candidate was sometimes just a terrible candidate. In 1988, Gore split the southern vote with Jesse Jackson, allowing Dukakis to keep pace.  2004 was one of the few times the calendar wasn't stacked towards the south.

Assuming Biden doesn't implode, I expect the main question this time will be whether somebody like Harris is still around by Super Tuesday to split the southern vote.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Given this includes Boston, Minneapolis, the Bay Area, NoVA, the Research Triangle, Austin, Vermont etc. I don't think it's that heavily weighted in favour of "conservatives" (and indeed because the Deep South states up have Democratic Parties that are now overwhelmingly African American in composition, it feels wrong to characterise them as such).

[walleye26]

Yes, you have a point, but even if you do well in VT, MA, MN, OK, and UT (all states that are very white, and their Democratic electorate is pretty liberal) then you can make up for losses in other Deep South states.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Given this includes Boston, Minneapolis, the Bay Area, NoVA, the Research Triangle, Austin, Vermont etc. I don't think it's that heavily weighted in favour of "conservatives" (and indeed because the Deep South states up have Democratic Parties that are now overwhelmingly African American in composition, it feels wrong to characterise them as such).

Agree with this. Also, inasmuch as you think states have ideological/coalitional homogenenous primary voters (they don't), California probably has more primary voters than half/a third of those states combined.

P.s. that map is missing Colorado which is definitely a more progressive state than average.

[Mr. Smith]

That was by design in the 80's. And the last candidate to pole vault from that...ended up running the worst campaign of them all, which is impressive considering McGovern's campaign.