Should Mississippi Go First on the Democratic Primary Schedule?

[pikachu]

Why not Alaska, by the way, since Native Americans are like 3000 times more ignored than African Americans?

Even though Alaska does have the highest percentage of Native Americans of any state, I feel New Mexico would be a more representative state to go first in the primary. Although it has a slightly smaller percentage of Native Americans than Alaska, it has more Native Americans overall along with a heavily Latino population that Alaska doesn't really have. But I'd be in favor of having New Mexico and Alaska go earlier than they do in the primaries to get more say to Native voters.

I agree. A really pumped up way to render the ideas we shared in this thread would be substituting all the first four primary states with:
Alaska (the most Native American state)
New Mexico (the most Hispanic state)
Hawaii (the most Asian state)
Mississippi (the Blackest state)

Alaska + Hawaii would be no-goes because of geography - one of the justifications for using a staggered primary system which starts with IA/NH/NV/SC is that they're cheap states which are easy to campaign in. The geographical isolation of HI/AK makes them more expensive, as does the sheer vastness of AK.

This holds true for any group, of course, but ranking states by most X doesn't work well because the heterogeneity within groups. We're all well-aware of the diversity within white voters, but there are noted differences between how Southern and Northern blacks vote, for example. With New Mexico and Hawaii in particular, you have Hispanic and Asian electorates which are very different from their counterparts in the rest of the country.

[pikachu]

Why not Alaska, by the way, since Native Americans are like 3000 times more ignored than African Americans?

Even though Alaska does have the highest percentage of Native Americans of any state, I feel New Mexico would be a more representative state to go first in the primary. Although it has a slightly smaller percentage of Native Americans than Alaska, it has more Native Americans overall along with a heavily Latino population that Alaska doesn't really have. But I'd be in favor of having New Mexico and Alaska go earlier than they do in the primaries to get more say to Native voters.

I agree. A really pumped up way to render the ideas we shared in this thread would be substituting all the first four primary states with:
Alaska (the most Native American state)
New Mexico (the most Hispanic state)
Hawaii (the most Asian state)
Mississippi (the Blackest state)

Alaska + Hawaii would be no-goes because of geography - one of the justifications for using a staggered primary system which starts with IA/NH/NV/SC is that they're cheap states which are easy to campaign in. The geographical isolation of HI/AK makes them more expensive, as does the sheer vastness of AK.

This holds true for any group, of course, but ranking states by most X doesn't work well because the heterogeneity within groups. We're all well-aware of the diversity within white voters, but there are noted differences between how Southern and Northern blacks vote, for example. With New Mexico and Hawaii in particular, you have Hispanic and Asian electorates which are very different from their counterparts in the rest of the country.

The fact that Alaska and Hawaii are remote is a setback but is really part of why I mentioned them. They need more attention. Maybe I am just a fool.

For the other part, I understand. In fact it seems to me that too little attention is given to the diversity inside Black voters (although maybe that's starting to change), the diversity inside Hispanic voters, et cetera. But really, my four states were a "pumped up" version of the original idea of this thread (Mississippi first) and you're not the first one to say that it would not actually be so representative. (To me, the case for Nevada first is much stronger)

Yeah, I’d agree that that Alaska and Hawaii don’t get much attention, though a large part of that is because of their remoteness. The cost to campaign there and for media travel is prohibitive, and the reward isn’t really there because of the small population. Your plan would at least change the latter, but it’d still be considerably more expensive for a candidate to campaign in Alaska and Hawaii than Iowa and New Hampshire – Alaska especially because of how large the state itself is. One of the supposed merits of the primary system is that it’s more accessible to lower-funded candidates because of how inexpensive the first four states are and using Alaska and Hawaii would prevent that. (I personally don’t care because I’d rather just move to a national primary, but that’s neither here nor there...)