amended early March primary bill advances in California legislature

[Mr. Morden]

Looks like the state Assembly and Senate in California have settled on a bill to put forth (not actually voted on yet) that would move California's primary date to the first Tuesday in March, which is March 3rd in 2020, or "Super Tuesday".  This would put it on the same date as a slew of other (mostly Southern) states, like Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee.

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2017/09/bells-and-whistles-removed-amended.html

[Mr. Morden]

I do wonder if the Dems are inadvertently setting themselves up for a possible contested convention.  It's not super likely, but it's not impossible with the Democratic delegate rules.  I mean, if the 2016 Republican primaries had been run with the Democratic delegate allocation rules, then a contested convention would have been an inevitability.

What you need for a contested convention is:

1) More than two candidates win a non-negligible %age of the vote fairly deep into the primary season.

2) The delegate allocation is proportional, or close enough to proportional that the leading candidate struggles to get a majority of the delegates.

3) The second and third and/or fourth place candidates refuse to formally drop out of the race and release their delegates.

The Dems have much more proportional delegate allocation rules than the GOP does, and that doesn't look like it's going to change.  They've recently had primary contests that quickly coalesce into a 2-person race early on, but that's not guaranteed to happen again next time.  And if California is going to move to March 3rd, which will be only about a month after Iowa, then I can see 3rd and 4th place candidates talking themselves into staying in the race through Super Tuesday, just in case something happens.  You can talk yourself into waging a zombie campaign where you already know you're dead if it's only for a couple of weeks.  A bit harder to do that for months and months.

The Dem. rules do offer the possibility that the superdelegates will unite behind the pledged delegate leader, in order to prevent a contested convention, but it looks like the number of superdelegates will be reduced in 2020 (or rather, some of them will be pledged on the basis of the primary result in their state, which means that they won't really be superdelegates anymore), so it might not be enough.  I don't know the exact math, but if the leading candidate only has 43 or 44% of the pledged delegates, there might not be enough superdelegates to give that candidate a majority.

So the final escape clause is if the trailing candidates gracefully bow out and release their delegates, which would then allow the leading candidate to pick off enough of them to win a majority.  This works as long as the 2nd and 3rd place candidates find the 1st place candidate an acceptable nominee.  But is this a given, considering the splits within the party, which may be exacerbated if there's another contentious primary contest in 2020?  And even if the candidates themselves concede defeat, do the divisions in the party make it less likely that their delegates will be willing to vote for another candidate than would have been the case in primary campaigns past?

[Mr. Morden]

Cali and Texas on the same day might suck the oxygen out of the other states... not sure what to think of this.

That CaliFORNIA and TX are finally getting what they deserve.

There's not going to be a real contest in California if it's just going to be in the bag for one candidate from the start.

We can't prove Harris is running yet, Newsom/Chiang won't run due to being Governor for just two years, and Garcetti can't carry the whole state.

Besides, the Dem. delegate allocation is proportional, so even if there's a favorite son or daughter candidate running and they're heavily favored, the margin by which they win is important.

[Mr. Morden]

The other wrinkle here is that California actually loses delegates by moving earlier.  As described here:

https://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/D-Alloc.phtml

going late in the process in 2016 actually gave California a 20% boost in its delegate allocation, because there are bonuses for going later, and those would now be lost.  So the move earlier is premised on momentum being important (that is, on earlier wins being more decisive).  If momentum doesn't matter, and each voter acts independently of the results of previous primaries, then California would be giving up power in doing this.

[Mr. Morden]

are there any other date switch bills in any other states, or just this one?

At least as of a few months ago, North Carolina was considering a bill to move their primary up to Super Tuesday as well:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2017/06/north-carolina-inches-toward-joining.html

But I'm not sure where that stands.  Also, Arkansas's Super Tuesday primary date has expired, so as current law stands, their 2020 primary would revert back to May.  But there's still plenty of time for them to change it back, if they wish.

[Mr. Morden]

As stated in the article Cali is not a good retail state at all it is so big and expensive will be really difficult for someone with lower name ID like Bullock to break thru.

I actually don't agree.  I mean, I agree that it's tough for someone with low name ID to do well on Super Tuesday, but there remains a straightforward way to boost name ID: Win one of the first four early states.  Or heck, even just start polling well in one of them, and you start getting a bunch of national media attention.

Consider, for example, Mike Huckabee 2008.  No one knew who he was in 2005 and 2006, and once he launched his presidential campaign, he couldn't raise any money.  But he campaigned in Iowa and slowly boosted his poll #s there, to the point where he gained a huge amount of national media attention, and used that to actually become competitive in national polls (ultimately winning Iowa and a bunch of Super Tuesday states, despite still having virtually no money).  Sure, he didn't actually win the nomination, but that was because he was always limited in his appeal.  He was the Evangelical identity politics candidate.  There's no reason why some currently little known candidate with broader appeal couldn't use an Iowa win to slingshot them to the nomination.

I actually think stacking up such a huge portion of the primary contests into the first week of March likely makes the first four states even more important.  It means that any bounce a candidate gets out of winning those contests might not have faded yet by the time all those Super Tuesday states are voting.  If you delayed those contests until several months after IA/NH/NV/SC, then those early wins would have had time to fade from people's memories.

[Mr. Morden]

It forces all the other candidates into a catch-22 where if they campaign hard in California and lose, they only make the loss look more significant, whereas if they don't, they lose massive delegates. Either way they're at an unfair disadvantage.

Well OK, I agree that an early California primary is an advantage for Harris (or, less likely, some other California candidate).  And yes, obviously winning California offers a big advantage for winning the nomination.  But winning the state doesn't guarantee that you'll win the nomination, as we saw in 2008.  And so my point was simply that the margin there could be important, even if there's a favorite son or daughter running.

This is especially possible if there's still a large field of candidates in the race, and Harris wins California, but with less than 50% of the vote.  Potentially, that could even lead to a contested convention (not likely, but not out of the question).

As for the catch-22 you talk about with regard to how hard do the candidates campaign in California....I'm assuming that none of them will have time to campaign that hard there at all.  If they only have a week or less after Nevada or South Carolina to campaign in 10+ different states, including California and Texas, then there isn't much time to do anything.  They would only be able to coast off of free media at that point.  Even the candidates with money would struggle to be able to put enough ads on the air to make an impact.

[Mr. Morden]

It forces all the other candidates into a catch-22 where if they campaign hard in California and lose, they only make the loss look more significant, whereas if they don't, they lose massive delegates. Either way they're at an unfair disadvantage.

Well OK, I agree that an early California primary is an advantage for Harris (or, less likely, some other California candidate).  And yes, obviously winning California offers a big advantage for winning the nomination.  But winning the state doesn't guarantee that you'll win the nomination, as we saw in 2008.  And so my point was simply that the margin there could be important, even if there's a favorite son or daughter running.

This is especially possible if there's still a large field of candidates in the race, and Harris wins California, but with less than 50% of the vote.  Potentially, that could even lead to a contested convention (not likely, but not out of the question).

As for the catch-22 you talk about with regard to how hard do the candidates campaign in California....I'm assuming that none of them will have time to campaign that hard there at all.  If they only have a week or less after Nevada or South Carolina to campaign in 10+ different states, including California and Texas, then there isn't much time to do anything.  They would only be able to coast off of free media at that point.  Even the candidates with money would struggle to be able to put enough ads on the air to make an impact.

The difference is that in 2008, there was no favored daughter California candidate. So candidates only win California by small margins (~10 points), as opposed to say a massive 20-30 point margin local candidate often get. In 2008, they really had a super tuesday with New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, etc. etc. a ton of states all going on the same day. Unless New York and Illinois moves up to the same day California will dominate the day.

I don't know that Harris will win the California primary by as much as 20 points.  There are plenty of examples of candidates not winning their home states in presidential primaries by margins that big.  The prototypical case where a favorite son wins his home state primary by an overwhelming margin is where the candidate in question has been entrenched in the state for a long time, and it's a small state whose primary electorate isn't splintered into many factions.  E.g., Mike Huckabee in Arkansas in 2008.  Or heck, Howard Dean winning Vermont in 2004 even after he'd dropped out of the race.  California's big, and Harris has only held statewide office since 2010 (as attorney general and then junior senator, not positions that allow you to dominate the state's politics as a governor would), so I don't know that a blowout victory is a given.

And even if it is, having California as a home state is an advantage that exists for her even if the primary is held later.  How advantageous it is for her if it's held early is something that we don't know yet, because it depends on how big a factor momentum will be.  2004, for example, was a primary contest where early momentum played a big factor, but then you've got cases like 2008, where, after the first few contests, you could predict how most of the rest of the primaries would go just on the basis of demographics.  By moving to an earlier primary, California sacrifices the delegate bonuses that it would get for going later, on the bet that determining early momentum will be more important than having some extra delegates.  But I'm not yet sure to what extent that bet will pay off.

[Mr. Morden]

But who knows? What if Harris places >3rd place in IA, NH, SC and NV? A win in CA wouldn't save her.

If Harris won a massive victory in California (expected) It could make up for her losses in the previous states and could jolt her into Super Tuesday.

California would be on Super Tuesday if this bill passes, not before it.  It would go:

Iowa
New Hampshire
Nevada and South Carolina in an order yet to be determined
Super Tuesday (including California, Texas, and several other states all on the same day)

She can't be jolted into Super Tuesday by event that's happening on Super Tuesday itself.

EDIT: Of course if Harris manages to consolidate the black vote and wins South Carolina, then she probably does pretty well in other Super Tuesday states as well, since so many of them will be in the South, and have large black populations.

[Mr. Morden]

I would actually be rather curious to see a 2020 presidential primary poll of California conducted right now.  Not that it's going to be terribly predictive of anything, but I am curious to know just how many are already on the Harris train.

[Mr. Morden]

It forces all the other candidates into a catch-22 where if they campaign hard in California and lose, they only make the loss look more significant, whereas if they don't, they lose massive delegates. Either way they're at an unfair disadvantage.

Well OK, I agree that an early California primary is an advantage for Harris (or, less likely, some other California candidate).  And yes, obviously winning California offers a big advantage for winning the nomination.  But winning the state doesn't guarantee that you'll win the nomination, as we saw in 2008.  And so my point was simply that the margin there could be important, even if there's a favorite son or daughter running.

This is especially possible if there's still a large field of candidates in the race, and Harris wins California, but with less than 50% of the vote.  Potentially, that could even lead to a contested convention (not likely, but not out of the question).

As for the catch-22 you talk about with regard to how hard do the candidates campaign in California....I'm assuming that none of them will have time to campaign that hard there at all.  If they only have a week or less after Nevada or South Carolina to campaign in 10+ different states, including California and Texas, then there isn't much time to do anything.  They would only be able to coast off of free media at that point.  Even the candidates with money would struggle to be able to put enough ads on the air to make an impact.

It could be a substantial advantage & the early states will become somewhat meaningless if you can do well in California.

You sound like Rudy Giuliani. 

He thought he could rely on the larger states voting later, like Florida and his home state of New York, but he ended up sinking in both the early states and nationally, and not only lost Florida, but was trailing in the polls in his home state of New York by the time he dropped out.  You usually have to win early somewhere if you want to do well later.

Like I said in my other post, frontloading all these states onto Super Tuesday could actually make the first four contests *more* important, because the winners of those early states would still have the early glow from being winners, and the momentum (to the extent momentum matters) wouldn't have subsided yet.

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There is no reason to assume that the winner of California is going get a 100-150 delegate lead out of it.  It's possible, but that's a huge victory margin, and it's hardly a given that Harris will manage it.  Clinton's biggest net delegate boost in 2016 was actually from Texas rather than California, because she won Texas by such an overwhelming margin.  Texas will also vote on Super Tuesday in 2020, so I don't think we can assume that the winner of California will automatically be leading the delegate count after that day.  It certainly might happen, but not a sure thing.

[Mr. Morden]

It forces all the other candidates into a catch-22 where if they campaign hard in California and lose, they only make the loss look more significant, whereas if they don't, they lose massive delegates. Either way they're at an unfair disadvantage.

Well OK, I agree that an early California primary is an advantage for Harris (or, less likely, some other California candidate).  And yes, obviously winning California offers a big advantage for winning the nomination.  But winning the state doesn't guarantee that you'll win the nomination, as we saw in 2008.  And so my point was simply that the margin there could be important, even if there's a favorite son or daughter running.

This is especially possible if there's still a large field of candidates in the race, and Harris wins California, but with less than 50% of the vote.  Potentially, that could even lead to a contested convention (not likely, but not out of the question).

As for the catch-22 you talk about with regard to how hard do the candidates campaign in California....I'm assuming that none of them will have time to campaign that hard there at all.  If they only have a week or less after Nevada or South Carolina to campaign in 10+ different states, including California and Texas, then there isn't much time to do anything.  They would only be able to coast off of free media at that point.  Even the candidates with money would struggle to be able to put enough ads on the air to make an impact.

It could be a substantial advantage & the early states will become somewhat meaningless if you can do well in California.

You sound like Rudy Giuliani. 

He thought he could rely on the larger states voting later, like Florida and his home state of New York, but he ended up sinking in both the early states and nationally, and not only lost Florida, but was trailing in the polls in his home state of New York by the time he dropped out.  You usually have to win early somewhere if you want to do well later.

Like I said in my other post, frontloading all these states onto Super Tuesday could actually make the first four contests *more* important, because the winners of those early states would still have the early glow from being winners, and the momentum (to the extent momentum matters) wouldn't have subsided yet.

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There is no reason to assume that the winner of California is going get a 100-150 delegate lead out of it.  It's possible, but that's a huge victory margin, and it's hardly a given that Harris will manage it.  Clinton's biggest net delegate boost in 2016 was actually from Texas rather than California, because she won Texas by such an overwhelming margin.  Texas will also vote on Super Tuesday in 2020, so I don't think we can assume that the winner of California will automatically be leading the delegate count after that day.  It certainly might happen, but not a sure thing.

That was Giuliani. But in a tight race of many decent candidates, a candidate having a gigantic sized home state early will have a natural advantage.

But why do you assume that Harris's lead in California would be so much safer than Giuliani's lead in New York?  Giuliani was the "national frontrunner", but his early state polling #s collapsed, then his national polling #s, then even his New York #s.  He was ahead in New York by over 30 points in early December 2007, and then six weeks later, he was losing in the polls there by double digits to John McCain, after Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan all voted and Giuliani failed to do well in any of them.

I'm not saying that Harris will follow the same trajectory.  I'm just saying that we don't know.  She might win big in California, or she might only win it by single digits.  (Plenty of candidates have only won their home state primaries by single digits, and it's possible that Harris will as well.)  Or she might see a Giuliani-like collapse, and fall behind in the polls even in her own home state.  It's just too early to know.

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How many delegates will California have?  About 500?  So getting a net advantage of 150 delegates out of California would require her to win the state by something like 30 points over her nearest competitor.  I guess that's possible, but I see no reason to assume it's inevitable.  And there will be a huge number of delegates up for grabs in other states on Super Tuesday, including Texas.  It's not like California is everything.

And like I also said, if you believe that Harris is really that strong in California, then it's an advantage for her that'll also exist even if the state votes later.  You can't have it both ways on momentum.  If momentum matters, then Harris has to make a decent showing in the early four states to stay alive, so her opponents still have the possibility of stopping her there, before we ever get to Super Tuesday.  But if momentum doesn't matter, and she has a big advantage in California, then it's a problem for the other candidates whether the state votes early or late.  Unless your argument is that momentum from early small states like IA and NH isn't important, but momentum from big states is.  But that flies in the face of past presidential primary experience.  What other primary contests worked like that?

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I actually don't think so.  We've had this scenario before, with Super Tuesday coming up right after Nevada and South Carolina, and for the most part it just means that people end up spending very little time in the Super Tuesday states.  They go on a big round the country tour for a week before Super Tuesday, but the battlefield is just too large for them to make a dent, even if they kept at it for weeks.  There will be some candidates who will opt out of one or more of the four early states, but it really doesn't end up making much difference, other than tamping down expectations in the states that they skipped.

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Yes, like I said above, not every candidate will go all in on all of the first four early states.  But even for those who skip one or two of them and spend more time on Super Tuesday states, there will be more than 10 states voting on ST.  You can't just rely on California or just on Texas.  There are too many places to compete, and even candidates with money will only be able to afford so many ads.  (I mean the # of TV markets in play on Super Tuesday alone has got to be bigger than what you get in a presidential general election, because those are focused on the GE battleground states, which aren't as big as CA and TX.)

So I really think that by Super Tuesday, the biggest factor is free media.  The candidates can coast on the glory of any wins they have from the first four states, and they can hope for positive coverage from debates and the like, but beyond that, they are limited.

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, the legislature hasn't passed this bill yet, and tomorrow is apparently the last day on the 2017 calendar that a new bill can be passed:

http://assembly.ca.gov/legislativedeadlines
https://twitter.com/FHQ/status/908403953846681606

If it's not voted on tomorrow, then it's not going to happen until 2018 or later.

[Mr. Morden]

Again, they will have to pass this today if it's going to pass in 2017.  Haven't heard where things stand with that, but on another note, it looks like Oregon and Washington are always weighing moving up their contests to March:

https://apnews.com/6a9e8cf3971849f8805d563b2e444720

[Mr. Morden]

The bill has passed the Assembly, and now heads back to the Senate for concurrence:

https://twitter.com/FHQ/status/908881922629218304

[Mr. Morden]

Are there any other primary date shifts in the cards?

Edit: Just saw the Oregon and Washington proposals, anything other than those?

A few months ago, the North Carolina legislature was considering a bill that would also move their primary up to Super Tuesday:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2017/06/north-carolina-inches-toward-joining.html

I'm not sure where that stands at the moment though.

But the much bigger potential shift is the talk coming from Georgia SoS Brian Kemp that California's move might prompt the Southern states to abandon March 3rd, and move their primaries en masse a week or more later:

http://politics.blog.myajc.com/2017/09/12/california-mounts-a-challenge-to-a-2020-sec-presidential-primary/

If all of the current southern Super Tuesday states abandoned March 3rd and moved their primaries a week later, then March 3rd would be left to California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota, and any other states that want to join them.  March 3rd would then no longer be "Super Tuesday" really, as March 10th would have more states voting and more delegates at stake.

I am really skeptical of that happening though, as it requires a lot of coordination among the Southern state legislatures, and a coordinated move *later,* as opposed to earlier, is a rather rare thing.

[Mr. Morden]

It's official, the CA primary will be March 3, 2020.

As of right now, I think the other states that are legally scheduled for the same date are AL, MA, OK, TN, TX, VT, and VA, though it's expected that CO, GA, and MN will join them, unless something unexpected happens.  North Carolina was also eyeing that date as well, but I don't know where that stands at the moment.

[Mr. Morden]

super tuesday is way too stacked now with texas and california. most of the big states should be near the end, except maybe with the exception of illinois. it's hard for a candidate with low name recognition to stake a campaign in such massive states without hella cash.

Well, I discussed this upthread: I agree that you're not going to get anywhere on Super Tuesday if you have low name recognition, but name recognition today, in September 2017, is very different from name recognition in March 2020.  A currently unknown candidate can become a household name by March 2020 if he or she wins one of the four early primary states, or even just starts polling well in them.  Hardly anyone who wasn't a political news junkie knew who Mike Huckabee was in September 2005 or even who Bernie Sanders was in September 2013.  But they caught fire campaigning in the early primary states, and scored early victories, and everyone knew who they were by Super Tuesday.

Like I said upthread, it's quite possible that frontloading the big states in the primary calendar actually makes the first four primaries *more* important, because the media glow from winning them will not yet have faded when the Super Tuesday states vote.  It's also unclear that money will become any more important with a frontloaded calendar.  Will even the richest campaigns be able to put up enough ads to make a dent in that many major media markets at once?  I think free national media will be much more important.  I think money actually matters more when the primary campaign is a long slog that's stretched out for months than when the race is decided early on.

[Mr. Morden]

This also moves the legislative primaries right up to March as well, right?

I think that's right.  IIRC, it means that the legislative primaries will be in March in presidential election years, but still in June in off years.

[Mr. Morden]

Hopefully the media doesn't play favorites, but for some reason I expect they will...

Well, they are largely ratings driven.  So I assume that, as with Trump in 2016, it'll be possible to attract media attention simply by saying outrageous things.  My hunch is that if the Dems do indeed have a very large field in 2020, there'll be one candidate who gets a decent amount of media attention, and a cult following, just for making controversial statements.  Maybe Tulsi Gabbard, though who knows, it could be someone like Alan Grayson.    I don't think they would win the nomination like Trump did, but gain a Ron Paul-esque cult following that commands more than just a couple of %age points of primary support?  That seems possible to me.

[Mr. Morden]

If we assume that North Carolina (currently unscheduled) joins Super Tuesday as well, as has been speculated, and that New York votes in April again like last time, then the 10 states with the largest base number of delegates (actual top ten may change slightly because of bonuses) will go like this:

March 3: CA, TX, NC
March 10: OH, MI
March 17: FL, IL

April 28: PA, NY (don’t know that NY will go on the 28th, it’s just a guess)

June 2: NJ

California and Texas are the two with the largest Hispanic population, and they’d both be going on Super Tuesday.  Does that make them more powerful in this race?  Maybe.  We don’t really know, because it depends on how important momentum will be.  If momentum is important, then you want to go early.  If it’s not important, then you want to go late, and get the delegate bonuses for having your primary held later.

[Mr. Morden]

The effect of moving CA much earlier in the calendar may be less about CA itself, but actually more about IA and NH (and SC and NV). These early states already had great importance because they often whittle down the field to just a few candidates, and now they'll have even greater importance because the leader at the end of the first four(ish) states will be in position to win the lion's share on Super Tuesday.

Yes, I agree.  This potentially makes IA/NH/NV/SC more important.

However, the other big thing this may do is make it more likely that we'll still have more than two candidates left in the race at the time that California votes, and so, with proportional representation, potentially scrambling the delegate math a bit in a way that would be less likely if California was at the very end.  Exactly who benefits from that is unclear.  Though as I said upthread, I guess it does at least marginally increase the odds of a contested convention.  Though a contested convention still seems like a longshot.

[Mr. Morden]

Thanks a lot, California. RIP any underdog candidate who doesn't have enough name recognition early on in the primaries.

Anyone who isn't nationally discussed by the day after New Hampshire is already screwed no matter what the calendar looks like.

Yeah, I agree.  No offense to anyone in this thread, but some of the hot takes on this (this changes everything!) are getting tedious.  This move might benefit California candidates like Harris (but even that's not totally clear, since the state is sacrificing delegates in order to move earlier), but it doesn't really transform the nomination process in a fundamental way, as some folks seem to be suggesting.  There will still be four small-ish states (IA/NH/NV/SC) voting first, so that provides an "on-ramp" for candidates without big bank accounts.  The fact that Super Tuesday then comes right after those four states isn't really new.  It's pretty much the same as what we've seen in recent primary campaigns.  California was in June last time, but it was in March in 1996, 2000, and 2004, and February in 2008, so that isn't new either.

If California were actually going to be scheduled *first*, before even Iowa and New Hampshire, *that* would change the nature of the race quite a bit.  But that isn't happening.  The national parties are continuing to use rules that set up smaller states as the first four contests, which means that there's going to be a lot of emphasis on retail politics, just like in other recent primary contests.  No, the candidates aren't going to abandon all of the early primary states in order to campaign in California and Texas now.  That's not how it works.  (Rudy Giuliani proved how dumb that is.  )  Were people paying any attention to how the primary campaigns worked in past years?  I've noticed that Josh Putnam has been spending all his time on Twitter these past few days debunking all these myths.... 

https://twitter.com/FHQ