The Great Primary Calendar re-shuffle Megathread

[Mr. Morden]

God help me, but I'm going to try to track all of the various state legislative and state party efforts to move primary dates, and the general evolution of the 2012 primary calendar.  I might give this up if it becomes too cumbersome.  There's going to be a lot of activity in state legislatures in the early months of 2011 on this.

Maybe we can keep all discussion of 2012 primary calendar changes in this thread?  There doesn't really need to be separate threads for "California moves its primary", "Georgia moves its primary", etc.  If so, mods, feel free to eventually sticky this thread if you like.  Not sure if it's necessary yet, as there isn't going to be much activity on this front until January.

To start with, I'll try to post what I understand the "current" calendar to be in the near future.  I'll get to that soon, and edit this post appropriately.  In the meantime, here are two versions of it:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2010/06/2012-presidential-primary-calendar.html
(that is a very useful blog on this topic btw)

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

I'll edit this post later with more detail.

OK, here's where things currently stand as I see it.  blue = primary, red = caucus, green = something that isn't really a primary or a caucus.

2012 GOP Presidential Primary Calendar (tentative)
March 2 UPDATE

Tue, Jan. 3: IA
Tue, Jan. 10: NH
Sat, Jan. 21: SC
Tue, Jan. 31: FL

Sat, Feb. 4: NV
Sat, Feb. 4 - Sat, Feb. 11: ME
Tue, Feb. 7: MO*, CO, MN
Tue, Feb. 28: AZ, MI

Sat, Mar. 3: WA
Tue, Mar. 6: GA, MA, OH, OK, TN, VT, VA, ID, ND, AK district conventions
Tue, Mar. 6 - Sat. Mar. 10: WY county conventions
Sat, Mar. 10: KS, Virgin Islands, Guam convention, Northern Marianas convention
Tue, Mar. 13: AL, MS, HI, American Samoa
Sat, Mar. 17: MO
Sun, Mar. 18: Puerto Rico
Tue, Mar. 20: IL
Sat, Mar. 24: LA

Tue, Apr. 3: DC, MD, WI
Tue, Apr. 24: CT, DE, NY, PA, RI

Tue, May 8: IN, NC, WV
Tue, May 15: NE, OR
Tue, May 22: AR, KY
Tue, May 29: TX

Tue, June 5: CA, MT, NJ, NM, SD
Tue, June 26: UT

* The Feb. 7 primary in Missouri awards no delegates on the Republican side.  The delegate allocation is based on the March 17 caucuses.

NOTES:

- These are only the dates for the GOP.  The Dem. calendar will be slightly different.  But I'm not going to bother tracking that, until such a time as Obama gets a serious primary challenger.

- I haven't bothered to add the dates for US territories yet.  Just the 50 states + DC.

[Mr. Morden]

Here is a thread discussing the new national party rules on primaries:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=116781.0

My summary of the revised RNC rules:

-If Iowa, NH, NV, or SC hold primaries/caucuses before Feb. 1, they lose half their delegates.
-If any other state holds primaries/caucuses before the first Tuesday of March, they lose half their delegates.
-Any state that holds primaries/caucuses before April 1 has to award their delegates on a proportional basis, not WTA statewide or WTA by district.  (Feb. 28 UPDATE: Actually, the proportionality rule allows states to use a hybrid of statewide PR and WTA by CD.  See here: http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-on-2012-republican-delegate.html  and here: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128721.msg2829427#msg2829427   )
-The RNC chairman will be able to grant waivers to states, to allow them to avoid the 50% delegate penalty if he wishes.  It looks like he'd be free to decide on the basis of any criteria he likes.

My summary of the revised DNC rules:

IA caucuses are to be held no earlier than Feb. 6th
NH primary to be held no earlier than Feb. 14th
NV caucuses to be held no earlier than Feb. 18th
SC primary to be held no earlier than Feb. 28th
Other primaries to be held no earlier than March 6th

States will be given bonus delegates for holding primaries in April or later.  They also get bonus delegates for "regional clustering" (holding primaries on the same dates as nearby states).  Bonuses can mean up to 35% increase in the number of delegates for the state.

If a state votes earlier than it's allowed, then it loses half its delegates, *and* any candidate who campaigns in that state before the primary is ineligible to get any delegates from the state.  However, if Democratic leaders in a state make a good faith effort to change the primary law so that the state is in compliance with the rules, and they fail, they can get the sanctions waived by the DNC.  e.g., if Dems in the Florida state legislature propose a bill that would move the primary back to March, but it's voted down by the GOP controlled legislature, then the DNC will give them a waiver.  Most of the states that currently have February primaries have either a GOP governor or legislature, so a lot of states could get waivers.

[Mr. Morden]

As noted above, states with primaries in February or earlier are going to be hit with new penalties this year.  So presumably, many of those states are going to move their primaries later, in order to comply with the new rules.  States with both a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature are probably the most likely to move their primaries later, as they have little to gain from going early and taking the penalty.  The only reason to go early is to try to have influence before the nomination is clinched.  If there's no contest on the Democratic side, then this is a non-issue.

So in this post, I'm going to list all of the January / February primary states, and list the party control of the governorship and the state legislature, as of 2011.

Dec. 11, 2010 UPDATE: In most of the primary states (NH and SC are two exceptions I know of), the state government sets the date of the primary.  Which means that for all of those February primaries (plus Florida), if you want to change the primary date, you need the state legislature to pass a change, and have the governor sign it.  As of 2011, I think the party control of state government in the Jan/Feb primary states is as follows:

Dem-controlled:
CA, CT, DE, MD, WA

GOP-controlled:
FL, AL, GA, OK, TN, UT, WI, AZ, MI

Divided government:
MO, NJ, NY, LA, VA

[Mr. Morden]

OK, there are a few stories on this already.  First, a bill's going to be introduced in the Texas legislature to move the primary from the first week of March to the first week of February:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2010/11/bill-introduced-in-texas-house-to-move.html

Don't know that it's necessarily going to go anywhere though, as the same state rep tried the same thing in 2007, and it went nowhere.

Bigger news is that Florida may actually move its early primary later, but also go back to having an even earlier straw poll:

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/dec/01/gop-likely-to-abandon-early-primary-may-revive-str/news-breaking/

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The article says that the RNC has tighter rules against early primaries than in 2008.  But they're not really *that* much tighter, and I actually think Florida Republicans would be nuts to move their primary later unless all of the February primaries are moving later too, but I guess we'll see....

[Mr. Morden]

Great Thread.  Frontloadinghq and the Green Papers contradict themselves on some dates though.  Which one do you prefer?

I'll have to take a closer look at it in the near future, to figure out who's "right" on some of these.  FHQ was definitely keeping up better at one point, but the guy who runs that blog has significantly scaled back his posting rate, so he may have fallen behind.

Any dates for IA, NH, NV, and SC are completely speculative at this point, as all four states are likely to wait until the rest of the calendar has settled before making any binding decisions.  All we can say is that IA and NH are determined to go before everyone else, SC is determined to go before any other Southern state, and NV will try to be one of the first states again as well.

[Mr. Morden]

I assume Team Romney crapped themselves somewhat when the new calendar rules passed.  The penalties are less problematic for Florida as a state than they are for Romney as a candidate, since they stand to give him much weaker leverage out of his regional strength.  I think a plausible theory is that his allies are trying to kill the cow who starts the stampede, or simply protect Florida as a big, fat jackpot for Romney.  And consider it in context with the general- hey, am I coining this?- Palinophobia from the Bushes.

I assume that Romney would love to see Florida hold a prominent straw poll shortly before the Iowa caucuses, and steal some of Iowa's "first in the nation" thunder.  He'd have a better chance at winning the FL straw poll than the Iowa caucuses, because the former would rely more on money and organization.  Of course, a straw poll wouldn't actually allocate any delegates, so there's every chance that other candidates skip it, and the media doesn't give it much coverage, which means that it wouldn't matter.  It only works if more than one candidate wants to contest it.

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but

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...the "effort" doesn't need to be abandoned.  It already succeeded. They changed the law.  Florida goes early as of 2008.  The effort would now actually be to move Florida back, which is a little stickier to sell.  Maybe the reporter was fed and swallowed spin from the Romney allies?
[/quote]

I don't know if it's actually spin, or just ignorance.  You'd be surprised by how many state legislators and state party leaders don't really seem to understand how the primary calendar works, even though they're the ones who are creating it.  It's quite possible that numerous Florida state legislators don't actually realize that they already have an early presidential primary, and all they have to do to keep it is do nothing.  It's just not something that that's necessarily on their issues radar, and most of them probably haven't given it much if any thought.

It's also likely that they haven't actually studied the new RNC rules.  They may simply be buying the media spin (which was generated by the national parties themselves) that the new penalties are tougher than they were in 2008.  Not so much on the GOP side of the aisle.  A January primary would mean that Florida would lose half its delegates.  But that penalty already applied in 2008, so that's no biggie.  The only new penalty is that they have to allocate their delegates proportionally, but there are like 30 other states that are in the same boat, so I don't see that as being a big deal.

At some point before legislation is actually drawn up on moving the primary, FL state legislators may simply realize that the penalties aren't much different from 2008, and they might as well keep the primary where it is.

[Mr. Morden]

Speaking of straw polls, Terry Branstad wants all the 2012ers to know that they had better participate in the August straw poll:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/45805.html

Also, I've added a bunch of new info to the early posts of this thread.  If you see any mistakes, let me know.  Also, I could really use some help in getting a list of which parties will control which state legislatures in 2011.

[Mr. Morden]

I've updated the third post of the thread with a list of party control of the state legislatures for the Jan/Feb. primary states.  Please let me know if you find any mistakes.

Like I said, I expect that Dem-controlled state governments are the most likely to move their primaries later (so yeah, my guess is that California will move back to a later primary).  But party control isn't necessarily determinative.  You could have some Dem-controlled states staying put and GOP-controlled or divided government states moving.  Too early to tell which states will move.

Another scheduling note that I'll mention is that the Iowa caucus has traditionally been held on a Monday (a tradition which was broken in 2008, when they went to a Thursday).

If Iowa is forced to go in one of the first two weeks of January this time around, they will probably *not* vote on a Monday, and instead go on a different day of the week, like in 2008.  That's because there will be major college football bowl games on both Mon, Jan. 2 and Mon, Jan. 9:

http://www.benchwarmersports.com/football-packages

[Mr. Morden]

Courtesy of bgwah's thread, I see that Washington may end up scrapping its primary, and going 100% caucus:

http://blogs.sos.wa.gov/FromOurCorner/index.php/2010/12/reed-proposes-suspending-2012-presidential-primary/

The GOP (and Dem.) caucus last time was on the second Saturday of February.  If the primary is scuttled, and the GOP is left with just the caucus, then the Washington State GOP can avoid all delegate penalties if they wish by moving the caucus to March or later.  Or they can stick with an early caucus and take the penalties.

[Mr. Morden]

The Ames, Iowa straw poll has been announced for Aug. 13th, 2011:

http://iowaindependent.com/49271/iowa-gop-strong-arms-presidential-candidates-into-ames-staw-poll

Meanwhile, the Nevada GOP has set their caucuses for Feb. 18, 2012:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/date-set-for-nevada-gop-caucus-112037424.html

As Josh Putnam notes:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2010/12/nevada-gop-sets-2012-presidential.html

the Nevada GOP is taking a different track from Iowa, NH, and SC.  Those three states protect their early status by waiting until everyone else has already set their dates.  NV isn't operating that way.  Though they may move back up to January depending on what other states do, for now, they're at Feb. 18.  In March 2007, they initially set their caucus for February 2008, but then later moved up to January, after there was a rush of other state primaries in February.  Same thing may happen this time.

[Mr. Morden]

The subject of the 2012 primary calendar has made it to Politico:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46567.html

The article gets a few facts wrong, but is generally a good read.  Bottom line, as we already know, both the DNC and RNC would like 46 states to vote in March or later, and only IA, NH, NV, and SC to vote in February, with no primaries in January.  But it all depends on all those early primary states agreeing to move later.  It only takes one of them to mess things up.  It does sound like many in the Florida GOP appear willing to move later, even as just a sort of "thank you" to the RNC for picking Tampa for the convention:

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(Personally, I don't buy that.  The Dems have used PR for like 25 years, and momentum was still plenty important in a lot of those contests.  Heck, look at the 2004 race for an extreme example.)

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Michigan is identified as a state likely to keep their now late February primary:

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[Mr. Morden]

Now that the census numbers are out, we know how many convention delegates each state will get for each party.  Here's the allocation on the Republican side:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/R-Del.phtml

This does not include any penalties that states will incur for holding early primaries, as we don't know what the calendar is yet!

FrontloadingHQ has a calendar of when state legislatures will be meeting in 2011:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/frontloading-starts-with-state.html

Some states with February primaries, like Georgia, wrap up their legislative session as early as April of this year.  If they're going to move their 2012 primary, they're going to have to do it before then, unless there's a special legislative session.  Florida doesn't even start its legislative session until March, so we may not know for a while whether IA will once again be backed up to the first week of January in order to keep its first in the nation status.

[Mr. Morden]

A bill has been introduced in the California Assembly that would move the primary from February to June:

http://www.ballot-access.org/2011/01/05/california-bill-to-move-presidential-primary-from-february-to-june/

Ohio may end up moving its March primary to a later date if redistricting takes a long time:

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/01/04/copy/slow-redistricting-could-delay-ohios-presidential-primary.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

I've also heard that VA, MD, and DC are looking to again do a "Potomac Primary", with all three voting on the same day, though that date would probably be later than last time, maybe April.  No link on that, sorry.

[Mr. Morden]

Yes there was.  They were often called caucuses by the media, but they weren't really caucuses in the same sense as Iowa or other states.  They were just a series of county conventions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Republican_caucuses,_2008

[Mr. Morden]

Rubio supports Florida keeping its early primary:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/2012-campaigns-take-their-first-baby-steps/1144437

And he's not alone:

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[Mr. Morden]

Two bills have been filed in the Virginia House that would move the primary to the first Tuesday in March:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/two-bills-introduced-to-move-virginia.html

[Mr. Morden]

In Virginia, we now have a companion bill in the state senate to move the primary to March:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/accompanying-senate-bill-to-move.html

The effort to move the primary later in Virginia appears to be bipartisan.

In Washington, a bill has been introduced by a Democratic state senator to abolish the state's presidential primary, and go 100% caucuses:

http://www.ballot-access.org/2011/01/14/washington-state-bill-to-abolish-presidential-primary/

So we now have bills pending in both CA and VA to move to a later primary, and a bill in WA to get rid of the primary altogether.  None of the other February primary states have made a move yet.

[Mr. Morden]

There are a couple of bills in the New Jersey legislature that were introduced last year, but still alive, though nothing's happened with them for ages.  They would both move the NJ primary back to June:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/two-oldies-but-goodies.html

And here's a textbook case of a reporter writing a story on a subject on which he is utterly clueless:

http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_118_1780.aspx

But bottom line, several different options are being floated in Georgia.  They may stick with Feb. 7th and take the penalties.  They may move to what could be the new Super Tuesday of March 6th.  Or they may move to shortly before March 6th, and still take the penalties.  The odd thing is that Thursday, March 1st seems to be an option.  Thursday isn't a typical day for elections, but so be it.

[Mr. Morden]

I feel dirty linking to all these news stories that get so many factual details wrong, but here's another one:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/21/arizona-begins-primary-calendar-jockeying/

Cutting through the factual inaccuracies, the bottom line is this.  Like it says on the calendar at the beginning of this thread, Arizona law sets its primary for Feb. 28, but the governor has the option of moving that up to Feb. 7th if she wishes.  While other February primary states are moving their primaries later, to comply with the DNC and RNC rules and avoid sanctions, the Arizona GOP looks set to pass a resolution this weekend that will urge Brewer to move the primary up to Feb. 7th.

Again (setting aside caucuses for a moment), we currently have 12 states with primaries on either Jan. 31 or Feb. 7.  And then there are states like Arizona that are later than Feb. 7, but might move up to that date.  All it takes is one of those states to hold firm with a late Jan. / early Feb. primary, and we'll get IA and NH scheduling their contests for January again.  This is what will most likely happen.  The primaries will most likely start in January again next year.  A year from today, the Iowa caucuses will likely have already taken place, and my guess is that the NH primary will have already happened too.  The media is constantly misrepresenting this point.  They seem to think that the DNC and RNC have somehow automatically moved all those primaries later or something.

[Mr. Morden]

Lots of new (minor) updates:

The Arizona GOP ended up not passing that resolution that would urge Brewer to move the primary up to Feb. 7th.

The Florida Democratic Party chair wants the state's primary moved to March, but it's still less than clear that the GOP controlled legislature is going to give him his wish:

link

Oklahoma bill would move primary to first Tuesday of March:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/pair-of-pre-filed-bills-propose-moving.html

Idaho bill would move primary up by just one week:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/01/frontloading-in-idaho-sort-of.html


Really, Frontloading HQ is now doing such a good job of tracking all of this that maybe you should just read that instead of reading my posts:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/

I'll just post here when one of these bills actually passes and there's actual movement on the calendar.

[Mr. Morden]

Here's a list of when some of the early February states are likely to move their primaries to.....in some cases based on bills that are in the pipeline in the respective state legislatures, and in some cases just based on public comments by legislative leaders:

Mar. 6: OK, VA
Apr. 3: MD
Jun. 5: CA, NJ
Jun. 12: DC

WA is likely to cancel their primary, though the caucus may still be in February.  In GA, there has been talk of moving to early March, though that's very uncertain, and they may yet just stick with early Feb.  And of course, in FL, it's unclear what's going to happen.  They might stick with Jan. 31, or else move to either March or April.

Haven't heard anything from other early Feb. states, like NY, MO, or TN.  Utah's legislative session apparently only lasts until March, so we should know fairly soon if they're going to move their primary or stick with Feb. 7th.

Bottom line, I'm guessing that enough states will vacate Feb. 7th that it will no longer be Super Tuesday.  March 6th will probably become Super Tuesday.

[Mr. Morden]

To the list above, add

Mar. 6: TN

as per this story: http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/02/bills-introduced-in-both-chambers-to.html

Again, it looks increasingly like March 6th is going to become Super Tuesday.

The effort to move the primary in TN (as in OK, VA, NJ, etc.) appears to be bipartisan.  There's no serious opposition in those states to moving the primary later.  Florida is a different matter.  The Dems have put forth bills that would move the primary to March 6th, and most of the GOP appears skeptical.  FHQ has a good rundown of the controversy:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2011/02/florida-primary-are-governor-scott-and.html

Basically, it looks like most of the Florida GOP is happy to leave the primary on Jan. 31.  And since the GOP controls the state government, that's probably what will happen.  (Which means, yes, IA, NH, and SC will all stay in January to stay ahead of FL, and the primaries will start (almost) as early in the year as they did in 2008.

[Mr. Morden]

Hey look, it's 2008 all over again...except different party:

Yes, well, there's no reason for it to get as heated as the 2008 DNC situation, because (in this case) Florida doesn't really care that much about the delegate penalty.  They'll take the 50% delegate cut, if it means they can go early and have influence on the nomination.  In 2008, FL and MI lost 100% of their delegates on the Democratic side and most of the Democratic candidates boycotted both states, so it was a lot more messy.

And I doubt Florida will be the only state to go earlier than the RNC's window is supposed to allow.  Perhaps a half dozen or so other states will probably end up going early too.  If the RNC (or DNC) thought that their 2012 primary calendar plan was actually going to succeed in moving the start of the process into February, then they're fools.

[Mr. Morden]

If RNC is serious about starting in February, they would have to threaten to remove all of Florida's delegates and to take the 2012 convention away.

They're not serious though.  They would *like* to move the primaries later, but they have no desire to repeat the 2008 DNC vs. FL/MI fiasco.  They'll make a lot of noise, but won't really do anything about it.

And again, it's not just Florida.  Florida's just the most open about it.  Other states are likely to follow suit, and stick to late Jan. / early Feb. primaries.  Utah's 2012 primary is still scheduled for Feb. 7th, and the legislature adjourns in a couple of weeks and no one's put forth any legislation to move the primary later.

[Mr. Morden]

So what penalties would there be?  Half-delegates?

States that vote earlier than April 1 have to allocate delegates by PR rather than WTA, and states that vote earlier than the first Tuesday of March will lose half their delegates (at least for all states besides IA, NH, NV, and SC, which can vote as early as Feb. 1 without losing any delegates).  Those are the rules the RNC adopted.  Unlikely they're going to be changed to anything harsher than that.

Also, Idaho has officially moved their primary May 15th:

http://www.ballot-access.org/2011/02/25/idaho-bill-signed-moves-primary-one-week-earlier/

and I've updated the calendar in the OP.  In Virginia, McDonnell will likely soon be signing the bill that moves that state's primary to March, as it's passed both houses of the legislature.