I’ve heard about FL and MI now only getting half votes because they held their primaries “too early”. What about New Hampshire who held its primary before both of these states? Did it get half votes?
No. The party allowed New Hamphire to hold the first primary, so they weren’t breaking any rules.
New Hampshire traditionally holds the first primary. Having the first primary is a major industry in the State. The amount of money brought in is very significant. When other States tried to move ahead of them they just kept leapfrogging to hold their place. The major parties have accommodated New Hampshire while trying to put the brakes on the other states that want to get into the early primary battle. That’s how the whole Michigan, Florida situation started.
There’s not one single time that differentiates “too early” from “okay” - different time frames are allotted different states per party rules. Hence, NH was acting in accordance with its assigned time slot, FL and MI went too early for theirs.
Again, just asking because it is GQ, but what makes New Hampshire so special that it gets to be first every single year?
I know that it would be bad to buck the party bigwigs there, and that keeps the status quo, but what logical reason can anyone articulate that says New Hampshire, and only New Hampshire, can have a primary before such and such date?
Didn’t the GOP punish New Hampshire with the 1/2 vote penalty?
When all the other states gave up their primaries because they weren’t important anymore, NH kept theirs. When primaries started becoming important again (in the 50’s?) NH was still running theirs and they gravitated to the front. Aside from the fact that having the first primary/caucus in smaller states to allow less well established candidates campaign in the whole state, it’s pretty much tradition.
Binding primaries came into favor following the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Both parties adopted rule changes which resulted in primaries being adopted by states that hadn’t had them. Arguably, before then they never were that important - primaries first came about as a progressive era reform circa 1910-1920, but there was not anything like universal adoption. Wiki observes (with a cite):
In the 1968 election, Humphrey got the nomination in spite of Eugene McCarthy’s primary victories and considerable grassroots support, which partially fueled the riots by Democrats at the convention who felt they had been jobbed by their own party.