Do other countries have Iowa and NH system of picking their leader?

Factual Questions
21

I grew up in Australia, and find some aspects of the American political system incredibly annoying. Still, i think that Australia’s Westminster system has some pretty big flaws of its own.

I’ve never, for example, been a fan of the way that the PM can dissolve the government and call a new election pretty much whenever the fancy strikes. Politics shouldn’t be a game of picking just the right election time to maximize your chance of success. I would support changing the system to require that an elected government serve out its full term. I would also support, in the case of Australia, lengthening that term from three to four years. Maybe, as a compromise, i’d be willing to make a rule allowing the PM to call an election any time in the fourth year of a government, but not before.

Also, I wouldn’t mind changing the Constitution to formalize the position of Prime Minister (the position is not even actually recognized in the Constitution), and requiring also that the PM cannot be ousted from the position from within his or her own party during the term of office. or perhaps, like my compromise above, can only be ousted in the fourth year of a four-year government. While the PM is officially a sort of first among equals, the practical fact is that PM is the most powerful political position in Australia, and when people vote in federal elections, they do so with the understanding that they are voting for a particular person to be Prime Minister. I think it’s bullshit that their choice can be over-ridden by a caucus of a few dozen members of the government.

Australia’s current PM is Malcolm Turnbull. While i happen to believe that he is a MASSIVE improvement, as both a leader and a human being, over his risible and embarrassing predecessor, the fact is that the people of Australia, when they gave the Liberal/National coalition a majority at the last federal election, did so on the understanding that Tony Abbott would be Prime Minister.

And if people are going to complain about the disproportionate influence of small states like Iowa and New Hampshire in selecting the Presidential candidates in the United States, it’s worth noting that the leaders of the Australian political parties have traditionally been chosen in a much more restricted and unrepresentative system. Malcolm Turnbull was chosen to replace Tony Abbott in an election comprising about 100 people. This sort of system helps to explain why the country has had 5 PMs in the last five years.

The Labor Party dramatically expanded its method of selecting a leader a few years ago, and about 30,000 members were involved in selecting Bill Shorten as party leader. That’s a start, but i’d like it to be supplemented by a system like i’ve described above, which sets out fixed terms for the government, and which strictly limits the possibility of changing leaders during a governmental term.

Of course, the first argument against my suggestions is that the Westminster system is very different from the American system, and the Australian PM is not an Executive in the same way that the US President is. The Aussie PM is part of the legislative body, and not the leader of a separate branch of government. I’m not convinced, however, that this difference negates my concerns about the way the system works.

22

If you fix the term between elections you guarantee yourselves the same kind of neverending campaign cycle that we have here in the states. Our way of doing political business is indeed pretty absurd.

23

The price we pay for democracy it seems. There has been a huge campaign here to move away from first past the post. The Canadian system described above is one example and there are several others.

The essence of the British system is that we are supposed to vote for an individual to be our MP. In practice, most people probably couldn’t name their local MP but they will probably know which party he belongs to. There is a consensus among everyone but the MPs concerned that there are far too many of them; currently 650 of them - one for every 92,000 people. The party leaders, who will usually be PM if their party wins, have a big influence on the undecided voters - “I won’t vote Labour because Jez Colbyn is a dick…” Some constituencies would elect a chimpanzee if it was nominated for the party they favour.

24

When Florida moved it’s primary up though it was never decided by a court whether it was legal to deny the delegates half their votes at the convention. I doubt it would be held to be legal to be effectively disenfranchising voters in any election primary or otherwise.

Americans are also good for allowing some forms of gerrymandering as long as some judge thinks it’s OK.

The whole primary mess was a slow process that started out as a reaction in the late 60s to the riots at the Democratic convention, whereas it was possible before than to select a candidate “behind closed doors.” After this the country moved to a primary system where it the elections were more than just “suggestions.”

25

NH and Iowa make a lot of money off the election. It’s not like either state is a vacation spot so this is a way they can fill hotel rooms, sell TV ads, and so on.

26

No because the primaries don’t delegate any actual authority or actual positions. The political parties are just paper and losing the primary still enables one to run for prez as independent or another party, as donald trump has threatened to do.

What should seem ridiculous to you is that political parties exist at all and that anyone pays attention to them. They’re a cancer on democracy. As it stands the process that gets 10% voter participation is supposed to narrow the candidates down to 2 and then 50% vote on those 2, but really only the votes from about 10 states matter at all. It’s just a disgrace

And the legislative branch is just as bad. Every state gets 2 senators with equal power - CA with 30 million population, and wyoming with 300k population

27

Why would it be illegal for a private convention to disenfranchise voters in a primary?

28

The Two Political Parties, like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, some electric utilities and MLB (Major League Baseball) are effectively quasi-governmental organizations.

29

On the other hand, were the first primaries to be held in California and New York the cost would exorbitant and there might be limited prospect of a revival to any candidate who didn’t have a strong showing right out of the gate.

30

Sounds like mhendo has gone quite native! :slight_smile:

But equally about that same number of representatives elected 4 PMs (Menzies, Howard, Hawke and Fraser) to a combined period of over 46 years. Maybe that indicates it might be more a function of the PM’s ability rather than the system?

Start a thread and we can debate the matter until we bore the pants off the entire SDMB. :wink:
The Australian Founding Fathers deliberated over the US system in great detail, took up and tweaked the notion of a Senate with equal representation from each state, and rightly binned every other element of the US presidential model.

31

Well, no. SCOTUS has ruled that The Parties must (for example) allow blacks to participate in their primaries, but it’s doubtful that any constitutional principle requires the parties to count primary votes that are being excluded for “legitimate” reasons.

32

The NZ National Party doesn’t even elect its Parliamentary leader. He or she is elected by the Parliamentary caucus of the NP, so 60 MPs decide who the PM will be.
The Labour Party does have a party/MP election process, so their leader is elected by a larger group, but it’s still only those who qualify by membership of the party.
Just like in Australia, the PM could be rolled at any time by being voted out by their peers, with no reference to the voters of NZ as a whole.

33

America likes its political parties because voting along party lines is much easier than figuring out which candidate is most qualified.

And I think they’re inevitable. People with similar ideologies will band together for mutual support no matter what. Even if political parties were formally abolished by law, some kind of informal alliance would form and we would have de facto parties. Maybe more than two viable parties but parties would exist.

I doubt that any modern government that has anything approaching a democratic system lacks some equivalent of parties. Ancient times as well, though it might have divided more along family/clan lines back then.

34

The primary system has just evolved and probably was based on the assumption in the Constitution that there wouldn’t be any parties. The electoral college was supposed to pick the top candidates and the thought was that the House of Representatives would then choose the president. Quaint and naive. It worked for Washington, then started to fall apart as parties formed.

In the early 19th century, the nominee was chosen by consensus; usually the Secretary of State was chosen to replace the president. This fell apart after Monroe, as Andrew Jackson decided to use his fame as a springboard to the presidency.

In 1831, the first party convention was held, and for over a century the convention made the choice. Candidates would work with the political bosses, who would choose the candidate they thought was the strongest. They liked if the candidate was indebted to them, but it was more important that their party won in the first place, so they would often be lined up behind a strong candidate. Individual state delegations would choose candidates, either a national name or a “favorite son” – someone from their own state who could horsetrade his state’s votes in exchange for special preferences.

It was common for the conventions to use several ballots to choose a candidate, since a majority was needed. The record is 103 ballots for the 1924 Democratic convention, which was deadlocked over how to deal with the Ku Klux Klan, and hampered by a rule that required a supermajority. It wasn’t until the 50s that delegates came to a convention without someone with enough votes lined up for a first-ballot majority.

During the Progressive era, the idea of a party primary gained traction: the voters would decide the candidate. There were only a handful of primaries, and those were used by candidates as a test run for their main campaign. Famously, JFK ran in the West Virginia primary in 1960 to show that his being a Catholic wouldn’t be a barrier (WV was a protestant state).

Many primaries were even nonbinding – state political leaders could ignore their results when choosing who their delegates should vote for.

The change began in 1968, when Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without running in any primaries. Democrats were outraged (especially after the convention) and started a movement to make the primaries binding, and to reduce the power of the bosses. Despite the poor showing of George McGovern, they stuck with that (with some modification, like super delegates who were chosen by party leaders), and the Republicans joined soon after.

Prior to the 1950s, New Hampshire was just another primary (it was binding, but NH had so few delegates that it didn’t matter). It developed a reputation for picking the winner (not exactly true. While one winner did become president in the period 1952-92, they only rarely picked both nominees), and since it was the first primary, it was the first indication as to the strength of the candidates.

New Hampshire passed a law that they would always be held one week before any other primary, since they liked the attention. But the primary season started earlier – originally in mid-March, it’s now in late January or early February.

Meanwhile, Iowa got into the act. Since they couldn’t beat NH for a primary, the set up the “caucuses,” which in some ways look like the old fashioned conventions. And since they were even earlier than NH, they got a ton of press.

So the real answer is that it’s all a historical accident that no one wants to change.

35

The term for such a poll area/event is bellwether.

Eden Monaro has been a bellwether seat in Australian politics…

However due to shifting boundaries, it may not be so in future.

But I don’t think the candidate selection hype in USA is related to bellwether…
I think its just habit, the politicians don’t mind the media hype, the media don’t mind having something to hype… so they organise the same thing to repeat everytime…

36

It’s not a bellweather. Iowa and New Hampshire are not particularly good predictors of the ultimate nominees. However, because they go first they have a disproproportionate amount of influence over who will not be the nominee.