What exactly would the effect be on the Presidential race, if there was a “National Primary” rather than each state having their primary on their own. Say, have one primary election in early spring.
I think the current systems is bad. People are kind of dopey, and are influenced more by current trends rather than by what they really want. I think having ONE primary election, rather than 50 spread out over months, would result in a more honest reflection of what the people want over our current system. What say you?
I say we have a Federal form of government with power being shared by individual states and of course the feds. Let each state decide how it wants to run their primary election. You’re arguement seems to consist of “people are stupid so we should change the way things work.” I just don’t think people are that stupid.
Marc
but the primaries didn’t take place in each state, just in the ones (in this year) that are primarily democratically oriented. My home state (Indiana) didn’t hold a Democratic primary.
On a similar note, why are we forced to accept the current president as the candidate defacto for his party? wouldn’t it make a little sense to hold republican and democratic primaries to see if the voters really even *want * the bum in office to run again?
They do hold primaries for the party with the incumbent President. Nobody’s running in opposition to Bush this year, and other than a few very rare cases (Taft comes to mind, and I think Teddy Roosevelt, I may be wrong, there may be more, etc.) the President is a virtual lock for his party’s nomination anyway.
The thinking this year is that Bush has the nomination locked up, so he’s running unopposed. Even so, in New Hampshire he only got 80% of the vote, not a very good showing for somebody without an opponent.
Erasticity, you are 1000% wrong. Here’s the list. Notice that it includes all 50 states, in addition to Washington DC and several U.S. territories.
January 19 Iowa
January 27 New Hampshire
February 3 Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina
February 6-9 Democrats Abroad
February 7 Michigan, Washington
February 8 Maine
February 10 Tennessee, Virginia
February 14 District of Columbia, Nevada
February 17 Wisconsin
February 24 Hawaii, Idaho, Utah
March 2 California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont
March 8 American Samoa
March 9 Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas
March 13 Kansas
March 16 Illinois
March 20 Alaska, Guam, Wyoming
April 13 Colorado
April 17 North Carolina, Virgin Islands
April 27 Pennsylvania
May 4 Indiana
May 11 Nebraska, West Virginia
May 18 Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon
June 1 Alabama, South Dakota
June 6 Puerto Rico
June 8 Montana, New Jersey
YET. Your problem seems to be that you didn’t want to take the time to look up if and when your state was having a primary, which isn’t exactly a hard thing to do. They say an informed citizenry is an important part of democracy…
Having one national primary day would be a mistake. If it was held in January 2004, the Democratic nominee would have been Howard Dean. Case closed.
If people are “dopey,” why would we want an honest reflection of what they think? For that matter, why is a months-long process more vulnerable to passing fashion than a one-day deal? I’d think just the opposite.
Erasticity: http://www.indgop.org/facts_forms.php
I kind of agree with the OP. Living in CA, the candidate is almost always picked before the primary rolls around this way. (Maybe that’s on purpuse. :)) Does anyone know why it’s done the way that it is? I recognize that this is up to the party, and not a matter of law, but why do the parties think this is the best way to select a candidate?
PS: Marc-- thanks for copying the entire OP in the first post to this thread. 
Incumbent Presidents are raarely denied their party’s nomination for President, but that doesn’t stop people from trying: Edward Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980, and Pat Buchanan challenged Bush in 1992, for example.
The advantage of the current system is that it forces the candidates to campaign on a personal level to win votes in the first few states. A national primary would basically be a battle of TV advertising and funding. The disadvantage of the current setup is that it gives disproportionate influence to Iowa and New Hampshire. A better system might be to rotate the early states, and to spread out the early states across regions of the country.
Force of habit I guess.
Marc
I thought about rotating the early states, but that would be pretty meaningless. Even if you clumped the states together in groups of 10, that would give each state a significant say in selecting the president every 20 yrs. Big whoop. But groups of 5 would be more likely, and then it would be avery 40 yrs. Yeah, candidates can get close and personal in NH, but CA is too big for that in any system.
Are you sure? Seemed to me that everyone thought that Dean was going to run away with the nomination this year and Kerry surprised everyone. How do you know that wouldn’t have happened if all primaries were held on the same day?
I should clarify why I said what I said.
Wisconsins primary is coming up on tuesday. A local news casts showed brief interviews with people asking them who they supported. About half a dozen said they were originally planning on voting for Howard Dean, but now think they’ll vote for Kerry instead, because he’s the current front runner. I don’t get it!
That just sounds dumb, to me. Those folks seem to be influenced by previous primary results, rather than what they really want.
Also, it seems to me that states having primaries later on have absolutely no value in determining the candidate. Wouldn’t having one election give more equality to each state about who the nominee will be?
Ah, you don’t want a single election; you want a single date for the 50 primaries. I suppose that would give various large states an overwhelming advantage and relegate the smaller states to the sidelines.
Note: Canadian here, and I’m only partially aware how you run these things.
So… you’re saying it would be better if they made up their minds and never reconsidered anything?
Grey is correct about one implication of your decision. Nobody would pay attention to Indiana under that system.
The “equality” aspect of a national primary versus a sequential primary is false logic. The only reason states late in the process “appear” not to have an impact is because sometimes they don’t - sometimes the nominee is indeed decided (in spirit, if not numerically) very early on. But if two or three viable candidates with national constituencies slog it out through the entire thing, then the late states become even more relevant. Just because it looks slanted a particular way now doesn’t mean it will always be so, nor is that sufficient justification to monkey with the system.
Bottom line is the primary process is a debate. A big state-by-state highly personalized debate. It allows total unknown’s to put their message on an equal footing with the highly recognized. Then the nation hashes out a collective opinion about all the candidates’ ideas. Ideally a synthesis is reached that most people can be happy with - you may not get everything you want, but at least some portion of your viewpoint is likely to be expressed in the resultant national platform.
Of what use is a debate that lasts only one day and has only one winner? It’s like writing your dissertation on the first day of graduate school and expecting to pass. As with most things in a democracy, it’s the process that counts. Screw with that ideal, and you end up with a tyranny of the majority - or as in the case of the 2000 election, a tyranny of the minority.
One never is quite sure. But there was a time where Dean was number one in the polls. Whether those people who told the pollsters they supported Dean would actually have voted for him had there been one national primary is anybody’s guess. But it’s possibilities like that that make me quite leery of changing the system.
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Bottom line is the primary process is a debate. A big state-by-state highly personalized debate.
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No, that is what a campaign is suppose to be.
Let me ask this: Would you have the general election spread out over several months?
So, the question is: Why do the two main parties think the current system is the best way to pick a candidate? They could run their primaries anyway they want, so there must be some reason for doing it this way. If it were to be done state-by-state, it would seem like a good idea to pick several states with varied political histories to have the first primaries.
Each state controls its own delegate selection process, right?
So my question is: Why do the other 48 states sit back and let New Hampshire and Iowa control (or at least heavily influence) the nomination process? Why don’t other states move up their primary dates to challenge the primacy of Iowa/NH?