Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...
As 2018 came to a close a second wave of folks seemed to be getting in their two cents about the impact of the three month shift of the California presidential primary on the 2020 calendar.1
And it is not a move that is without import. While California pairing with Texas (among others) on Super Tuesday is a new wrinkle for 2020, frontloaded primary calendars with California on the heels of the earliest states are not. California was part of the logjam on the first Tuesday in March in 2000, and similarly just a month behind Iowa kicking things off on the 2008 calendar.
Of course, the dynamics of each of those races were different. Each cycle is always different in some way from its predecessors.2 The 2000 cycle saw fields of candidates on both sides that were comparatively small. And in 2008, California was early on a de facto national primary date, but other states -- Florida and Michigan -- sought to push even more directly into the early calendar territory Iowa and New Hampshire.
But maybe 2020 is when the stars align for a California primary move to be of consequence. Perhaps, but 2019 has already witnessed no lack of 2020 candidate maneuvering. And the attention, at least to this point, seems to be in the usual directions: toward the earliest states.
Yes, there is still time for that to change.
In fact, the increase in early voting in the Golden state and the stretch of that window of convenience voting to a point on the calendar in line with the caucuses in Iowa may be enough to alter the equation. It is that reality that has driven much of the renewed discourse about the California primary and 2020.
Some have argued that the implications of the California primary move coupled with that Iowa-aligned early voting start means that the Golden state cannot be ignored. If that is even partly true, then it will likely serve as an extension of the frontloaded calendars cited above. To be successful, candidates have to have the resources to plan for a crowded Super Tuesday, and in 2020, an early vote GOTV effort in the state. Both have winnowing possibilities layered into them.
Still others have made the case that a largely unwinnowed, or lightly winnowed, field entering into a month-long California primary voting window may lead to a fractious split of a large cache of delegates, raising the likelihood of an inconclusive outcome to primary season.
FHQ would submit another scenario altogether, a rather counterintuitive one.
Those rooting most heavily for a still crowded field by the time California rolls around in 2020 are those with some nominal frontrunner status, those with some experience winning statewide in the Golden state, or those with some combination of the two. The more crowded it is, the less likely it is that some number of candidates clears the 15 percent threshold to qualify for delegates in (each of the 55 races for delegates in) California.3
The fewer candidates that crest above 15 percent, the greater the delegate prize California would be to those who do. Bear in mind that, despite the fact that winnowing was slow in 2016 in a crowded Republican nomination race, no primary or caucus saw any more than three candidates receive 15 percent or more of the vote.
And hey, if it is crowded enough in the California results, then California could become a very big prize indeed. If early voting is great enough and distributes the votes in a way that only one candidate clears that threshold (in all 55 jurisdictions), then California becomes a winner-take-all affair.
Advantage: winner.
But it is early yet and the winnowing has only really just begun.
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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...
1. Sanders is heading to the Palmetto state to speak at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally.
2. Later this month Bloomberg will be in Virginia to speak to the Democratic Business Council. This one is more preaching to the choir than broadening any likely coalition of the former New York mayor's.
3. In Iowa today, Steyer is going to announce something. What can one announce in the Hawkeye state?
4. Speaking of announcements, Castro is building up to his own later this week. Yesterday he was in Iowa pledging to shun PAC money and in Nevada reaching out to the Latino community.
5. Meanwhile, Draft Beto stretches into Nevada and California with new hires in an attempt to pull the former Texas congressman into the 2020 race.
6. Finally, Harris has an entry for the 2020 Book Primary.
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
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1 Second wave because there was an initial round back in 2017 when the California legislature pushed the presidential primary in the Golden state up.
2 That is the reason that even small rules changes can yield large impacts (or alternatively, be amplified by differing dynamics).
3 There will be 55 contests for delegates nestled in the broader California primary. Allocations of at-large and party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates will be based on the statewide results, while the results in each of the 53 congressional districts will determine how the varying numbers of congressional district delegates will be allocated.
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Brown's Signature Sends California Primary Back to Super Tuesday for 2020
There had been some speculation in the time since the California state legislature passed legislation to move up the Golden state presidential primary for 2020 over whether Governor Jerry Brown (D) would sign the measure. That speculation ended barely a week after the legislature wrapped up its session by passing the primary bill.
Brown signed the bill -- SB 568 -- and in the process, moved not only the presidential primary into March but the statewide (midterm) primary as well.
Much has already said about what this move means. It means California shifts up 91 days on the calendar; bigger than any move during the 2016 cycle, and that the Golden state is joining an already crowded date on the 2020 calendar. Texas, Virginia and Massachusetts among others have been stationed there since at least 2016.
For more about what the move means, and perhaps more importantly, what it doesn't, please see our earlier primer on the subject.
California Primary Bill Passes Legislature. What It Means and What It Doesn't
On the final day the California legislature was in session for 2017, both chambers did what state legislatures often do at the close of a year: in short, legislate. The volume and pace of activity tends to markedly tick up as some bills make it through while others fall by the wayside. The final day in the Sacramento was no different.
But the bill FHQ was eyeing was SB 568, the amended legislation that would shift the California primary -- a consolidated presidential and statewide primary -- from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June to the first Tuesday following the first Monday in March. That is not a proposal without significance, but in its amended form was scaled back from the more ambitious version that was originally introduced in February.
[Rather than rehash all of the particulars of the evolution of the bill here, I will encourage readers to check out those links from earlier in the year.]
It was that simpler version that eventually came up for a third reading and vote in the Assembly on the day the legislature was set to adjourn. Heading in, the early handicapping projected passage, and that was to be expected given Democratic support of the measure and the party in control in both chambers. Moreover, a similar bill that originated in the Assembly passed the lower chamber on a near party line vote back in July.
The vote on SB 568 mirrored that earlier vote on AB 84, passing 55-21 largely along party lines. Three Republicans crossed to vote in favor of the legislation while only one Democrat defected to vote no. That sent the amended bill back to the state Senate for concurrence where it, too, passed -- 26-10 -- on the strength of mainly Democratic votes. One member from each party opposed the party positions on the vote.
At this point, it seems as if Governor Jerry Brown (D) will sign the bill into law (but even in the event of a veto, Democrats have supermajorities in both the Assembly and Senate and would need to keep either nearly all of their members on board or the same supporters together to reach the two-thirds threshold to override the veto).
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Regardless of how it gets there, it looks like this bill will become law, and California will see its presidential (and statewide) primary shift up three months from June to March in 2020. What does it mean?
As it turns out, as others have gotten wind of this potential move, there has been no shortage of reactions to its impacts. Most have seen BIG STATE MOVING LOTS OF DELEGATES TO THE FRONT OF THE 2020 CALENDAR and have (over)reacted in predictable ways. Let's look at some of these reactions and offer some context along with some other notes of interest about the likely move.
Point I:
Some have contended that a California move to the earliest date allowed non-carve-out states by the national parties will advantage homegrown candidates.
Counterpoint:
That really is not an unreasonable conclusion. Someone like Kamala Harris would seemingly have a leg up in terms of organizing in the state, raising money from donors -- big money and otherwise -- in the state, and has already won statewide there. That looks good on paper, but is also a hypothesis that has been tested in other states with other candidates in past cycles. And the results have been mixed, and anything but a clear advantage for home state candidates.
Jimmy Carter's nascent 1980 team was involved in nudging legislators in both Alabama and Carter's own Georgia to move their primaries to coincide with the Florida primary in March. The idea was similar: give a candidate from the region (the South) some early wins. In addition, the primary motivation for the Carter team was to counter early hypothetical wins by Ted Kennedy in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Of course, Carter benefited from but did not necessarily need that southern counterpunch after winning in New Hampshire.
And that is a decent lesson to take from this: unintended consequences. [Actually, that is a good lesson for anything involving the patchwork presidential nomination process.] Just because a candidate's home state has a well-scheduled primary or caucus, it does not mean that the move will pay dividends when it counts.
The reasons are quite simple.
First, those favorite sons and daughters have to survive to the point on the calendar on which their state primary is scheduled. California will be fifth among at least seven other states on March 3, 2020. Harris, Eric Garcetti or any other Californian vying for a presidential nomination in 2020 will still have to show some progress in the four likely February states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Four losses and a month's worth of potential negative press/fundraising as a result is no way to go into what would become a do-or-die contest back home in the Golden state. And no, Rudy Giuliani, you cannot just skip those first states and put all your chips in the California -- or in the former New York mayor's case, Florida -- basket. One runs the risk of losing any positive reaction to good showings in the early states and/or the race and other (victorious) candidates passing you by.
Second, as mentioned above, candidates will have options other than California on March 3, 2020. Texas or Virginia or Tennessee or take your pick. Candidates can go elsewhere in search of delegates. The Democratic candidates in 2008 that survived to Super Tuesday steered clear of Illinois, for example. They ceded the state to Obama and focused elsewhere. The same was true of Arkansas on the same date that year. No one ventured into the Natural state either, yielding to Clinton (and Huckabee) there.
Third and alternatively, a home state contest could also be a net negative for their candidate(s). And that is not necessarily because there may be multiple Californians in the race. There will be winnowing during February that will likely guard against that (multi-Californian) negative. No, home state contests can become must-wins for their candidates or may be opportunities for opponents to deal a death blow to the campaign of those from that state by beating them there. Both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in Florida in 2016 comes to mind on both those points. Each had discussions about primary timing and allocation with Sunshine state legislators in the lead up to 2016, and both Bush and Rubio and their teams were thinking the same thing: an unpenalized, winner-take-all Florida primary sure would be beneficial.
On paper, well in advance of 2016 voting, it was. However, presidential nominations are not won and lost on paper. Few elections are. What looked good to Rubio's and Bush's teams during the invisible primary in 2013-15 looked far different in 2016. Bush did not make it to Florida on March 15 and the loss there knocked Rubio from the race. It takes time to organize elections, and in that time -- from date scheduling to actual election -- conditions can change and ruin even the best laid plans.
None of this is to suggest that California will not be a boon to one of its home-grown candidates. Rather, the point is to provide some context. It is much to early to come to any such conclusion with an level of confidence and that is mainly a function of how similar moves have played out in other states and for other candidates during the post-reform era.
Point II:
Others have argued that an early California primary could price out some candidates; that the financial burden will now be too great for all but the candidates richest in resources.
Counterpoint:
While there is a kernel of truth to that contention -- big, populous, expensive state newly early on the calendar makes it tougher on candidates -- another way of approaching the analysis of the impact is to look at how things would be in 2020 without California alongside seven or more other states in early March.
After all, there are already states in that position on the calendar for 2020 and California was not alone in 2017 in looking at moving its primary there. Legislation to move primaries to the beginning of March was also put forth in Arkansas and North Carolina this year (and in Nebraska in 2016). No, those efforts were not successful, but movement in the year following a presidential election is atypical. It just is not a priority for most legislators until the year before a presidential election. Additionally, the three caucus-turned-primary states for 2020 -- Colorado, Maine and Minnesota -- have a history of contests on that same date or in early March. It would not surprising to see those new primaries end up next to California. And Georgia would likely strongly considered setting its date there again if the remnants of the SEC primary remain on the date. [Georgia "Gardner-ized" its primary scheduling process ahead of 2012, allowing the secretary of state the power to set the date. It resets every cycle. More on this below.]
None of this even considers other states that may also look at this early March position between now and mid- to late 2019.
The point here is to highlight the fact that California has chosen a landing spot on the calendar that tends to be overly clustered with other contests and has typically allocated the most delegates of any date on the calendar in most cycles. That was certainly true in 2016. With or without California, the point on the calendar most often dubbed Super Tuesday was going to be super anyway. That creates an obstacle -- having to compete in many places at once -- for candidates that has usually separated the wheat from the chaff (if that winnowing had not already occurred to some degree during the preceding invisible primary and early contests).
Yes, California adds to that burden from a delegates and expenditures standpoint, but what is the marginal effect adding the Golden state to the mix on Super Tuesday? Do any more candidates drop out because of their -- California's -- addition to the line up? In real time, in the midst of primary season, probably not many. The effects will most likely be felt during the invisible primary, where much of the nomination maneuvering has transitioned to throughout the post-reform era.
Now, to be clear, this California move is endogenous to candidate decision-making. Prospective candidates may look at a slate of contests that includes California, Texas and others and say, "Hey, I can't compete with the fundraising (or endorsements, media attention, organization) of candidate X! I'm not running." But again, I am skeptical that those candidates would not arrive at the conclusion even if California still had a June primary in 2020.
And to be fair to Walter Shapiro, who wrote the article cited in the "Point" above, we really do not have a clear and specific answer to the the question of how Democrats will adapt to super PACs in 2020. The Republican experimentation in 2012 and 2016 likely indicates the limits, but the Democrats lag in that experimentation in the primaries phase following an uncompetitive race in 2012 and a battle in 2016 where super PACs and the Citizens United decision were negatively viewed.
Point III:
Still others have made the case in the lead up to these final votes on the California primary bill that California will provide a big net delegate margin that will effectively end the race for the Democratic nomination.
Counterpoint:
This is a problematic claim from at least a couple of perspectives.
First, that may be true, but not necessarily because of this California move. Again, legislators in the Golden state have settled on a date that is already moderately crowded with other contests and may get even more crowded between now and the end of 2019. Sure, that could lead to the effective conclusion of the nomination, but that depends on a lot of factors: invisible primary fundraising, media coverage and organization not to mention how the likely first four contests go in February. There is a scenario where someone runs the table like Al Gore did with a similar calendar in 2000. Such a scenario would likely see this hypothetical frontrunner build not a delegate majority but enough of a delegate advantage to render a comeback by a trailing candidate nearly impossible.
Absent that clear frontrunner running away with the nomination, however, the 2020 race is unlikely to see the race run its course by early March. That is even more true in light of the fact that the field of Democrats seeking the nomination looks like it will be quite large. There will be some winnowing in February, but it remains to be seen just how much the field will have shrunk by a Super Tuesday that includes California. There are and will be too many moving parts shifting between now and that point in the cycle.
Speaking of building delegate leads, the second reason California's presence on Super Tuesday will not be the decisive contest (via large delegate advantage) is the allocation rules. The Democratic National Committee has maintained a proportional allocation mandate on all states for every cycle stretching back into the 1980s. That affects the math. One candidate -- homegrown or otherwise -- is not going to waltz into the Golden state and leave with a win and nearly 500 delegates. California is not winner-take-all. Instead, it would take a significant victory in the state to produce what Matt Seyfang calls a net delegate margin large enough to offset potential delegate wins elsewhere for other candidates. Hillary Clinton has won each of the last two competitive California primaries by around 8 percent. That translated to a +38 delegate advantage in February 2008 and a +33 delegate margin in June 2016. That represents a significant building block in any race for delegates, but not a death knell to other candidates unless combined with many other wins across the Super Tuesday slate of contests. And to state the obvious, a 30-40 delegate advantage coming out of California is a far cry from a nearly 500 delegate margin under winner-take-all rules.
Point IV:
Further out on the fringes of social media, some are contending that moving the California primary is yet more evidence of the Democratic National Committee "rigging" the presidential nomination process.
Counterpoint:
The DNC is not rigging the nomination.
National parties create the overarching rules that provide guidance on the parameters around how states -- state parties and state governments -- behave in the process. The DNC has put in place limits on the timing of primaries and caucuses and has a mandate for proportional allocation (with minimal latitude provided to the states). Both parties have various ways of doing this, but both examine the rules from the previous cycle in the two years after a presidential election. In recent cycles, both parties have completed that process and approved new rules for the next cycle in the late summer or early fall of the midterm election year.
That gives the states about a one year window in which to respond with any tweaks to their previous scheduling, allocation or participation regulations, or to leave well enough alone if the previous configuration remains compliant with the national party rules regime.
If anything, California is acting perhaps too early by moving up its primary before the national party rules are complete for 2020. A change at the DNC level could mean that California is non-compliant and would have to again make legislative changes to the primary date. This is the main reason most states hold off until the year prior to the presidential election to make any changes. There is more certainty then in terms of the national party restrictions and how other states may be reacting to them.
And there is not any apparent evidence that the national party was in any way involved in the introduction of the legislation to move the primary up. For one thing, when frontloading and Iowa's and New Hampshire's carve-out positions on the calendar were being discussed at the first meeting of the Unity Reform Commission -- the group tasked with reexamining the Democratic delegate selection rules -- the California bill was raised. Sanders appointee, Gus Newport, mentioned in passing that he "thought" the California legislature was looking at moving its primary up to an earlier date. There was no reaction from the rest of the group; no angry denunciations, no commentary on how California has tried this in the past and its impacts, and no discussion of the implications for 2020 from Clinton or Sanders appointees. Nothing. And that was a day after one of the bills in the Golden state passed through its chamber of origin. It is not that the URC not responding is evidence that the DNC was not intervening in California. Rather, what was noteworthy at the time is that no outrage was expressed over it.
If anything the existing DNC rules -- directly or indirectly -- constrained the legislative actions in California. The bill that now heads to Governor Brown's desk for consideration began in a much more provocative form. The original legislation that passed the state Senate called for moving the primary to the third Tuesday in March, but with the added provision that the governor could shift the date up even further onto the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire. Under a hypothetical scenario in which the California governor opts in 2019 to move the primary into February, said primary would be non-compliant and thus open the state up a 50 percent cut to its delegation.
But that provision disappeared in late August and in its place was a more convention move to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March that, more importantly, would be compliant with the DNC delegate selection rules that are likely to carry over to 2020.
Of course, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (and later the full DNC) could change that in reaction to this move in California. The party will have the time to do that, but whether the inclination is there is another matter. There are a few Californians in the DNC that may balk at such a move.
But the reality of this likely shift in California is that it has been a self-interested maneuver aimed at increasing the state's influence in the process. Many state actors have sought as much many times in previous cycles. And that is something the DNC is hands off about unless a move violates the parties rules (see Florida and Michigan, 2008).
Point V:
Finally, some have argued that a California move will draw or has in the past drawn other states forward on the 2020 calendar.
Counterpoint:
This is trickier to tackle. The process is obviously complex as all of the above indicates. It should also be said that from a superficial angle, it makes sense to reason that if a big state moves up, others will follow. FHQ has even done that. However, when we do those exercises hey tend to be in the abstract with some historical examples to back it up.
The California move to late March for the 1996 cycle brought Oregon along for the ride, but that sort of intra-cycle call and response was unusual then. Yes, the majority of southern states coordinated a move nearly en masse to early March for the 1988 cycle, but prior 2000 most of the movement happened in a more independent (uncoordinated) fashion and between cycles rather than within them. There are exceptions to that -- the Great Lakes primary of mid-March 1996 or the aforementioned Oregon shift that same year -- but that began to change in 2004 and 2008.
States, then, reacted to California's 1996 move in 2000. California actually reacted to its 1996 move in 2000 by moving up from late to early March. So there was both intra- and inter-cycle reaction to California's double move.
But California's impact on the de facto national primary that developed for 2008 is being overstated by Politico in the article cited above. Democrats aligning their timing rules with the Republican National Committee by allowing February contests in 2004 set the stage for the formation of the 2008 calendar. There were 17 Democratic contests in February 2004, seven of which were on the first Tuesday in February. An additional four states moved to the first Tuesday in February before 2007. That is 21 February states that were either going to repeat February contests by law in 2008 or had a history of them in 2004.
Then add in wide open contests for both nominations.
All of this was in place before California moved its primary for 2008 during the first half of 2007. There was already a foundation in place drawing states to earlier dates on the 2008 calendar. California and three other states had legislation introduced in January 2007 to move their primaries to February 5, 2008. Only an additional seven primary states initiated legislation to shift to February or earlier positions after California began its effort to shift into February 2008. An argument could be made that California contributed to that stampede to what was called Titanic Tuesday. However, what was not witnessed in 2007 was "more than 20 other states also mov[ing] up their contests in response."
That is false. The conditions were already in place for a massive move before California legislators began their work on the effort in early 2007.
What is different in 2020 is that California has moved much earlier than most states tend to move.
Fun fact:
Should Governor Brown sign SB 568 into law, the two most populous states will occupy the same [early] spot on the calendar for the first time. Texas is already scheduled to have an early March primary in 2020. Those two states have never shared a date on the presidential primary calendar in the post-reform era. New York shared an early date with California in March 2000 and February 2008, but Texas had already slipped past New York in population by 2000. Texas offers another option for those [non-Califorinian] candidates who would be seeking delegates on that date outside of the Golden state. But together, they are quite the pairing so early on the calendar. And likely to be joined by others.
Interesting possibility:
One early reaction to the California bill passing both legislative hurdles was from the heart of the SEC primary move for 2016. Like 1988, there was some coordination among some southern states to coalesce on an earlier spot on the 2016 primary calendar. That effort was spearheaded by Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp. Asked for comment in the wake of passage in California, Kemp's office suggested one option may be to move the SEC primary to a later date.
For the most part, states have not tended to unilaterally disarm in that way, moving to a later date. To the extent that has happened, it has usually been budgetary. It is a function of states experimenting with a separate and earlier presidential primary, but not getting as large a return on investment as expected. States like Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina have decoupled their presidential primaries from (pre-convention) May and June consolidated primaries only to reverse course soon thereafter. The costs of funding a new and separate presidential primary were too steep to carry out more than once; particularly after it failed to net any of them the influence they sought.
The other scenario where states have moved to later dates is when forced to by a change in national party rules. It was mentioned above that in 2004 both parties allowed February contests. After the de facto national primary in 2008 and some of the other maneuvering that pushed Iowa and New Hampshire into the year prior to the presidential election, both parties moved to protect the early states -- carving out February for those four contests -- and prohibiting other states from holding contests prior to March. That left a lot of states with February primaries on the books in their states that were forced to move back in 2012. Some shifted to the newly established earliest allowed date -- the first Tuesday in March -- while others pushed back even further.
But those states were prompted to move by a change in the national party rules. At this time, there is no such prompting -- via penalty or incentive -- from the national parties. That may change between now and 2018 when the 2020 rules are finalized.
One final aspect to an SEC primary move, especially if it is to a much later date, is that on the Democratic side, such a move would mean shifting back a meaningful segment of the Democratic primary electorate: African Americans, who make up over half of the primary electorate in a number of those southern states. The optics on that would likely be bad, but it remains to be seen whether Republican-controlled legislatures across the south would view that as a roadblock.
Still, that is an implication of the SEC primary potentially moving back.
Interesting possibility II:
California had not adjourned its session before talk emerged from Oregon about the possibility of the Beaver state dislodging itself from its traditional May primary position to perhaps join California in March. But California was only part of the rationale in Oregon. Efforts in 2015 and 2017 to shift the Washington state primary from May to March were also a part of the Oregon secretary of state's calculus.
SEC primary meet a PAC12 primary (or at the very least a West Coast primary)?
Let's focus on the coastal states. There is some reason to be skeptical of Oregon and Washington joining up with California based on the evidence we have now. There are several factors that complicate matters for the Golden state's northern neighbors.
First, the efforts in both states to this point are mainly Republican-driven. It was the Republican secretary of state in Oregon last week who said he would push for an earlier primary. But Oregon has a consolidated primary in late May, one they would have to split up and fund to have an earlier presidential primary. The statewide primary cannot be earlier -- in March -- because it would conflict with the state legislative session and that is prohibited in the state (no campaigning by legislators during their legislative session). The key question in Oregon, then, is whether Democrats will be willing to fund a separate and earlier presidential primary in March 2020. They tried that in 1996 and went right back to the current set up in 2000.
In Washington, Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) spent some of 2015 trying to get Democrats in the Washington state legislature to go along with a plan to move the primary there to the second Tuesday in March for 2016. That got bottled up in committee. In the grand scheme of things, that has everything to do with Democrats having opted out of the state-funded primary since it came into being via ballot initiative in 1989. Washington Democrats have just preferred caucuses. They -- caucuses -- are much easier to move around because they don't have to go through a legislature in most cases. And Washington has had earlier caucuses in the recent past. One could see Democrats there opting for caucuses aligned with a California primary, but again, there is reason to be skeptical that Secretary Wyman will be successful in lobbying to get the primary moved up.
Should Washington Democrats pull the trigger on such a move, it could put some pressure on Oregon Democrats to follow suit with a primary move. But that likely won't happen until 2019. And it goes without saying that at this point, March 3 looks like it is going to be quite crowded which could minimize the impact of a western (sub)regional primary. Should the SEC primary states disarm and move back, then maybe that western primary will be noteworthy, but see the above discussion about that SEC primary possibility.
There is also the chance of a more expansive PAC12 primary. Colorado has a primary now and the first Tuesday in March is an option at the governor's disposal in the Centennial state under the new state law. Additionally, Utah passed legislation earlier this year to fund a presidential primary. But the legislature will have to go back at some point and revisit the timing. The February and June options available to the state under law are both non-compliant with national party rules on timing. Finally, Arizona would have to move up a couple of weeks in March as well. There is no sign yet that anything along those lines is in the works. Overall, it is something that could gain traction if there are both Democratic and Republican proponents across those states.
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In the end, it looks as if California will move up to March for 2020. But be careful about coming to conclusions about what that means. It is still early yet.
But the bill FHQ was eyeing was SB 568, the amended legislation that would shift the California primary -- a consolidated presidential and statewide primary -- from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June to the first Tuesday following the first Monday in March. That is not a proposal without significance, but in its amended form was scaled back from the more ambitious version that was originally introduced in February.
[Rather than rehash all of the particulars of the evolution of the bill here, I will encourage readers to check out those links from earlier in the year.]
It was that simpler version that eventually came up for a third reading and vote in the Assembly on the day the legislature was set to adjourn. Heading in, the early handicapping projected passage, and that was to be expected given Democratic support of the measure and the party in control in both chambers. Moreover, a similar bill that originated in the Assembly passed the lower chamber on a near party line vote back in July.
The vote on SB 568 mirrored that earlier vote on AB 84, passing 55-21 largely along party lines. Three Republicans crossed to vote in favor of the legislation while only one Democrat defected to vote no. That sent the amended bill back to the state Senate for concurrence where it, too, passed -- 26-10 -- on the strength of mainly Democratic votes. One member from each party opposed the party positions on the vote.
At this point, it seems as if Governor Jerry Brown (D) will sign the bill into law (but even in the event of a veto, Democrats have supermajorities in both the Assembly and Senate and would need to keep either nearly all of their members on board or the same supporters together to reach the two-thirds threshold to override the veto).
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Regardless of how it gets there, it looks like this bill will become law, and California will see its presidential (and statewide) primary shift up three months from June to March in 2020. What does it mean?
As it turns out, as others have gotten wind of this potential move, there has been no shortage of reactions to its impacts. Most have seen BIG STATE MOVING LOTS OF DELEGATES TO THE FRONT OF THE 2020 CALENDAR and have (over)reacted in predictable ways. Let's look at some of these reactions and offer some context along with some other notes of interest about the likely move.
Point I:
Some have contended that a California move to the earliest date allowed non-carve-out states by the national parties will advantage homegrown candidates.
Counterpoint:
That really is not an unreasonable conclusion. Someone like Kamala Harris would seemingly have a leg up in terms of organizing in the state, raising money from donors -- big money and otherwise -- in the state, and has already won statewide there. That looks good on paper, but is also a hypothesis that has been tested in other states with other candidates in past cycles. And the results have been mixed, and anything but a clear advantage for home state candidates.
Jimmy Carter's nascent 1980 team was involved in nudging legislators in both Alabama and Carter's own Georgia to move their primaries to coincide with the Florida primary in March. The idea was similar: give a candidate from the region (the South) some early wins. In addition, the primary motivation for the Carter team was to counter early hypothetical wins by Ted Kennedy in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Of course, Carter benefited from but did not necessarily need that southern counterpunch after winning in New Hampshire.
And that is a decent lesson to take from this: unintended consequences. [Actually, that is a good lesson for anything involving the patchwork presidential nomination process.] Just because a candidate's home state has a well-scheduled primary or caucus, it does not mean that the move will pay dividends when it counts.
The reasons are quite simple.
First, those favorite sons and daughters have to survive to the point on the calendar on which their state primary is scheduled. California will be fifth among at least seven other states on March 3, 2020. Harris, Eric Garcetti or any other Californian vying for a presidential nomination in 2020 will still have to show some progress in the four likely February states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Four losses and a month's worth of potential negative press/fundraising as a result is no way to go into what would become a do-or-die contest back home in the Golden state. And no, Rudy Giuliani, you cannot just skip those first states and put all your chips in the California -- or in the former New York mayor's case, Florida -- basket. One runs the risk of losing any positive reaction to good showings in the early states and/or the race and other (victorious) candidates passing you by.
Second, as mentioned above, candidates will have options other than California on March 3, 2020. Texas or Virginia or Tennessee or take your pick. Candidates can go elsewhere in search of delegates. The Democratic candidates in 2008 that survived to Super Tuesday steered clear of Illinois, for example. They ceded the state to Obama and focused elsewhere. The same was true of Arkansas on the same date that year. No one ventured into the Natural state either, yielding to Clinton (and Huckabee) there.
Third and alternatively, a home state contest could also be a net negative for their candidate(s). And that is not necessarily because there may be multiple Californians in the race. There will be winnowing during February that will likely guard against that (multi-Californian) negative. No, home state contests can become must-wins for their candidates or may be opportunities for opponents to deal a death blow to the campaign of those from that state by beating them there. Both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in Florida in 2016 comes to mind on both those points. Each had discussions about primary timing and allocation with Sunshine state legislators in the lead up to 2016, and both Bush and Rubio and their teams were thinking the same thing: an unpenalized, winner-take-all Florida primary sure would be beneficial.
On paper, well in advance of 2016 voting, it was. However, presidential nominations are not won and lost on paper. Few elections are. What looked good to Rubio's and Bush's teams during the invisible primary in 2013-15 looked far different in 2016. Bush did not make it to Florida on March 15 and the loss there knocked Rubio from the race. It takes time to organize elections, and in that time -- from date scheduling to actual election -- conditions can change and ruin even the best laid plans.
None of this is to suggest that California will not be a boon to one of its home-grown candidates. Rather, the point is to provide some context. It is much to early to come to any such conclusion with an level of confidence and that is mainly a function of how similar moves have played out in other states and for other candidates during the post-reform era.
Point II:
Others have argued that an early California primary could price out some candidates; that the financial burden will now be too great for all but the candidates richest in resources.
Counterpoint:
While there is a kernel of truth to that contention -- big, populous, expensive state newly early on the calendar makes it tougher on candidates -- another way of approaching the analysis of the impact is to look at how things would be in 2020 without California alongside seven or more other states in early March.
After all, there are already states in that position on the calendar for 2020 and California was not alone in 2017 in looking at moving its primary there. Legislation to move primaries to the beginning of March was also put forth in Arkansas and North Carolina this year (and in Nebraska in 2016). No, those efforts were not successful, but movement in the year following a presidential election is atypical. It just is not a priority for most legislators until the year before a presidential election. Additionally, the three caucus-turned-primary states for 2020 -- Colorado, Maine and Minnesota -- have a history of contests on that same date or in early March. It would not surprising to see those new primaries end up next to California. And Georgia would likely strongly considered setting its date there again if the remnants of the SEC primary remain on the date. [Georgia "Gardner-ized" its primary scheduling process ahead of 2012, allowing the secretary of state the power to set the date. It resets every cycle. More on this below.]
None of this even considers other states that may also look at this early March position between now and mid- to late 2019.
The point here is to highlight the fact that California has chosen a landing spot on the calendar that tends to be overly clustered with other contests and has typically allocated the most delegates of any date on the calendar in most cycles. That was certainly true in 2016. With or without California, the point on the calendar most often dubbed Super Tuesday was going to be super anyway. That creates an obstacle -- having to compete in many places at once -- for candidates that has usually separated the wheat from the chaff (if that winnowing had not already occurred to some degree during the preceding invisible primary and early contests).
Yes, California adds to that burden from a delegates and expenditures standpoint, but what is the marginal effect adding the Golden state to the mix on Super Tuesday? Do any more candidates drop out because of their -- California's -- addition to the line up? In real time, in the midst of primary season, probably not many. The effects will most likely be felt during the invisible primary, where much of the nomination maneuvering has transitioned to throughout the post-reform era.
Now, to be clear, this California move is endogenous to candidate decision-making. Prospective candidates may look at a slate of contests that includes California, Texas and others and say, "Hey, I can't compete with the fundraising (or endorsements, media attention, organization) of candidate X! I'm not running." But again, I am skeptical that those candidates would not arrive at the conclusion even if California still had a June primary in 2020.
And to be fair to Walter Shapiro, who wrote the article cited in the "Point" above, we really do not have a clear and specific answer to the the question of how Democrats will adapt to super PACs in 2020. The Republican experimentation in 2012 and 2016 likely indicates the limits, but the Democrats lag in that experimentation in the primaries phase following an uncompetitive race in 2012 and a battle in 2016 where super PACs and the Citizens United decision were negatively viewed.
Point III:
Still others have made the case in the lead up to these final votes on the California primary bill that California will provide a big net delegate margin that will effectively end the race for the Democratic nomination.
Counterpoint:
This is a problematic claim from at least a couple of perspectives.
First, that may be true, but not necessarily because of this California move. Again, legislators in the Golden state have settled on a date that is already moderately crowded with other contests and may get even more crowded between now and the end of 2019. Sure, that could lead to the effective conclusion of the nomination, but that depends on a lot of factors: invisible primary fundraising, media coverage and organization not to mention how the likely first four contests go in February. There is a scenario where someone runs the table like Al Gore did with a similar calendar in 2000. Such a scenario would likely see this hypothetical frontrunner build not a delegate majority but enough of a delegate advantage to render a comeback by a trailing candidate nearly impossible.
Absent that clear frontrunner running away with the nomination, however, the 2020 race is unlikely to see the race run its course by early March. That is even more true in light of the fact that the field of Democrats seeking the nomination looks like it will be quite large. There will be some winnowing in February, but it remains to be seen just how much the field will have shrunk by a Super Tuesday that includes California. There are and will be too many moving parts shifting between now and that point in the cycle.
Speaking of building delegate leads, the second reason California's presence on Super Tuesday will not be the decisive contest (via large delegate advantage) is the allocation rules. The Democratic National Committee has maintained a proportional allocation mandate on all states for every cycle stretching back into the 1980s. That affects the math. One candidate -- homegrown or otherwise -- is not going to waltz into the Golden state and leave with a win and nearly 500 delegates. California is not winner-take-all. Instead, it would take a significant victory in the state to produce what Matt Seyfang calls a net delegate margin large enough to offset potential delegate wins elsewhere for other candidates. Hillary Clinton has won each of the last two competitive California primaries by around 8 percent. That translated to a +38 delegate advantage in February 2008 and a +33 delegate margin in June 2016. That represents a significant building block in any race for delegates, but not a death knell to other candidates unless combined with many other wins across the Super Tuesday slate of contests. And to state the obvious, a 30-40 delegate advantage coming out of California is a far cry from a nearly 500 delegate margin under winner-take-all rules.
Point IV:
Further out on the fringes of social media, some are contending that moving the California primary is yet more evidence of the Democratic National Committee "rigging" the presidential nomination process.
Counterpoint:
The DNC is not rigging the nomination.
National parties create the overarching rules that provide guidance on the parameters around how states -- state parties and state governments -- behave in the process. The DNC has put in place limits on the timing of primaries and caucuses and has a mandate for proportional allocation (with minimal latitude provided to the states). Both parties have various ways of doing this, but both examine the rules from the previous cycle in the two years after a presidential election. In recent cycles, both parties have completed that process and approved new rules for the next cycle in the late summer or early fall of the midterm election year.
That gives the states about a one year window in which to respond with any tweaks to their previous scheduling, allocation or participation regulations, or to leave well enough alone if the previous configuration remains compliant with the national party rules regime.
If anything, California is acting perhaps too early by moving up its primary before the national party rules are complete for 2020. A change at the DNC level could mean that California is non-compliant and would have to again make legislative changes to the primary date. This is the main reason most states hold off until the year prior to the presidential election to make any changes. There is more certainty then in terms of the national party restrictions and how other states may be reacting to them.
And there is not any apparent evidence that the national party was in any way involved in the introduction of the legislation to move the primary up. For one thing, when frontloading and Iowa's and New Hampshire's carve-out positions on the calendar were being discussed at the first meeting of the Unity Reform Commission -- the group tasked with reexamining the Democratic delegate selection rules -- the California bill was raised. Sanders appointee, Gus Newport, mentioned in passing that he "thought" the California legislature was looking at moving its primary up to an earlier date. There was no reaction from the rest of the group; no angry denunciations, no commentary on how California has tried this in the past and its impacts, and no discussion of the implications for 2020 from Clinton or Sanders appointees. Nothing. And that was a day after one of the bills in the Golden state passed through its chamber of origin. It is not that the URC not responding is evidence that the DNC was not intervening in California. Rather, what was noteworthy at the time is that no outrage was expressed over it.
If anything the existing DNC rules -- directly or indirectly -- constrained the legislative actions in California. The bill that now heads to Governor Brown's desk for consideration began in a much more provocative form. The original legislation that passed the state Senate called for moving the primary to the third Tuesday in March, but with the added provision that the governor could shift the date up even further onto the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire. Under a hypothetical scenario in which the California governor opts in 2019 to move the primary into February, said primary would be non-compliant and thus open the state up a 50 percent cut to its delegation.
But that provision disappeared in late August and in its place was a more convention move to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March that, more importantly, would be compliant with the DNC delegate selection rules that are likely to carry over to 2020.
Of course, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (and later the full DNC) could change that in reaction to this move in California. The party will have the time to do that, but whether the inclination is there is another matter. There are a few Californians in the DNC that may balk at such a move.
But the reality of this likely shift in California is that it has been a self-interested maneuver aimed at increasing the state's influence in the process. Many state actors have sought as much many times in previous cycles. And that is something the DNC is hands off about unless a move violates the parties rules (see Florida and Michigan, 2008).
Point V:
Finally, some have argued that a California move will draw or has in the past drawn other states forward on the 2020 calendar.
Counterpoint:
This is trickier to tackle. The process is obviously complex as all of the above indicates. It should also be said that from a superficial angle, it makes sense to reason that if a big state moves up, others will follow. FHQ has even done that. However, when we do those exercises hey tend to be in the abstract with some historical examples to back it up.
The California move to late March for the 1996 cycle brought Oregon along for the ride, but that sort of intra-cycle call and response was unusual then. Yes, the majority of southern states coordinated a move nearly en masse to early March for the 1988 cycle, but prior 2000 most of the movement happened in a more independent (uncoordinated) fashion and between cycles rather than within them. There are exceptions to that -- the Great Lakes primary of mid-March 1996 or the aforementioned Oregon shift that same year -- but that began to change in 2004 and 2008.
States, then, reacted to California's 1996 move in 2000. California actually reacted to its 1996 move in 2000 by moving up from late to early March. So there was both intra- and inter-cycle reaction to California's double move.
But California's impact on the de facto national primary that developed for 2008 is being overstated by Politico in the article cited above. Democrats aligning their timing rules with the Republican National Committee by allowing February contests in 2004 set the stage for the formation of the 2008 calendar. There were 17 Democratic contests in February 2004, seven of which were on the first Tuesday in February. An additional four states moved to the first Tuesday in February before 2007. That is 21 February states that were either going to repeat February contests by law in 2008 or had a history of them in 2004.
Then add in wide open contests for both nominations.
All of this was in place before California moved its primary for 2008 during the first half of 2007. There was already a foundation in place drawing states to earlier dates on the 2008 calendar. California and three other states had legislation introduced in January 2007 to move their primaries to February 5, 2008. Only an additional seven primary states initiated legislation to shift to February or earlier positions after California began its effort to shift into February 2008. An argument could be made that California contributed to that stampede to what was called Titanic Tuesday. However, what was not witnessed in 2007 was "more than 20 other states also mov[ing] up their contests in response."
That is false. The conditions were already in place for a massive move before California legislators began their work on the effort in early 2007.
What is different in 2020 is that California has moved much earlier than most states tend to move.
Fun fact:
Should Governor Brown sign SB 568 into law, the two most populous states will occupy the same [early] spot on the calendar for the first time. Texas is already scheduled to have an early March primary in 2020. Those two states have never shared a date on the presidential primary calendar in the post-reform era. New York shared an early date with California in March 2000 and February 2008, but Texas had already slipped past New York in population by 2000. Texas offers another option for those [non-Califorinian] candidates who would be seeking delegates on that date outside of the Golden state. But together, they are quite the pairing so early on the calendar. And likely to be joined by others.
Interesting possibility:
One early reaction to the California bill passing both legislative hurdles was from the heart of the SEC primary move for 2016. Like 1988, there was some coordination among some southern states to coalesce on an earlier spot on the 2016 primary calendar. That effort was spearheaded by Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp. Asked for comment in the wake of passage in California, Kemp's office suggested one option may be to move the SEC primary to a later date.
For the most part, states have not tended to unilaterally disarm in that way, moving to a later date. To the extent that has happened, it has usually been budgetary. It is a function of states experimenting with a separate and earlier presidential primary, but not getting as large a return on investment as expected. States like Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina have decoupled their presidential primaries from (pre-convention) May and June consolidated primaries only to reverse course soon thereafter. The costs of funding a new and separate presidential primary were too steep to carry out more than once; particularly after it failed to net any of them the influence they sought.
The other scenario where states have moved to later dates is when forced to by a change in national party rules. It was mentioned above that in 2004 both parties allowed February contests. After the de facto national primary in 2008 and some of the other maneuvering that pushed Iowa and New Hampshire into the year prior to the presidential election, both parties moved to protect the early states -- carving out February for those four contests -- and prohibiting other states from holding contests prior to March. That left a lot of states with February primaries on the books in their states that were forced to move back in 2012. Some shifted to the newly established earliest allowed date -- the first Tuesday in March -- while others pushed back even further.
But those states were prompted to move by a change in the national party rules. At this time, there is no such prompting -- via penalty or incentive -- from the national parties. That may change between now and 2018 when the 2020 rules are finalized.
One final aspect to an SEC primary move, especially if it is to a much later date, is that on the Democratic side, such a move would mean shifting back a meaningful segment of the Democratic primary electorate: African Americans, who make up over half of the primary electorate in a number of those southern states. The optics on that would likely be bad, but it remains to be seen whether Republican-controlled legislatures across the south would view that as a roadblock.
Still, that is an implication of the SEC primary potentially moving back.
Interesting possibility II:
California had not adjourned its session before talk emerged from Oregon about the possibility of the Beaver state dislodging itself from its traditional May primary position to perhaps join California in March. But California was only part of the rationale in Oregon. Efforts in 2015 and 2017 to shift the Washington state primary from May to March were also a part of the Oregon secretary of state's calculus.
SEC primary meet a PAC12 primary (or at the very least a West Coast primary)?
Let's focus on the coastal states. There is some reason to be skeptical of Oregon and Washington joining up with California based on the evidence we have now. There are several factors that complicate matters for the Golden state's northern neighbors.
First, the efforts in both states to this point are mainly Republican-driven. It was the Republican secretary of state in Oregon last week who said he would push for an earlier primary. But Oregon has a consolidated primary in late May, one they would have to split up and fund to have an earlier presidential primary. The statewide primary cannot be earlier -- in March -- because it would conflict with the state legislative session and that is prohibited in the state (no campaigning by legislators during their legislative session). The key question in Oregon, then, is whether Democrats will be willing to fund a separate and earlier presidential primary in March 2020. They tried that in 1996 and went right back to the current set up in 2000.
In Washington, Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) spent some of 2015 trying to get Democrats in the Washington state legislature to go along with a plan to move the primary there to the second Tuesday in March for 2016. That got bottled up in committee. In the grand scheme of things, that has everything to do with Democrats having opted out of the state-funded primary since it came into being via ballot initiative in 1989. Washington Democrats have just preferred caucuses. They -- caucuses -- are much easier to move around because they don't have to go through a legislature in most cases. And Washington has had earlier caucuses in the recent past. One could see Democrats there opting for caucuses aligned with a California primary, but again, there is reason to be skeptical that Secretary Wyman will be successful in lobbying to get the primary moved up.
Should Washington Democrats pull the trigger on such a move, it could put some pressure on Oregon Democrats to follow suit with a primary move. But that likely won't happen until 2019. And it goes without saying that at this point, March 3 looks like it is going to be quite crowded which could minimize the impact of a western (sub)regional primary. Should the SEC primary states disarm and move back, then maybe that western primary will be noteworthy, but see the above discussion about that SEC primary possibility.
There is also the chance of a more expansive PAC12 primary. Colorado has a primary now and the first Tuesday in March is an option at the governor's disposal in the Centennial state under the new state law. Additionally, Utah passed legislation earlier this year to fund a presidential primary. But the legislature will have to go back at some point and revisit the timing. The February and June options available to the state under law are both non-compliant with national party rules on timing. Finally, Arizona would have to move up a couple of weeks in March as well. There is no sign yet that anything along those lines is in the works. Overall, it is something that could gain traction if there are both Democratic and Republican proponents across those states.
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In the end, it looks as if California will move up to March for 2020. But be careful about coming to conclusions about what that means. It is still early yet.
Bells and Whistles Removed, Amended California Presidential Primary Bill Moves Forward
For much of 2017, there have been a couple of bills working their way through the California State Assembly to change the date of the presidential primary in the Golden state. And for much of the year both have been on a bit of a collision course. Both have made it through their originating chamber, but the bills differ from one another, requiring some reconciliation at some point.
That reconciliation came as August came to a close last week. The crux of this is that the Senate-passed bill called for the continued consolidation of the presidential primary with the direct primary for state and local offices and moving that combined primary from early June to the third Tuesday in March. Additionally, the legislation would have given the California governor the power to shift that consolidated primary up even further on the primary calendar than the newly called for March baseline.
Alternatively, the Assembly took a simpler path, more consistent with the way in which other states tend to move their primaries around. Again, the budgetary constraints placed on the state almost require the presidential and direct primaries to remain consolidated. A separate presidential primary election would cost the state more than $100 million. But the Assembly bill would leave the direct primary in June in midterm election years while shifting the consolidated primary election up to the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March in presidential years.
In the end, there were atypical aspects to each piece of legislation. The staggered result of that Assembly bill (AB 84) -- a March primary in one year, and a June primary in another -- is exception rather than rule in most states with consolidated primaries. Alabama and Mississippi stand out as states that have a similar, on-again-off-again approach, but again, most states -- Illinois and Texas among them -- with consolidated primaries tend to be more consistent, holding them at the same calendar point regardless of the what office is at the top of the ticket in a given year.
On the state Senate side, the uncommon provision in the bill (SB 568) was and has always been the additional power granted the governor to shift the primary to an even earlier date than the new third Tuesday in March baseline. It was always poorly designed. Basically, the earliest the governor could realistically schedule the primary was for the first Tuesday in March. There is more to it than that -- which interested readers can dig into here -- but that essentially powerless power ceded to the governor would only really give the executive in the Golden state the ability to move the primary to a point on the calendar where Assembly bill would already move it.
But as of August 31, those complications are gone. First, the Assembly bill was pulled off the active list in the Senate and the gubernatorial provision was removed from the Senate bill. What is left is a piece of legislation (SB 568) that would push the consolidated California primary election up from the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in June to the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March. That calendar position would be used in both presidential and midterm election years starting in 2019, eliminating the staggering of the Assembly bill.
The amended Senate bill will now go on the calendar for a final vote in the Assembly and have to return to the Senate for consideration there before moving on to the governor for signature. With a uniform date now settled, California's potential impact on the 2020 presidential primary calendar can be more clearly discussed. As outlined in previous posts in this space, the proposed shift would move a significant chunk of delegates from late in the calendar to the earliest spot on the calendar after the four carve-out states. Such a cache of delegates moving to the beginning of March would shift up the point at which half the delegates will have been allocated in both parties by about a week depending on how other states react between now and 2020.
First, though, California has to move its primary. And that will likely take more time as the remaining Senate-passed (but now amended) bill continues its path through the legislative process.
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A tip of the cap to Richard Winger at Ballot Access News for passing along news of the amendment to FHQ.
That reconciliation came as August came to a close last week. The crux of this is that the Senate-passed bill called for the continued consolidation of the presidential primary with the direct primary for state and local offices and moving that combined primary from early June to the third Tuesday in March. Additionally, the legislation would have given the California governor the power to shift that consolidated primary up even further on the primary calendar than the newly called for March baseline.
Alternatively, the Assembly took a simpler path, more consistent with the way in which other states tend to move their primaries around. Again, the budgetary constraints placed on the state almost require the presidential and direct primaries to remain consolidated. A separate presidential primary election would cost the state more than $100 million. But the Assembly bill would leave the direct primary in June in midterm election years while shifting the consolidated primary election up to the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March in presidential years.
In the end, there were atypical aspects to each piece of legislation. The staggered result of that Assembly bill (AB 84) -- a March primary in one year, and a June primary in another -- is exception rather than rule in most states with consolidated primaries. Alabama and Mississippi stand out as states that have a similar, on-again-off-again approach, but again, most states -- Illinois and Texas among them -- with consolidated primaries tend to be more consistent, holding them at the same calendar point regardless of the what office is at the top of the ticket in a given year.
On the state Senate side, the uncommon provision in the bill (SB 568) was and has always been the additional power granted the governor to shift the primary to an even earlier date than the new third Tuesday in March baseline. It was always poorly designed. Basically, the earliest the governor could realistically schedule the primary was for the first Tuesday in March. There is more to it than that -- which interested readers can dig into here -- but that essentially powerless power ceded to the governor would only really give the executive in the Golden state the ability to move the primary to a point on the calendar where Assembly bill would already move it.
But as of August 31, those complications are gone. First, the Assembly bill was pulled off the active list in the Senate and the gubernatorial provision was removed from the Senate bill. What is left is a piece of legislation (SB 568) that would push the consolidated California primary election up from the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in June to the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March. That calendar position would be used in both presidential and midterm election years starting in 2019, eliminating the staggering of the Assembly bill.
The amended Senate bill will now go on the calendar for a final vote in the Assembly and have to return to the Senate for consideration there before moving on to the governor for signature. With a uniform date now settled, California's potential impact on the 2020 presidential primary calendar can be more clearly discussed. As outlined in previous posts in this space, the proposed shift would move a significant chunk of delegates from late in the calendar to the earliest spot on the calendar after the four carve-out states. Such a cache of delegates moving to the beginning of March would shift up the point at which half the delegates will have been allocated in both parties by about a week depending on how other states react between now and 2020.
First, though, California has to move its primary. And that will likely take more time as the remaining Senate-passed (but now amended) bill continues its path through the legislative process.
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A tip of the cap to Richard Winger at Ballot Access News for passing along news of the amendment to FHQ.
California Continues Slow March Toward Earlier Presidential Primary
In the earliest stages of the 2020 presidential election cycle, there has been little maneuvering on the nascent calendar of primary and caucus contests. However, the state that seems most likely to shift in 2017 in anticipation of the next nomination phase is a big one.
The question that emerges from the legislative action in California is where in March the Golden state will settle on the calendar. March is the destination in the two bills that have worked their way through the originating chamber -- one from the Assembly and one from the Senate -- to the cusp of final votes across the capitol. But they are not companion bills, nor has any effort been made to reconcile the two pieces of legislation with each other.
On the Senate side, AB 84 made it out of committee late last week with a unanimous green light to move the primary from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. But the Senate -- including the same Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional amendments -- had already passed the more complicated SB 568. That bill would also move a consolidated California primary from June to March but to the third Tuesday in March (with an option for the governor to move the election up even further).
The same has been true on the Assembly side. The Assembly bill made it through its initial chamber and has made it through the committee stage on the state Senate with no amendments aimed at reconciling the two bills.
And the differences extend beyond a conflict over the date of the primary election in presidential election years. There is also a discrepancy with respect to the timing of the primary in midterm years. The Senate's governor's option bill would move the primary to the third Tuesday in March in both presidential and midterm years with the allowance that the governor may move the primary to an earlier date from the proposed earlier late March baseline. Yet, the Assembly version would maintain the June primary date in midterm years while shifting the consolidated primary to early March in presidential years only.
Neither version has seen much resistance along the way despite the differences. As such, it may be that the state legislature will defer to the governor to decide which version to sign (or veto them both).
Regardless, it should be noted that small changes to the Senate version in the Assembly will ultimately send the legislation back to the Senate if it passes the Assembly. That version, too, received a second reading on the floor of the Assembly, but was referred to the Appropriations Committee. That more complicated version -- with the governor's option -- may end up bottled up there with the more straightforward Assembly version pushing through to the governor.
The slow march (in an even slower year for presidential primary movement) continues in California.
The question that emerges from the legislative action in California is where in March the Golden state will settle on the calendar. March is the destination in the two bills that have worked their way through the originating chamber -- one from the Assembly and one from the Senate -- to the cusp of final votes across the capitol. But they are not companion bills, nor has any effort been made to reconcile the two pieces of legislation with each other.
On the Senate side, AB 84 made it out of committee late last week with a unanimous green light to move the primary from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. But the Senate -- including the same Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional amendments -- had already passed the more complicated SB 568. That bill would also move a consolidated California primary from June to March but to the third Tuesday in March (with an option for the governor to move the election up even further).
The same has been true on the Assembly side. The Assembly bill made it through its initial chamber and has made it through the committee stage on the state Senate with no amendments aimed at reconciling the two bills.
And the differences extend beyond a conflict over the date of the primary election in presidential election years. There is also a discrepancy with respect to the timing of the primary in midterm years. The Senate's governor's option bill would move the primary to the third Tuesday in March in both presidential and midterm years with the allowance that the governor may move the primary to an earlier date from the proposed earlier late March baseline. Yet, the Assembly version would maintain the June primary date in midterm years while shifting the consolidated primary to early March in presidential years only.
Neither version has seen much resistance along the way despite the differences. As such, it may be that the state legislature will defer to the governor to decide which version to sign (or veto them both).
Regardless, it should be noted that small changes to the Senate version in the Assembly will ultimately send the legislation back to the Senate if it passes the Assembly. That version, too, received a second reading on the floor of the Assembly, but was referred to the Appropriations Committee. That more complicated version -- with the governor's option -- may end up bottled up there with the more straightforward Assembly version pushing through to the governor.
The slow march (in an even slower year for presidential primary movement) continues in California.
California Primary to March?
It looks that way.
The question that remains after competing bills passed each house in the state legislature on May 4 is exactly where in March the primary ends up in 2020. The Assembly bill -- AB 84 -- is the more straightforward of the two. It shifts a consolidated California primary back into the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March position the Golden state primary occupied during the 2000 and 2004 cycles.
Alternatively, the Senate version -- SB 568 -- is a bit more complex. On the surface, it stakes out a less ambitious, third Tuesday in March spot on the calendar. However, it also gives the California governor the option of bumping the primary up to an even earlier position. Now, given current national party timing penalties on presidential primaries, anything earlier than the first Tuesday in March is a non-starter. That gubernatorial power is rendered mostly powerless; except granting the executive branch the ability to move the primary up as early as the date called for in the Assembly legislation.
While it is true that a version of this March primary legislation has passed each chamber of the California state legislature, one version obviously still has to pass the opposite house and be signed into law. The first of those seems more likely than not, but the gubernatorial signature is not assured (though admittedly likely given the synchronicity of an open 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and Democrats' unified control in the Golden state).
The likelihood of a move, then is quite high. That carries with it a couple of additional notes worth mentioning here.
First, this move would be on the early side. While some states schedule their presidential primaries for the next cycle before the midterm year, it is exception rather than rule. The vast majority states hold off on acting until the timing of the presidential primary is actually on most legislators radar. Occasionally, that is immediately after a presidential election year, but more often than not, the urgency is higher after the midterms and more importantly after the national parties have set their delegate selection rules for the upcoming cycle.
Since this California move would be made earlier than is typical, the legislature would theoretically have the ability to move again. That is probably not likely this time around, but it should be noted that California shifted from March to June after 2004 before moving again -- from June to February -- ahead of the 2008 cycle. All the incentives are to move earlier, and in this 2020 case, California will already be as early as it possibly can be. Unless the national parties seek to penalize March primaries, then, California would be unlikely to pull up the tent stakes and move again; this time to a later date.
Additionally, a California push into March has a certain gravitational pull to it. In delegates terms, the cache of delegates in California represented nearly seven percent of the total number of Republican delegates in 2016 and nearly 11.5 percent on the Democratic side. That is a level of delegate-richness that brings other states along for the ride. That happened in 1996, 2000 and 2008 -- all cycles that witnessed California shifting to an earlier primary date.
While there are only a handful of states with unified Democratic control now -- and thus have less motivation to move -- that may be different after the 2018 midterms. That is still a way off, but bears mention in this context. California may be alone in moving now, but would potentially pull many of those northeastern, mid-Atlantic states that shifted from February to much later dates in 2012 back into March, further frontloading the calendar.
Most of this is a story for 2019. But for now, the momentum is behind a California push into some Tuesday position in March.
The question that remains after competing bills passed each house in the state legislature on May 4 is exactly where in March the primary ends up in 2020. The Assembly bill -- AB 84 -- is the more straightforward of the two. It shifts a consolidated California primary back into the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March position the Golden state primary occupied during the 2000 and 2004 cycles.
Alternatively, the Senate version -- SB 568 -- is a bit more complex. On the surface, it stakes out a less ambitious, third Tuesday in March spot on the calendar. However, it also gives the California governor the option of bumping the primary up to an even earlier position. Now, given current national party timing penalties on presidential primaries, anything earlier than the first Tuesday in March is a non-starter. That gubernatorial power is rendered mostly powerless; except granting the executive branch the ability to move the primary up as early as the date called for in the Assembly legislation.
While it is true that a version of this March primary legislation has passed each chamber of the California state legislature, one version obviously still has to pass the opposite house and be signed into law. The first of those seems more likely than not, but the gubernatorial signature is not assured (though admittedly likely given the synchronicity of an open 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and Democrats' unified control in the Golden state).
The likelihood of a move, then is quite high. That carries with it a couple of additional notes worth mentioning here.
First, this move would be on the early side. While some states schedule their presidential primaries for the next cycle before the midterm year, it is exception rather than rule. The vast majority states hold off on acting until the timing of the presidential primary is actually on most legislators radar. Occasionally, that is immediately after a presidential election year, but more often than not, the urgency is higher after the midterms and more importantly after the national parties have set their delegate selection rules for the upcoming cycle.
Since this California move would be made earlier than is typical, the legislature would theoretically have the ability to move again. That is probably not likely this time around, but it should be noted that California shifted from March to June after 2004 before moving again -- from June to February -- ahead of the 2008 cycle. All the incentives are to move earlier, and in this 2020 case, California will already be as early as it possibly can be. Unless the national parties seek to penalize March primaries, then, California would be unlikely to pull up the tent stakes and move again; this time to a later date.
Additionally, a California push into March has a certain gravitational pull to it. In delegates terms, the cache of delegates in California represented nearly seven percent of the total number of Republican delegates in 2016 and nearly 11.5 percent on the Democratic side. That is a level of delegate-richness that brings other states along for the ride. That happened in 1996, 2000 and 2008 -- all cycles that witnessed California shifting to an earlier primary date.
While there are only a handful of states with unified Democratic control now -- and thus have less motivation to move -- that may be different after the 2018 midterms. That is still a way off, but bears mention in this context. California may be alone in moving now, but would potentially pull many of those northeastern, mid-Atlantic states that shifted from February to much later dates in 2012 back into March, further frontloading the calendar.
Most of this is a story for 2019. But for now, the momentum is behind a California push into some Tuesday position in March.
California and the 2020 Prime Time Primary
Legislators in California are eyeing an earlier position on the 2020 presidential primary calendar.
There has been legislation (SB 568) to do something with the California presidential primary that has been active in the Golden state legislature since February. Amendments quietly added at the end of March garnered more attention yesterday with a press release from the secretary of state and the bill's author in the state Senate.
The change? Move California's June primary up in the process. But not just move it up, shift it into a position on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the 2020 queue.
In reality, this sounds more provocative than it actually is. This is not Florida or Michigan moving into January for the 2008 cycle. Instead, the California maneuvering is more subtle, yet motivated by similar reasoning. States, regardless of size, mainly want a couple of things out of the presidential nomination process: 1) their voters to have a say in the identity of the nominees and 2) to have the candidates pay some attention to -- spend money and time on -- them.
The best ways to accomplish those two goals are to be early and/or to have a specific spot on the calendar for your contest and your contest alone. Iowa and New Hampshire, and since 2008, Nevada and South Carolina have each of those in spades. There are many reasons for that, but currently, the important fact is that all four are protected by the delegate selection rules of the national parties. Without a change there -- to the national party rules -- efforts by California or any other state to move up usually means settling for the earliest allowed date after the four carve-out states or taking a substantial penalty. The former is an attractive gathering point for other states, which gets them early but not alone. And the latter -- the penalty -- reduces a state's clout, affecting the campaigns' calculi in approaching the state.
This is what happened when the California state legislature shifted the Golden state primary in both 2000 and 2008. California was early in both cases, but shared the date with numerous other states, giving campaigns options in terms of where and how to expend the finite resources at their disposal. These are not problems unique to the Golden state.
What is unique in California's case is its size. But the number, diversity and wealth of the population are both blessing and curse. Enough wealth is concentrated in the state that the candidates of all stripes have been more than willing to come into the state early to raise funds. But then they go spend it elsewhere; Iowa and New Hampshire chief among the recipients. Californians have often bemoaned this ATM treatment, and have at various points (1996, 2000, 2008) seen their legislatures seek a different relationship; a different, earlier position on the calendar that allows both fundraising and fund spending in the state. But again, all of those experiments got the state early, but not alone.
And the proposed 2020 experiment will not end any differently.
Let's game this out in a way that the proponents of this legislation have only partially thought out.
First, the SB 568 moves not only the California presidential primary to the third Tuesday in March, but everything else traditionally scheduled for June. That spares the state the $100 million plus price tag of a separate presidential primary, but also creates extended general election campaigns for all those down ballot who win February or March primaries.
But the legislation also provides another scheduling option on top of that baseline March primary date. Like other states which have mimicked New Hampshire to some degree, the California bill grants an individual -- not the state legislature -- the final say in the matter. States like Arizona, Georgia and New Mexico have experimented with allowing one individual -- typically the secretary of state as in New Hampshire, or the governor -- set the date of the presidential primary. In those cases the state legislature ceded the power to an executive branch actor in order to streamline the date setting process. It is understating things, but the legislative process can be messy and slow, and a political question like when a presidential primary should be held can trigger divisions that can derail legislation. Legislatures across the country are also not always in session during the second half of a year. That time constraint often compounds the problem of a glacial legislative process.
To be more nimble and reactive, then, a handful of state legislatures have given up the date-setting powers, granting them to an individual not hampered by internal division nor similar time constraints.
This California proposal partially ventures down the same road. The legislature sets the mid-March date, but gives the governor the ability to shift the primary up even further by proclamation. This is where most of the quick reaction analysis on this legislation has ended; with California's governor of the future hypothetically moving the California primary into the third position on the calendar behind Iowa and New Hampshire.
But there is more to the story than that.
This future California governor, if empowered by the provisions of this bill, is not unfettered. He or she would have to make a decision on the date a full 240 days prior to the proposed new/earlier presidential primary date. Now, if it is assumed that Iowa and New Hampshire will fall roughly in the same spots on the calendar as each did in 2016, then the calendar looks something like this (on the Democratic side) in 2020:
Monday, February 3: Iowa
Tuesday, February 11: New Hampshire
Tuesday, February 18: California
Saturday, February 22: Nevada
Saturday, February 29: South Carolina
Of course, it is anything but assured that the four carve-outs will be in those positions come 2020. And the reason why is because of ambitious states like California that introduce uncertainty into the process of the calendar coming together. Since that uncertainty has been routinized -- not to mention counterbalanced by national party rules -- the early four states usually hold off on formally scheduling their contests until the fall in the year prior to the presidential election. In other words, those states will not have official dates until fall 2019. Keep that in mind.
That affects California. If the governor waited until the end of September to set a date around the same time that the carve-outs settle on their own dates, then the 240 day buffer provision would mean that the earliest the future California governor could schedule the presidential primary for would be the very end of May. That would default to basically the same position California occupies now on the calendar.
But the reality of the provision is that it calls for the governor to move the date up from mid-March to an earlier date, not a later one. The 240 day buffer means the governor cannot wait to the fall to make a decision alongside Iowa, New Hampshire and the others. Waiting means giving up that power and falling back on the baseline March date the legislators are attempting to establish.
And making a decision earlier means the governor would be making the decision earlier and with less than complete information. To schedule a February 18 primary, a decision would have to be made by late June. A number of state legislatures will be out of session by that time and that may cut down on any potential clustering around a February 18 California primary. But that would be a decision that would give the carve-out states plenty of time to react accordingly and schedule their contests ahead of California.
That all leads to one conclusion: The third spot is out of the question for California.
The best they can hope for is fifth; playing the Florida role from 2012. That is the "we don't want to be first, we want to be early all by ourselves" argument. California's proposal logistically prevents it from getting the third slot, and the national party rules, unless amended, will prevent it from claiming a spot that is fifth in the order and before March. California could move up to the first Tuesday in March, but as the earliest date allowed by the national parties, that is a date that California would share with a number of other states, just like the 2000 and 2008 experiments.
What in the national party rules would prevent California from going before March? Penalties. Now, the national party rules can change and likely will in the coming months. But there is no apparent desire to alter basic framework of the calendar: carve-outs in February and everyone else between March and early June. A rules-defying February primary would cost California half of their delegates on the Democratic side and would reduce the Republican delegation from 172 to 12, a 93 percent reduction. Additionally, any Democratic candidates who campaign in a rogue California would lose any delegates won from the reduced pool. In that scenario, California could move up, be early and alone. Alone on the calendar and alone in terms of candidates spending time and money there.
This is a long and winding path with exit ramps that end in dead ends.
One cannot fault California legislators for walking down this path. They are not alone, and have adopted some innovations from other states. Still, the thinking is old and somewhat outdated. The race to the front is one that cannot be won. However, there are alternatives. A savvier approach might be to choose a spot on the calendar that is pretty barren. There is a lot of space in early and mid-April that could potentially benefit California. No, the primary would not be among the first to winnow the field, but it could serve as a knockout blow in the race for the nomination. Sure, proportional rules on the Democratic side work against that theory as does California's size. An April California primary would give those mid-Atlantic/northeastern states with later April primaries pause. California's gravitational pull in the delegate math means that states that want to give their voters a say -- any say -- in the nominations would want to be before a state as delegate-rich as California.
Even that route is fraught with peril and uncertainty. And keep in mind that the proposed proclamation power would only allow the governor to move the date up, not back to April. It really is a toothless provision.
So, third Tuesday in March? Set the date. Join Illinois. Join Arizona.
There has been legislation (SB 568) to do something with the California presidential primary that has been active in the Golden state legislature since February. Amendments quietly added at the end of March garnered more attention yesterday with a press release from the secretary of state and the bill's author in the state Senate.
The change? Move California's June primary up in the process. But not just move it up, shift it into a position on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the 2020 queue.
In reality, this sounds more provocative than it actually is. This is not Florida or Michigan moving into January for the 2008 cycle. Instead, the California maneuvering is more subtle, yet motivated by similar reasoning. States, regardless of size, mainly want a couple of things out of the presidential nomination process: 1) their voters to have a say in the identity of the nominees and 2) to have the candidates pay some attention to -- spend money and time on -- them.
The best ways to accomplish those two goals are to be early and/or to have a specific spot on the calendar for your contest and your contest alone. Iowa and New Hampshire, and since 2008, Nevada and South Carolina have each of those in spades. There are many reasons for that, but currently, the important fact is that all four are protected by the delegate selection rules of the national parties. Without a change there -- to the national party rules -- efforts by California or any other state to move up usually means settling for the earliest allowed date after the four carve-out states or taking a substantial penalty. The former is an attractive gathering point for other states, which gets them early but not alone. And the latter -- the penalty -- reduces a state's clout, affecting the campaigns' calculi in approaching the state.
This is what happened when the California state legislature shifted the Golden state primary in both 2000 and 2008. California was early in both cases, but shared the date with numerous other states, giving campaigns options in terms of where and how to expend the finite resources at their disposal. These are not problems unique to the Golden state.
What is unique in California's case is its size. But the number, diversity and wealth of the population are both blessing and curse. Enough wealth is concentrated in the state that the candidates of all stripes have been more than willing to come into the state early to raise funds. But then they go spend it elsewhere; Iowa and New Hampshire chief among the recipients. Californians have often bemoaned this ATM treatment, and have at various points (1996, 2000, 2008) seen their legislatures seek a different relationship; a different, earlier position on the calendar that allows both fundraising and fund spending in the state. But again, all of those experiments got the state early, but not alone.
And the proposed 2020 experiment will not end any differently.
Let's game this out in a way that the proponents of this legislation have only partially thought out.
First, the SB 568 moves not only the California presidential primary to the third Tuesday in March, but everything else traditionally scheduled for June. That spares the state the $100 million plus price tag of a separate presidential primary, but also creates extended general election campaigns for all those down ballot who win February or March primaries.
But the legislation also provides another scheduling option on top of that baseline March primary date. Like other states which have mimicked New Hampshire to some degree, the California bill grants an individual -- not the state legislature -- the final say in the matter. States like Arizona, Georgia and New Mexico have experimented with allowing one individual -- typically the secretary of state as in New Hampshire, or the governor -- set the date of the presidential primary. In those cases the state legislature ceded the power to an executive branch actor in order to streamline the date setting process. It is understating things, but the legislative process can be messy and slow, and a political question like when a presidential primary should be held can trigger divisions that can derail legislation. Legislatures across the country are also not always in session during the second half of a year. That time constraint often compounds the problem of a glacial legislative process.
To be more nimble and reactive, then, a handful of state legislatures have given up the date-setting powers, granting them to an individual not hampered by internal division nor similar time constraints.
This California proposal partially ventures down the same road. The legislature sets the mid-March date, but gives the governor the ability to shift the primary up even further by proclamation. This is where most of the quick reaction analysis on this legislation has ended; with California's governor of the future hypothetically moving the California primary into the third position on the calendar behind Iowa and New Hampshire.
But there is more to the story than that.
This future California governor, if empowered by the provisions of this bill, is not unfettered. He or she would have to make a decision on the date a full 240 days prior to the proposed new/earlier presidential primary date. Now, if it is assumed that Iowa and New Hampshire will fall roughly in the same spots on the calendar as each did in 2016, then the calendar looks something like this (on the Democratic side) in 2020:
Monday, February 3: Iowa
Tuesday, February 11: New Hampshire
Tuesday, February 18: California
Saturday, February 22: Nevada
Saturday, February 29: South Carolina
Of course, it is anything but assured that the four carve-outs will be in those positions come 2020. And the reason why is because of ambitious states like California that introduce uncertainty into the process of the calendar coming together. Since that uncertainty has been routinized -- not to mention counterbalanced by national party rules -- the early four states usually hold off on formally scheduling their contests until the fall in the year prior to the presidential election. In other words, those states will not have official dates until fall 2019. Keep that in mind.
That affects California. If the governor waited until the end of September to set a date around the same time that the carve-outs settle on their own dates, then the 240 day buffer provision would mean that the earliest the future California governor could schedule the presidential primary for would be the very end of May. That would default to basically the same position California occupies now on the calendar.
But the reality of the provision is that it calls for the governor to move the date up from mid-March to an earlier date, not a later one. The 240 day buffer means the governor cannot wait to the fall to make a decision alongside Iowa, New Hampshire and the others. Waiting means giving up that power and falling back on the baseline March date the legislators are attempting to establish.
And making a decision earlier means the governor would be making the decision earlier and with less than complete information. To schedule a February 18 primary, a decision would have to be made by late June. A number of state legislatures will be out of session by that time and that may cut down on any potential clustering around a February 18 California primary. But that would be a decision that would give the carve-out states plenty of time to react accordingly and schedule their contests ahead of California.
That all leads to one conclusion: The third spot is out of the question for California.
The best they can hope for is fifth; playing the Florida role from 2012. That is the "we don't want to be first, we want to be early all by ourselves" argument. California's proposal logistically prevents it from getting the third slot, and the national party rules, unless amended, will prevent it from claiming a spot that is fifth in the order and before March. California could move up to the first Tuesday in March, but as the earliest date allowed by the national parties, that is a date that California would share with a number of other states, just like the 2000 and 2008 experiments.
What in the national party rules would prevent California from going before March? Penalties. Now, the national party rules can change and likely will in the coming months. But there is no apparent desire to alter basic framework of the calendar: carve-outs in February and everyone else between March and early June. A rules-defying February primary would cost California half of their delegates on the Democratic side and would reduce the Republican delegation from 172 to 12, a 93 percent reduction. Additionally, any Democratic candidates who campaign in a rogue California would lose any delegates won from the reduced pool. In that scenario, California could move up, be early and alone. Alone on the calendar and alone in terms of candidates spending time and money there.
This is a long and winding path with exit ramps that end in dead ends.
One cannot fault California legislators for walking down this path. They are not alone, and have adopted some innovations from other states. Still, the thinking is old and somewhat outdated. The race to the front is one that cannot be won. However, there are alternatives. A savvier approach might be to choose a spot on the calendar that is pretty barren. There is a lot of space in early and mid-April that could potentially benefit California. No, the primary would not be among the first to winnow the field, but it could serve as a knockout blow in the race for the nomination. Sure, proportional rules on the Democratic side work against that theory as does California's size. An April California primary would give those mid-Atlantic/northeastern states with later April primaries pause. California's gravitational pull in the delegate math means that states that want to give their voters a say -- any say -- in the nominations would want to be before a state as delegate-rich as California.
Even that route is fraught with peril and uncertainty. And keep in mind that the proposed proclamation power would only allow the governor to move the date up, not back to April. It really is a toothless provision.
So, third Tuesday in March? Set the date. Join Illinois. Join Arizona.
The Electoral College Map (11/4/16)
New State Polls (11/4/16) | |||||||||
State | Poll | Date | Margin of Error | Sample | Clinton | Trump | Undecided | Poll Margin | FHQ Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Arizona | 11/1-11/2 | +/-4.12% | 550 likely voters | 39 | 47 | 7 | +8 | +1.67 | |
California | 10/22-10/30 | +/-2.3% | 1382 likely voters | 54 | 30 | 7 | +24 | +22.93 | |
Colorado | 10/31-11/3 | +/-3.02% | 1150 likely voters | 45 | 44 | 2 | +1 | -- | |
Colorado | 11/2-11/3 | +/-4.0% | 605 likely voters | 43 | 38 | 6 | +5 | -- | |
Colorado | 11/3-11/4 | +/-3.7% | 704 likely voters | 48 | 43 | 3 | +5 | +4.13 | |
Florida | 10/31 | +/-2.2% | 1995 registered voters | 49 | 46 | 1 | +3 | +2.11 | |
Georgia | 11/1-11/2 | +/-4.2% | 538 likely voters | 45 | 49 | 1 | +4 | -- | |
Georgia | 11/3-11/3 | +/-3.1% | 1000 likely voters | 46 | 48 | 2 | +2 | +3.05 | |
Indiana | 10/30-11/1 | +/-4.9% | 399 registered voters | 39 | 49 | 9 | +10 | -- | |
Indiana | 11/1-11/3 | +/-4.0% | 600 likely voters | 37 | 48 | 6 | +11 | +9.71 | |
Iowa | 11/1-11/2 | +/-3.0% | 1076 likely voters | 41 | 44 | 6 | +3 | -- | |
Iowa | 11/1-11/3 | +/-3.6% | 700 likely voters | 41 | 44 | 5 | +3 | +1.17 | |
Kansas | 9/1-10/13 | +/-3.2% | 892 likely voters | 39 | 47 | 0 | +8 | -- | |
Kansas | 11/1-11/3 | +/-5.5% | 313 likely voters | 34 | 58 | 0 | +24 | +12.48 | |
Massachusetts | 10/23-11/2 | +/-5.0% | 417 likely voters | 56 | 26 | 7 | +30 | +23.92 | |
Michigan | 11/1-11/3 | +/-4.0% | 600 likely voters | 42 | 38 | 13 | +4 | -- | |
Michigan | 11/3-11/4 | +/-3.2% | 957 likely voters | 46 | 41 | 6 | +5 | +6.86 | |
Missouri | 10/31-11/1 | +/-3.0% | 1083 likely voters | 41 | 52 | 7 | +11 | +8.13 | |
Nevada | 10/31-11/1 | +/-3.7% | 688 likely voters | 48 | 45 | 7 | +3 | +1.02 | |
New Hampshire | 10/31-11/1 | +/-3.5% | 781 likely voters | 48 | 43 | 9 | +5 | -- | |
New Hampshire | 10/28-11/2 | +/-4.28% | 695 likely voters | 44 | 44 | 4 | +/-0 | -- | |
New Hampshire | 11/1-11/2 | +/-2.0% | 1001 registered voters | 41 | 43 | 3 | +2 | +4.75 | |
New Jersey | 10/27-11/2 | +/-3.75% | 678 likely voters | 51 | 40 | 6 | +11 | +11.79 | |
New Mexico | 11/1-11/2 | +/-3.0% | 1102 likely voters | 46 | 43 | 1 | +3 | +7.21 | |
North Carolina | 10/31-11/1 | +/-2.9% | 1169 likely voters | 49 | 47 | 4 | +2 | +1.46 | |
Pennsylvania | 10/31 | +/-1.9% | 2606 registered voters | 47 | 46 | 3 | +1 | -- | |
Pennsylvania | 10/31-11/1 | +/-3.0% | 1050 likely voters | 48 | 44 | 8 | +4 | -- | |
Pennsylvania | 11/2-11/3 | +/-4.4% | 504 likely voters | 46 | 46 | 4 | +/-0 | +5.16 | |
Utah | 10/30-10/31 | +/-2.6% | 1424 registered voters | 29 | 35 | 8 | +6 | -- | |
Utah | 11/1-11/3 | +/-4.38% | 500 likely voters | 24 | 33 | 7 | +9 | +9.631 | |
Virginia | 10/29-11/2 | +/-3.8% | 654 likely voters | 45 | 38 | 9 | +7 | -- | |
Virginia | 11/3-11/4 | +/-2.8% | 1238 likely voters | 48 | 43 | 4 | +5 | +6.35 | |
Wisconsin | 10/31-11/1 | +/-4.4% | 500 likely voters | 44 | 38 | 9 | +6 | -- | |
Wisconsin | 10/31-11/1 | +/-3.3% | 891 likely voters | 48 | 41 | 10 | +7 | +6.43 | |
1Excluding the two head-to-head online panel surveys in Utah lowers Trump's average advantage there to 7.95 points. Those polls are outliers in view of the majority of surveys in the Beehive state during 2016 and serve as an anchor on the data. The change would shift Utah within the Lean Trump category, closer to Toss Up Trump. McMullin garnered 28% in the Y2 survey and 24% support in the Gravis survey. He currently has an FHQ graduated weighted average share of support of 23.23%, trailing both Trump and Clinton. | |||||||||
--
Changes (11/4/16)
4 more days.
| Changes (November 4) | |||
| State | Before | After | |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire | Lean Clinton | Toss Up Clinton | |
There were another 34 survey releases from across 20 states to close the final full work week before election day. The partisan consolidation that happened for Hillary Clinton after the first debate continued for Donald Trump following the latest round of FBI/emails revelations. That has triggered a subtle but consistent narrowing of the margins in Clinton lean and toss up states.
But those subtle shifts have not translated to many changes to the alignment of states on the Electoral College Spectrum and the shading of states has been steady. However, while no states jumped the partisan line changing the distribution of electoral votes, New Hampshire did inch across the Lean/Toss Up line it has recently been hovering around. But like Colorado, the Granite state remains tilted in Clinton's direction.
Elsewhere, both Iowa and Nevada shifted off the Watch List, moving deeper into their respective candidate's columns. Both are still toss ups, but neither is within one point of pushing across the partisan line any longer. That leaves Ohio as the only state at FHQ that is within range of changing categories and altering the electoral vote breakdown.
On the Electoral College Spectrum, there was only some minor shuffling among a small group of solid Trump states. Utah once again flip-flopped spots with Indiana and the far end of the Lean Trump area and the new polling out of Kansas pushed the Sunflower state past South Dakota among the Strong Trump states.
Again, it is a steady picture here heading into the last weekend before next Tuesday's election.
--
The Electoral College Spectrum1 | ||||
MD-102 (13) | RI-4 (162) | NH-4 (263) | TX-38 (161) | TN-11 (61) |
HI-4 (17) | NJ-14 (176) | CO-94 (272 | 275) | SC-9 (123) | AR-6 (50) |
VT-3 (20) | OR-7 (183) | FL-29 (301 | 266) | MO-10 (114) | ND-3 (44) |
MA-11 (31) | NM-5 (188) | NC-15 (316 | 237) | UT-6 (104) | NE-53 (41) |
CA-55 (86) | MN-10 (198) | NV-6 (322 | 222) | IN-11 (98) | KY-8 (36) |
NY-29 (115) | MI-16 (214) | OH-18 (340 | 216) | MS-6 (87) | AL-9 (28) |
IL-20+13 (136) | ME-23 (216) | IA-6 (198) | SD-3 (81) | ID-4 (19) |
DE-3 (139) | WI-10 (226) | AZ-11 (192) | KS-6 (78) | WV-5 (15) |
WA-12 (151) | VA-13 (239) | GA-16+13 (181) | LA-8 (72) | OK-7 (10) |
CT-7 (158) | PA-20 (259) | AK-3 (164) | MT-3 (64) | WY-3 (3) |
1 Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. 2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he or she won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Trump won all the states up to and including Colorado (all Clinton's toss up states plus Colorado), he would have 275 electoral votes. Trump's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Clinton's number is on the left and Trumps's is on the right in bold italics. To keep the figure to 50 cells, Washington, DC and its three electoral votes are included in the beginning total on the Democratic side of the spectrum. The District has historically been the most Democratic state in the Electoral College. 3 Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral college votes to candidates in a more proportional manner. The statewide winner receives the two electoral votes apportioned to the state based on the two US Senate seats each state has. Additionally, the winner within a congressional district is awarded one electoral vote. Given current polling, all five Nebraska electoral votes would be allocated to Trump. In Maine, a split seems more likely. Trump leads in Maine's second congressional district while Clinton is ahead statewide and in the first district. She would receive three of the four Maine electoral votes and Trump the remaining electoral vote. Those congressional district votes are added approximately where they would fall in the Spectrum above. 4 Colorado is the state where Clinton crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. Currently, Colorado is in the Toss Up Clinton category. | ||||
NOTE: Distinctions are made between states based on how much they favor one candidate or another. States with a margin greater than 10 percent between Clinton and Trump are "Strong" states. Those with a margin of 5 to 10 percent "Lean" toward one of the two (presumptive) nominees. Finally, states with a spread in the graduated weighted averages of both the candidates' shares of polling support less than 5 percent are "Toss Up" states. The darker a state is shaded in any of the figures here, the more strongly it is aligned with one of the candidates. Not all states along or near the boundaries between categories are close to pushing over into a neighboring group. Those most likely to switch -- those within a percentage point of the various lines of demarcation -- are included on the Watch List below.
The Watch List1 | |||
State | Switch | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Alaska | from Lean Trump | to Toss Up Trump | |
Colorado | from Toss Up Clinton | to Lean Clinton | |
Indiana | from Lean Trump | to Strong Trump | |
Mississippi | from Strong Trump | to Lean Trump | |
New Hampshire | from Toss Up Clinton | to Lean Clinton | |
Ohio | from Toss Up Clinton | to Toss Up Trump | |
Oregon | from Lean Clinton | to Strong Clinton | |
Pennsylvania | from Lean Clinton | to Toss Up Clinton | |
Utah | from Lean Trump | to Strong Trump | |
1 Graduated weighted average margin within a fraction of a point of changing categories. | |||
Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (11/3/16)
The Electoral College Map (11/2/16)
The Electoral College Map (11/1/16)
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