> which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state"
It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.
The 2024 changes, inasmuch as they are about specific elections and not the general long-term arc of the party, are about 2028 more than 2024. No one is expecting a significantly contested nominating contest when the party has an incumbent President seeking reelection.
The prediction markets on PredictIt have the Democrats winning at 52 cents, and the Republicans at 50 cents. You should expect the election to be quite close.
I’m talking about the Demcoratic nomination contest, not the general election, but even in the latter case I would expect prediction markets odds of victory more than a year out to have very weak, if any correlation, to margin of victory. Heck, I don’t know of any research showing that prediction markets far from elections are even good at predicting odds.
Meh, if you look at the Candle for 90d you can see the high/low for Nov3,4th of the 2020 election [1]. There's so much volatility in that data its hard it's hard to consider this an accurate predicator for 2024.
The volume for 2024 is also so low compared to 2020 so I don't think you can use the current 2024 predictions as evidence.
Incumbents do have an advantage, but I wouldn't say they aren't expecting a significant contested election. Trump was the incumbent, and it was a pretty aggressively contested.
> Incumbents do have an advantage, but I wouldn’t say they aren’t expecting a significant contested election
I’ve clarified the grandparent: I was referring to the nominating contest (the aggregate of primary elections and caucuses that are addressed by the schedule change being discussed), not the general election.
everybody is jumping down GP's throat here by focusing on the word "Biden".
him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they're doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections to avoid the kind of "self destructive" internecine primary battles with fringe candidates like Bernie Sanders--yes, he was very popular, but his views are to one side of the Democratic party which is to one side of the Republican party which makes his views part of the fringe in the uniform tapestry of views--which have taken place for many years.
Not saying it's right or wrong, just saying GP's analysis holds together as part of the larger analysis everybody here seems to be basing their thinking on.
> him saying they’re doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they’re doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections
Yes, it is.
Because it refers to specific geographic strengths that Biden had as a candidate, not strengths that are uniformly typical of establishment-preferred Democratic candidates.
(Now if, instead of referring to Biden’s particular and unique strengths that correlate with the change, they had said that it was to lock in estanlishment candidates by moving some larger, more expensive states to campaign in forward, and that that establishment support was more key in campaigning in those states – a weak but at least superficially plausible argument – that would be different. But “states with a higner percentage of black voters” are…a different thing.
oh my sweet summer child, The Democrats have been trying to reduce/eliminate the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire for many years. The reason it's not likely that primaries seasons would be changed solely for a particular candidate is that a party will need to "live with" the result for some time to come, they're not going to be able to rearrange it every election.
South Carolina Democrats, black and white, are much more toward the center of the overall electorate, which is where the national campaigns shift their focus after running left and right in their respective D and R primaries. It is not Biden's specific strength that matters, because it was also the reason "Super Tuesday" was created many years ago to benefit the establishment candidate (Walter Mondale at the time)* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday#1984:_Beginnings...
And black voters are (or have been) reliably Democrat, which benefits all Democrat candidates, not particular to do with Biden (or Bill Clinton) though they did enjoy outsized black support. Saying the first primary is being moved "to make the electorate look like America" is designed to shut up the Left, who would scream bloody murder if they said "putting this state first is an establishment move because SC is not so left wing" It takes an "establishment move" to change the primaries because the state parties have to change it in the local places with cooperation or opposition from the other party in those states.
* a much younger Biden was a candidate back then too but when, as an English coalminer's great-grandson, Biden's support was centered in the UK so nobody in the US was doing him huge political favors)**
**this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Biden plagiarizing Niel Kinnock's speech which knocked him out of the 1992 race https://archive.ph/idkaA
If absolute fairness were the reason for change ALL parties that primary would do so by some algorithm that's transparent.
E.G. 5 Primary waves (Tuesdays/weeks/months) sorted by the 10 states with the least population to the most population.
Why? It's a better rough approximation for a representative sample over an increasingly large window of voters than the current process, and still keeps any benefit of ramping up from smaller to larger populations to narrow overall selection in the field. Plus the algorithm is so simple that it can be outlined in a sentence.
There’s some logistical issues as some States run the elections so the individual parties can’t pick their own primary dates (unless they pay for themselves which I think they’re loathe to do).
Assuming parties could pick the primary border, I think it’d be most advantageous to pick the States sorted by the absolute value of the win/loss percentage for a given state. That way highly contested States get an earlier say in the process and presumably a candidate that is more favorable in those markets comes out ahead earlier in the process.
I'll take any change over usurping Iowa (though IMO New Hampshire actually functions quite well historically as the first primary based on my recollections, I think the worst that happens is that a small state gets good roads), but going small population to large population kinda still "discriminates" against large urban centers.
I think an established rotation would be better, and at least a medium sized state rotating in the "first wave".
> If you’re going to change it, why don’t do the primary on the same day like any other country?
It is not true that “every other country” has parties select their presidential (or nearest equivalent, whether as head of state or head of government, other countries frequently divorcing those roles) candidate by simultaneous national elections. Sometimes, they don’t even (in a legal sense) choose a candidate at all, though the party may have its own process of deciding and announcing who its members responsible for the leadership election (e.g., MPs in Westminster-style system) will vote for should they secure the necessary majority to decide the outcome on their own.
In fact, I couldn’t off the top of my head name even a single country that uses a national simultaneous primary to select party nominees for election head of government or head of state, can you?
In Argentina, by law, the candidates for all national elections for all parties are selected by las PASO (mandatory simultaneous open primaries), which are national simultaneous elections. I don't know if there are many other such countries, but there's one.
How is the US worse than other countries where the majority-party apparatus selects the country's leader with no involvement of the electorate? Just look at the prime ministers the UK has cycled through
to date with no elections.
Selecting a head of government through the electoral college is less democratic than one elected person from every riding deciding who is the leader collectively.
It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.