Tuesday brings Michigan’s primaries, which will be a bit odd as most of the top Democrat candidates aren’t on the ballot paper. Why?
It’s all because of the ongoing friction between individual states and the party machines over the timing of primaries/caucuses. The problem is that for any individual state it makes sense to want to be in near the start of the election calendar as otherwise there is a risk that the result will be decided before the election gets to you, and so the state will largely be neglected by the different Presidential campaigns. For example, California’s primary has been pretty much a dead contest in recent Presidential selections because it took place towards the end of the primary season, by when the results were cut and dried.
So states keep on bringing forward the dates of their own contests, including California this time. But if you bring forward your date, and then someone else brings forward their date, you’ve got to bring forward your own date yet again – and it all teeters on the edge of chaos.
In order to stop the election calendar collapsing into a complete mess (and at the current rate of change, next time round Iowa may well even have to bring forward its caucuses into the preceding year to keep its first place), the Republican and Democrat parties impose sanctions to supplement their attempts at using diplomacy to ensure some sort of order.
One of the few sanctions they have is to reduce or remove the number of delegates to the party’s convention that a state gets to select in its primary or caucus. However, most early contests are more much about momentum and show rather than actual delegate numbers: does it matter how many delegates McCain won in New Hampshire? No, what matters is that he won the first primary – just as in the UK winning a Parliamentary by-election can have much more impact on the political scene than the fact that only one MP was elected in it. Therefore these sanctions don’t always work.
Which brings us to Michigan. On the Republican side, the number of delegates have been cut in half, but all the candidates are fighting the contest. With the score one each so far to Huckabee (Iowa caucus), Romney (Wyoming caucus) and McCain (New Hampshire primary), it is likely to be an important opportunity for one of them to firmly seize the mantle of front-runner.
On the Democrat side, the attempts to make Michigan toe the line came closer to success, with the result that both Edwards and Obama (but not Clinton) said they would boycott the contest. “Uncommitted” (i.e. elect a delegate to the national convention who isn’t pledged to support a particular candidate) is on the ballot paper.
The risk for Clinton is that it makes this a no-win event: if she romps to victory, well of course she should have given the lack of opponents, but if she wins by less than an overwhelming margin, well that’s a slap in the face for her.
We will soon see.
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9 Comments
Ooh goody! Will cancel meetings to stay up and watch on satellite!
Why did your earlier article not cover the primaries for the Faroese candidates?
Clinton has boycotted Michigan as well, as have all the Democratic candidates, all that differed was their way of doing so – Obama and Edwards removed their names from the ballot, Clinton et al have made no visits to Michigan and have not spent a dime campaigning there.
(Which is actually probably worst case scenario for her, because not campaigning decreases her chance of getting over 50%, but being the only major candidate with her name on the paper, she pretty much needs it).
Michigan still think they’re going to have their delegates seated at Denver, so that’ll be an interesting internal argument to watch.
I would much prefer wall to wall coverage of the Faroese elections, frankly. Could someone get the Danish equivilant of EARS over to my machine please?
Pretty much a 4 way split between Sambandsflokkurin, Javnaðarflokkurin, Tjóðveldisflokkurin and Fólkaflokkurin as I understand it.
Yeah, I can see that, but only under the old system, not the new d’Hondt election this year.
The seats won by these “main 4” are:
Sambandsflokkurin 7
Javnaðarflokkurin 7
Tjóðveldisflokkurin 8
Fólkaflokkurin 7
In addition to the farce in the Democratic primary, Michigan electoral law allows you to vote in whichever primary you like, even if you’re a registered member of the other party.
The Democrat blog Daily Kos is running a campaign called Democrats for Mitt – they want Democrat voters to cross over and vote for Mitt Romney in order to a) keep the Republicans divided and b) increase the chance they will actually select him.
If he actually wins, I think Michigan might be too embarrassed to have a primary in 2012… 😉
Ironic, isn’t it?
The only Republican candidate that polls suggest could beat any of the three main Democrats is a full four years OLDER than Ming Campbell.
The Democrats for Mitt campaign shows the nonsense of the primary system.
If you are selecting candidats for nationwide office, and have parties defined by registration rather than membership, I don’t really see the alternative to a primary system of some description.