The Des Moines Register reported on Friday that Florida’s decision to move its primary to January 29 (the same date that the South Carolina primary is scheduled) may prompt New Hampshire to schedule its primary a week earlier.
Since Iowa and New Hampshire have agreed that the Iowa caucuses will be held eight days before the New Hampshire primary, that means the caucuses would be held on January 7, instead of on January 14 as tentatively scheduled.
As a precinct captain, I hope that this does not happen. You can’t do any serious GOTV work during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. People will be returning home on January 1 or 2, or going back to work, or recovering from holiday stress. It’s a hectic time, and I don’t imagine it being a time that people would welcome phone calls or door knocks from volunteers trying to get them to vote.
My husband pointed out that very few college students would be back in time for the Iowa caucuses if they were held on January 7. That’s got to be bad news for Barack Obama, but possibly also for John Edwards, since he is likely to have strong support on college campuses as well (I expect Ed Fallon to help his campaign with this crowd).
Of course, even on January 14 there may be quite a few college students who are not back from their winter breaks.
I’m sympathetic to Chris Bowers of MyDD, who has advocated this calendar instead:
December 10th (Monday): Iowa
December 18th (Tuesday): New Hampshire
January 19th (Saturday): Nevada
January 29th (Tuesday): South Carolina, Florida, Michigan
February 5th (Tuesday) National Primary
He sees the advantages as follows:
New Hampshire and Iowa placated. They still get to go first–in fact, they get to go a lot earlier relative to other states in the current calendar. There is no way any state moves into a window that includes the holidays.
New Hampshire and Iowa reduced. The two “traditional” states will take place so much earlier than any other state, that whatever “momentum” candidates derive from those states will be significantly muted over five weeks later.
Diverse groups play important, early role. Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and Michigan will effectively function as a second set of early contests to immediately precede Super Tuesday. This will allow for significant, early state voting representation for African-Americans, Latinos, union members, Jews, and ever region of the country.
Frontloading significantly eased. In this calendar, the primary / caucus season lasts for fifty-eight days, instead of twenty-three. This will give voters more time to decide, and give candidates more time to build up a national operation. In 2004, Kerry was severely lacking in nationwide staff after his early victories, including in states like Ohio and Florida, and this deficit might have cost him the election. At the same time, the primary season was over pretty much the same day it began in 2004, but with this calendar, from the start of the campaign until Super Tuesday voters would have a lot more time to make up their minds.
Almost everyone gets a voice: The national primary on February 5th will give more people a real say in determining the nominee than at any nomination process in two decades.
Nominee still decided early. With nine months between Super Tuesday and Election Day, there is plenty of time to rally around the eventually nominee.
This has a lot going for it, except that I wouldn’t look forward to working my precinct right after Thanksgiving. People get so busy in December with shopping, holiday parties, kids’ programs and recitals. I think it would be even harder to talk marginal voters into coming out for an hour on a Monday night.
It’s too late to fix this cycle, and perhaps Iowa will never get to go first again, so it won’t matter. But I would support pushing the start of the primary season way back to mid-February, like it used to be in the 1980s. I don’t like the idea of holding the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary during or shortly after the holiday season.