Changes made to the political system are usually motivated by self-interest. But that doesn’t mean the changes produce expected results.
New campaign finance rules that Congress enacted in the 1970s and afterward were supposed to take money out of politics. Obviously, that didn’t happen. The amount of money flooding into campaigns since then has increased astronomically.
The latest major change to h election law, passed by the Legislature in the early days of Gov. Jeff Landry’s term, brought back party primaries, the system under which the current U.S. Senate race is being run. This time, there wasn’t even a good-government pretext. Everybody knew it was meant to defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy, and it did.
The most recent change in the election process came last week, when the national Democratic Party adopted a . State parties fight over the calendar because early primaries get more attention and have outsized influence on nominations.
For decades, New Hampshire held the nation’s first presidential primary. Beginning in 1972, the Iowa caucuses emerged as a competitor, but procedural mishaps in recent caucuses have diminished Iowa’s credibility.
In 2024, Democrats cast aside New Hampshire as its first primary and gave that honor to South Carolina. Why? President Joe Biden wanted it that way.
First, it was a thank you to South Carolina Democrats and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn for the decisive primary victory they handed Biden in 2020. Second, it was meant to open the 2024 primary season with a guaranteed win for Biden. Third, it was recognition that New Hampshire lacks racial diversity; only about 1% of New Hampshire’s electorate is Black, compared to 26% in South Carolina.
The third reason lives on, even now that Biden is out of the picture.
Here’s another important fact: Black voters make up 26% of South Carolina’s overall electorate, but they made up 56% of the state’s Democratic primary electorate in 2020, according to exit polling.
Why the difference? Most Black voters are Democrats. So, while Black voters represent a bit more a quarter of all voters in South Carolina, they represent more than half of the voters who participate in the Democratic primary.
Under the newly adopted rules for 2028 Democratic delegate selection, South Carolina’s primary remains first, on Jan. 22. Nevada moves into second place, on Feb. 1. New Hampshire follows on Feb. 8, then New Mexico on Feb. 15, Michigan on Feb. 22 and Virginia on Feb. 29.
New Mexico and Nevada make the early states’ list largely because of diversity and their location in the West: 43% of New Mexico’s eligible voters are Hispanic and nearly a third of Nevada’s are Hispanic or Black.
Virginia — 19% Black, 5% Hispanic and 5% Asian — houses numerous federal employees, an important voter group for Democrats. Don’t discount the fact that Virginia is close to the nation’s capital, making it convenient for campaign consultants and party activists to go back and forth during the primary. It’s also a reward for Virginia’s shifting from red to blue in federal elections.
Michigan’s electorate is 18% Black, Hispanic or Asian, and home to powerful labor unions. Moreover, it’s a vote-rich swing state.
Which raises the question: Why didn’t Democrats select swing states for all six of their early presidential primaries? Wouldn’t that give Democratic candidates valuable familiarity in the states most likely to determine the general election? Why aren’t Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona in the first tier, alongside Michigan and Nevada?
South Carolina isn’t a swing state; it voted Republican in the last 12 presidential elections, and Trump carried it by 18 points in 2024. Neither New Hampshire nor New Mexico are considered swing states; the former voted Democratic in the last six elections, and the latter in the last five.
Did party leaders put identity politics ahead of general-election strategy? You could make that case.
But there’s another explanation: Putting all the early primaries in swing states would expose Democratic candidates to attacks from one another in the very states they would later need to win the general election. Those wounds could hurt more than the early exposure would help.
According to T.S. Eliot, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
In politics, it’s sometimes hard to know the right deed — and whether the reason is right or wrong. Even taking self-interest into account, it’s still hard.