Name: America's presidential primaries, explained
Uploaded: 2020-03-04T17:42:26.000Z
Duration: 8 min 3 s
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In December of 2007, a US Senator named Barack Obama was running for president.

It didn’t look like he would beat the well-known front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

Adverbs of degree

She was nearly 20 points ahead of him in the national polls.

The Iowa Caucus is like an election, but instead of voting in a voting booth you stand with

other people to be counted. It’s weird.

But it’s also the very first contest in America’s presidential primary process to

determine the two major party’s nominees.

And if you win it, it’s a pretty big deal.

You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

Literally overnight, Obama shot up in the polls.

Winning Iowa turned him from a long-shot candidate to a real possibility.

For the last 50 years, Iowa has been a hugely influential part of the presidential primary system.

First, a bunch of technical mishaps delayed the caucus results.

Then, when the results came out, no one was actually sure if they were correct.

And it started to raise questions about whether the Iowa Caucus deserves to be so important.

The way America’s political parties choose their presidential nominees —

starting in Iowa, and then with 63 other elections on 21 separate days —

was kind of set up quickly, and without any real thought behind the order.

So… why do we choose presidents this way?

To understand how we do things now, you have to go back about 50 years.

As recently as the 1960s, only a few states even held primaries.

And party leaders would just pick the presidential nominee at the convention.

Voters were much more divorced from the process than they are today.

This is Li, she’s been covering the 2020 primaries for Vox.

At that time the people in charge were effectively picking the people that would stay in charge

In the few primaries that year, young democrats voted in big numbers for candidates who were

But at the convention, the party delegates instead chose the pro-war Vice President.

Who wasn’t even on the ballot in the few states that actually held primaries.

Gas is being spread, it’s coming this way and it’s awful.

The protests were incredibly effective and actually ended up in the changes that we see now.

What changed after that was that the Democratic Party decided to let voters pick the nominee,

Today the delegates from each state still officially vote on the nominee at the convention.

but they have to vote according to how the candidates did in their state primaries.

To win the nomination, a candidate needs a majority of all the delegates.

And big states with big populations, like Florida, have lots of delegates for the taking.

Small states, like Iowa, have just a few.

But even though it’s not a delegate powerhouse, in the sequential primary system, Iowa has

As do other small states that vote early in the process,

Let’s look at the 2016 Republican primary as an example.

When the Iowa Caucus kicked things off, there were 12 serious candidates on the ballot.

After Iowa, three immediately dropped out.

And after the New Hampshire primary a week later, three more dropped out.

This is what those early states are there to do.

The early states end up winnowing the field to a slate of what people might consider

They help candidates generate hype, press coverage, additional donations.

In other words, instead of the rest of the country having to choose between 12 candidates,

early states help the party narrow down its options to just a few viable candidates for

That also gives voters in these early states a lot of power.

A voter in the earliest state has five times the influence on deciding the nominee as a

So there was no real rationale in the way that these early states were initially determined.

Iowa goes first because in 1972, the first election after the changes, Iowa said they

needed a long time to compile their results.

And as it held onto that spot, Iowa got more and more important.

And New Hampshire is the first traditional primary because they have a law saying they

And the questions around whether these states should go first are not new.

The main problem that people bring up over and over again is that both states are super

When you look at the actual numeric breakdown, both are about 90 percent white so neither

of these states is very representative of either the US or the party itself.

That’s partly why in 2008, the parties moved two more diverse states, Nevada and South

Carolina, to also be early in the calendar.

Then there’s Super Tuesday, which started in the 80s when southern states decided to

have their primaries at the same time to try to have a bit more influence.

Over the years, Super Tuesday has gotten more and more super.

In 2020, one third of all delegates will be awarded on this one day.

In other words, Super Tuesday has been looking more and more like a national primary.

So why not just have a national primary and have everyone vote on the same day?

The answer has to do with who would probably win.

If there was a national primary today,  whoever has the most money as well as the

most name recognition would probably do the best because they're able to reach people

and they already have an established backing in place.

Think about that in terms of the 2020 primary.

If everyone voted on one day, and money and name recognition mattered the most, this is

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