America's presidential primaries, explained

in December of 2007 a u.s. senator named Barack Obama was running for president it didn't look like he would beat the well-known frontrunner Hillary Clinton she was nearly 20 points ahead of him in the national polls but then one month later a huge huge victory Obama won the Iowa caucus 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 parties nominees and if you win it it's a big deal [Applause] literally overnight Obama shot up in the polls winning Iowa turned him from a longshot candidate to a real possibility for the last 50 years Iowa has been a hugely influential part of the presidential primary system but in 2020 well epic failure meltdown of the vote reporting 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 and is there a better way to do it to understand how we do things now you have to go back about 50 years as recently as the 60s only a few states even held primaries most states didn't 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 Lee she's been covering the 2020 primaries for Vox at that time the people in charge or effectively picking the people that would stay in charge which mostly worked fine until 1968 in the few primaries that year Young Democrats voted in big numbers for candidates who were against the Vietnam War 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 it did not go over well there was huge pushback to that the protests were incredibly effective and actually ended up in the changes that we see now what changed was the Democratic Party decided to let voters pick the nominee with elections in each state Republicans soon followed suit 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 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 a crucial job 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 3 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 frontrunners 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 the rest of the primaries 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 voter just a few weeks later but here's the problem with that 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 so they had to hold their caucus early and as its held onto that first spot Iowa's gotten more and more important and New Hampshire is the first traditional primary because they have a law saying that they have to be first yep that's it and the questions around whether these states should go first or not new the main problem that people bring up over and over again is that both states are super white when you look at the actual numeric breakdown both are about 90% white so neither of these states is very representative of either the US or the party itself and that's become a huge concern that's partly why in 2008 the parties move to 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 year 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 who would probably come out on top remember that poll from December 2007 if everyone voted at once Obama would have lost which brings us back to Iowa and New Hampshire I wanna Iowa because I spent 87 days go on every small town fair and fish-fry both Iowa New Hampshire they're very accessible so you can drive around you can hold events you can go to the fair and meet with voters and also their media markets are much cheaper than other larger states like California both of those factors make it easier for a candidate who maybe isn't that well-known to also make the same type of impression of somebody else who might be you know wealthier and more well resourced so the sequential system helps a narrow the field and starting in a small state can help underdog candidates emerge but should that state the Iowa why start in Iowa well that's the conversation that will absolutely happen after this election cycle there have been a bunch of different options floated wine is to change the state that goes first so which states should go first the website 538 tried to figure this out by looking at the racial ethnic and educational breakdown of every state to find which one was the most representative of the Democratic Party as a whole number one was Illinois Iowa was 42nd another option is to actually just move it so that ten states go in February that kind of dilutes the influence of Iowa New Hampshire a little bit and then another possibility is the idea of rotating they talk more about rotating regions that would dominate the primary one year in a different region that would dominate the primary a different year the way America nominates its presidential candidates isn't set in stone the political parties can and have changed the process over the years but it's been a while maybe it's time [Music] you

Channel: Vox

Views: 1,887,560

Keywords: vox.com, vox, explain, primaries, iowa, new hampshire, first, elections, nominee, president, presidential process, system, calendar, national primary, regional primary, winnow, the point, early states, sequential primary

Id: tCvMtkEVqdA

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020