The series of U.S. presidential primaries is one of the first steps in the process of electing a President of the United States. The primary elections provide a method for U.S. political parties to nominate and unite behind one popularly chosen candidate for the Presidency.
In the United States presidential candidates of the two major parties in recent years have been selected by a complicated sequence of primaries and caucuses. The rules on who can participate vary between states (and are changed from time to time). The first event is always the Iowa caucus in January, followed by the New Hampshire Primary two weeks later. (In 2006 the Democrats are discussing changes in the sequence for 2008.) In recent elections those two events have gained over half the national and international media attention paid to the selection process, and are considered essential by the candidates.
The first important presidential primaries were in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt defeated William Howard Taft and Robert LaFollette. However the Taft people controlled the Republican party and stopped the growth of primaries. In 1952 New Hampshire began the modern system by holding an early primary that became very important to both parties.
After the confusion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democrats moved to a system of primaries and caucuses in every state that guaranteed much wider voter participation in selecting candidates. The Republicans followed suit. Today every voting unit (the states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and territories) that sends delegates to the national convention has to follow the rules set out by the national committee of each party. The primaries are party affairs following under party rules, but they are operated by local governments which validates the voters and counts the votes. The caucus is entirely a party affair.
Today, both the Republican and Democratic parties hold a series of caucuses and primaries from January through June of a presidential election year. In any given state, the parties typically hold their caucus or primary election on the same date. Who is eligible to vote in a primary depends on the state party's rules. In a closed primary, only voters registered with the party may vote. In a semi-closed primary, voters unaffiliated with a party (independents) may choose a party primary in which to vote. In an open primary, any voter may vote in any party's primary.
Before 1968 state leaders had a major say in selecting delegates to the national convention. They still have some role as "superdelegates" chosen outside the primary system. Now all the delegates are selected by the candidates. Some states--especially California--have a winner-take-all primary, while others, such as New Hampshire, split the delegates in proportion to the vote.
Campaigning for the primaries often begins a year or more before the New Hampshire primary, almost two years before the general election. Primaries have forced out incumbent presidents seeking re-election in 1952 (when Kefauver beat Truman in New Hampshire), 1968 (when Johnson did poorly against McCarthy in New Hampshire) and nearly so in 1976 when Ronald Reagan challenged incumbent Gerald Ford.
The two most important events are the New Hampshire Primary and the Iowa Caucus. Since 1952 New Hampshire has drawn disproportionate attention from the candidates and the media. A little-known, underfunded candidate can use "retail politics" to talk to every interested voter in the state, as John McCain did in 2000 to win an upset that tied him as frontrunner with George W. Bush. An outsider can humiliate a sitting president--Harry S. Truman ended his re-election bid in 1952 after losing this primary; Lyndon Baines Johnson dropped out in 1968 after running far below expectations. It is a contest that gathers enormous media attention, and its importance was cemented when Jimmy Carter took a surprise win in 1976 and rode it to the presidency. In the late 1970s, the New Hampshire Legislature passed laws designed to guarantee that their primary would always come first — a status it has successfully defended from other states who envy the attention.
The Iowa caucus is a party event. Each party sets its own rules and handles operations. On a given night party members assemble at local places and openly choose delegates to the county convention, who in turn choose delegates to the state convention, who in turn elect delegates to the national convention. What is important is the media report of who did well in Iowa. Other states have similar caucus systems, but receive far less pubnlicity because Iowa is always first.
Some Democrats from other states claim that the current system is unfair, because it places undue emphasis on New Hampshire and Iowa, which they claim are not representative of the nation as a whole. New Hampshire fights back by obliging candidates who want to campaign in the state to pledge to uphold that primary as the first one. The Democrats in March 2006 are proposing a revised system to take effect, perhaps, in 2008; it has not received final approval.
After New Hampshire comes a series of primaries in wehich the front-runners chosen by New Hampshire have to validate their claims and actually win large numbers of delegates. Since the advent of "Super Tuesday" in 1988, there has been a trend towards "front-loading" state primaries--moving their dates forward as much as possible, so that more primaries are bunched together earlier in the campaign season. As a result, in the 2004 Democratic primary schedule, for instance, the nominee was already known by early March; in the past, the nominee was often not decided until June, when the last of the primaries were held, or even until the late-summer convention.
There are several proposals of reforming the primary system. Some reformers have called for a single nationwide primary to be held on one day. Others point out that requiring candidates to campaign in every state simultaneously would exacerbate the purported problem of campaigns being dominated by the candidates who raise the most money. Alternative reform concepts such as the American Plan would return the presidential primary season to a more relaxed schedule. Fewer primaries in smaller states would allow grassroots campaigns to score early successes and pick up steam. With this idea in mind, a commission empaneled by the Republican National Committee recommended the Delaware Plan in 2000; however, populous states objected to the plan because it would have always scheduled their primaries at the end of the season. The Delaware Plan was put to vote at Republican National Convention of 2000 and rejected.