Don’t look now, but it’s already time for the DNC and the states to figure out the 2028 Democratic presidential primary calendar, so I wrote an overview at New York:
The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024. On the Democratic side, there is no one like Vance (or Hillary Clinton going into 2016 or Joe Biden going into 2020) who is likely to become the solid front-runner from the get-go, though Californians Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris lead all of the way too early polls.
But 2028 horse-race speculation really starts with the track itself, as the calendar for state contests still isn’t set. What some observers call the presidential-nominating “system” isn’t something the national parties control. In the case of primaries utilizing state-financed election machinery, state laws govern the timing and procedures. Caucuses (still abundant on the Republican side and rarer among Democrats) are usually run by state parties. National parties can vitally influence the calendar via carrots (bonus delegates at the national convention) or sticks (loss of delegates) and try to create “windows” for different kinds of states to hold their nominating contests to space things out and make the initial contests competitive and representative. But it’s sometimes hit or miss.
Until quite recently, the two parties tended to move in sync on such calendar and map decisions. But Democrats have exhibited a lot more interest in ensuring that the “early states” — the ones that kick off the nominating process and often determine the outcome — are representative of the party and the country as a whole and give candidates something like a level playing field. Prior to 2008, both parties agreed to do away with the traditional duopoly, in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came first, by allowing early contests representing other regions (Nevada and South Carolina). And both parties tolerated the consolidation of other states seeking influence into a somewhat later “Super Tuesday” cluster of contests. But in 2024 Democrats tossed Iowa out of the early-state window altogether and placed South Carolina first (widely interpreted as Joe Biden’s thank-you to the Palmetto State for its crucial role in saving his campaign in 2020 after poor performances in other early states), with Nevada and New Hampshire voting the same day soon thereafter. Republicans stuck with the same old calendar with Trump more or less nailing down the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.
For 2028, Republicans will likely stand pat while Democrats reshuffle the deck (the 2024 calendar was explicitly a one-time-only proposition). The Democratic National Committee has set a January 16 deadline for states to apply for early-state status. And as the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher explains, there is uncertainty about the identity of the early states and particularly their order:
“The debate has only just begun. But early whisper campaigns about the weaknesses of the various options already offer a revealing window into some of the party’s racial, regional and rural-urban divides, according to interviews with more than a dozen state party chairs, D.N.C. members and others involved in the selection process.
“Nevada is too far to travel. New Hampshire is too entitled and too white. South Carolina is too Republican. Iowa is also too white — and its time has passed.
“Why not a top battleground? Michigan entered the early window in 2024, but critics see it as too likely to bring attention to the party’s fractures over Israel. North Carolina or Georgia would need Republicans to change their election laws.”
Nevada and New Hampshire have been most aggressive about demanding a spot at the beginning of the calendar, and both will likely remain in the early-state window, representing their regions. The DNC could push South Carolina aside in favor of regional rivals Georgia or North Carolina. Michigan is close to a lock for an early midwestern primary, but its size, cost, and sizable Muslim population (which will press candidates on their attitude towards Israel’s recent conduct) would probably make it a dubious choice to go first. Recently excluded Iowa (already suspect because it’s very white and trending Republican, then bounced decisively after its caucus reporting system melted down in 2020) could stage a “beauty contest” that will attract candidates and media even if it doesn’t award delegates.
Even as the early-state drama unwinds, the rest of the Democratic nomination calendar is morphing as well. As many as 14 states are currently scheduled to hold contests on Super Tuesday, March 7. And a 15th state, New York, may soon join the parade. Before it’s all nailed down (likely just after the 2026 midterms), decisions on the calendar will begin to influence candidate strategies and vice versa. Some western candidates (e.g., Gavin Newsom or Ruben Gallego) could be heavily invested in Nevada, while Black proto-candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Wes Moore might pursue a southern primary. Progressive favorites like AOC or Ro Khanna may have their own favorite launching pads, while self-identified centrists like Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg might have others. Having a home state in the early going is at best a mixed blessing: Losing your home-state primary is a candidate-killer, and winning it doesn’t prove a lot. And it’s also worth remembering that self-financed candidates like J.B. Pritzker may need less of a runway to stage a nationally viable campaign.
So sketching out the tracks for all those 2028 horses, particularly among Democrats, is a bit of a game of three-dimensional chess. We won’t know how well they’ll run here or there until it’s all over.
When I studied in France in the 1970’s, what amazed me was the lack of a centrist party. It was a subject I discussed with Jean-Louis Servan-Shreiber (the brother of Jean-Jacques Servan-Shreiber who founded the “radical” or centrist party in France). In every French election approximately forty percent of the population voted for right-wing parties and forty percent voted for left-wing parties and the “centrists” made up less than twenty percent of the popular vote. I have the distinct impression that the U.S. is following that pattern. Those in the center are being shut out by those on the left and right – possibly because those on the left and right have more passion. Of course, the French concept of right and left is much more broad than the American concept – in school in Paris (L’Institue d’Etudes Politiques) we had people who were die-hard communists and die-hard royalists (and some who would not deny being fascists). Free speech has always been much more “free” in France and other European countries than the U.S. – but we are getting there – gradually.
Eddie – So you do remember me? It’s only been 37 years since we last talked. I assume you’re not going to be at Emory for our 35th alumni reunion next weekend? Nice to see a classmate do so well. My opinions have not changed one bit in the interim. When we last argued, I was working for McGovern and you weren’t. My political participation since then has been off and on.
John
John:
I’ve been pretty much in the same place politically for a quarter century or so, but yeah, I went through all sorts of changes before that. And for the record, I worked for Zell Miller before his bizarre apostasy.
I’m still no radical, but what’s happened to the Right in this country tends to make one get a mite intemperate now and then.
Hope you are well,
Ed
Well, I’ll tell you what: I was one proud Democrat today, listening to the President’s Cincinnati speech. High energy, down to earth, eloquent, funny, youthful, spirited, smart and wise. I was enormously encouraged. It reminds me of 1917, when the European powers were bogged down in a war of attrition. Then America jumped in, and all those rested young doughboys came to the battlefield. It seems to me that if Obama is now rolling out his biggest weapon — himself — it won’t take long to eclipse the images of shrieking retirees with too much time on their hands and swastika signs, demanding the the government not get involved in health care for anybody younger than 65 and not to cut one dime out of their Medicare. And the sorry, daily parade of parochial, dishonest, vain, dumb, ill-intentioned, pandering and deeply dishonest politicians (some of them on the Democratic side of the aisle) is going to look like a tub of fishbait by comparison.
Testing this out.
When I was a boy at Emory University in 1971, I made friends with a fellow student, we didn’t get along at first because he was somewhat conservative and I was not. Then he changed (or became more honest) and we began to seriously discuss political theory and I thought I had met my political twin, left-wing to the core and violently anti-Vietnam war. Then I went to study in Paris (where I ran into his girlfriend) for a year and when I came back this boy had become a Catholic Republican and we ceased to talk. Last thing I heard he was working for Zell Miller. I went on to Mercer Law School and we lost tract entirely. I’m still the radical that I always was, although not for the reasons he suspected. It looks like he came back to the fold. Right?