FairVote's Innovative Analysis this week takes a look at the effect of primary shake-up on candidate traffic through states. States have moved their primaries forward in the hope that this will bring them more attention in candidates' search for delegates. Without thinking too hard about it, this seems to make a lot of sense.
Predictably, though, there's a lot more to it than that, and the actual situation is rather counter-intuitive.
Here's why:
Wasn’t the point of big states moving their primaries to early February to increase their influence in the nominating process by having their voters matter more? The big states are certainly turning heads, but the candidates are looking into the states’ wallets rather than gazing deeply into their eyes. But you remember how it was in high school: the rich kids threw the best parties and had the coolest car, but your sweetheart was probably the boy or girl next door.
In other words, states may believe that more campaign attention equals more influence – but they would be wrong.
FairVote's analysis is full of interesting examples, but here's a particularly good one:
Clearly, frontloading by populous states is not diminishing the influence classic primary powerhouses like New Hampshire or Iowa. Iowa alone has been graced with the presidential hopefuls’ attention a whopping 720 times, and only hit up for money 2.36% of that time. Delegate-rich New York, with a population 6 times that of Iowa’s, has been host to campaign functions exactly one tenth as many times, with 45.83% of the events designed to generate campaign revenue.
The full article can be found here.