The parties: always tinkering

Parties are more active in the background of nomination contests than you might think

Caitlin Jewitt and I have a piece up at MSNBC today about why state parties switch from caucuses to primaries and from primaries to caucuses for their presidential nomination contests. As we note, they do this for a number of reasons, including:

• adapting to directives and recommendations from national parties.

• bad experiences in one format.

• logistical or cost challenges.

• to augment their voice in the national contest.

• to advantage or disadvantage one or more candidates.

There are other reasons! But the main lesson here is that there’s a surprising amount of activity in this area. In any given presidential cycle, some two to four state parties are switching from primaries to caucuses or vice versa, and they’re doing this for strategic purposes. In an era where we tend to think of the voters as being in charge of picking nominees, it’s the state parties that are setting the terms for those decisions.

Another key lesson is that, even though caucuses have fallen from favor among Democrats, roughly a dozen state Republican parties still utilize them, and that hasn’t changed much in recent years.

Anyway, I encourage you to read the whole thing.