Iowa and New Hampshire have always been the first two states to hold presidential primaries every election cycle. The Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary have become synonymous with the first primaries and have always been seen as particularly important to prospective candidates. However, Iowa and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status when it comes to holding primaries is facing another threat: Nevada.
Presidential primaries, now a major part of the presidential election process, started after the tumultuous and now-infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At the time, a party’s nominee for president would be selected by party leaders and pledged delegates, with primary elections practically nonexistent and people not having a say in who their party chose to run. (It also explains how the Democratic and Republican parties both had liberal and conservative wings. Politics was way less partisan back then than it is now.)
In 1968, the Vietnam War was on in full swing, after Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson greatly increased American presence in Vietnam. Activist Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, a strong critic of the Vietnam War, were both assassinated in the run-up to the convention. As Johnson had refused to seek a second term even after winning a landslide victory in 1964, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, became the frontrunner for presidential nominee within the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, Humphrey’s support for Johnson’s policies, especially with regard to the Vietnam War, caused outrage among antiwar protesters. (Violent protests outside the Chicago convention center eventually led to the now-infamous case of the Chicago Seven.) The outrage was particularly intense when party leaders chose to nominate Humphrey over other candidates, even though Humphrey had not won any primary elections.
After the Democrats lost the 1968 election, the party decided to change up the nomination process so that people could have a say in who a party would nominate for president. This was to be done either by caucus or election. And since Iowa had a particularly complex caucus process, it chose to be first in the primary season. New Hampshire, which hosts elections, has a state law which requires that the state hosts its primary at least seven days before any similar elections take place in every state.
Since then, Iowa and New Hampshire have always kicked off the primary season, with Nevada and South Carolina following behind before Super Tuesday, when a whole host of states host primaries on the same day. Primaries are spread out over a period of several months, to allow candidates, especially those underfunded, to campaign in multiple states without having to split resources. However, this process means that the states who host primaries first have a disproportionate impact on a party’s eventual nominee, since by the time states like New York host their primaries in June, the nominee has usually been decided already.
The debate over Iowa and New Hampshire coming first has been criticized in recent years. Although these two states are small and allow for easy campaigning, they are also heavily white—unrepresentative of the U.S. population. Also, since caucuses require people to physically show up at a location, making it difficult for working-class individuals to vote, states have gradually phased out the caucus system. In addition, with technical difficulties in the Iowa Caucuses last year, caucuses have only come under even more scrutiny. Only four states still held caucuses in the 2020 election cycle, among them including Iowa and Nevada.
On Feb. 15, the Nevada Assembly, the state’s legislature, moved ahead with a bill pushed on by state Democrats to end the use of caucuses in Nevada primaries, switching to an election and setting the state up to move it ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. This bill also set the date for Nevada’s primary to take place on the Tuesday immediately preceding the last Tuesday in January (this would be Jan. 23 in 2024), which would try and replace New Hampshire’s set date on the second Tuesday in March, but which could be changed to ensure New Hampshire would have a primary a week before any other state.
Nevada’s legislation marked one of the first moves to contest which state would come first in the 2024 primary election cycle.
However, changing the primary calendar isn’t an easy thing to do, either. Iowa and New Hampshire are all but certain to fight hard to retain their statuses as the first caucus and primary in the nation. It might also be difficult to sync it with the Republicans’ primary, which, in general, is held on the same day as the Democrats’ primary, considering Republicans haven’t taken a stance on the issue yet. And Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and the White House have not weighed in on the issue, either.
Doing away with caucuses and the appeal of having a more diverse state—Nevada is just 48 percent non-Hispanic white compared to over 90 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire—might help sway national Democrats to support making Nevada the first state to hold its primary, though. Tom Perez, a former DNC chair, has also questioned allowing Iowa and New Hampshire to go first, too.
New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Bill Gardner, a Democrat who has held the position for the past 45 years, has promised to do anything possible to ensure New Hampshire remains first and in compliance with state law. Gardner could, for instance, move the state’s primary to Jan. 16 to ensure it is seven days ahead of any other state’s primary. Gardner has worked hard to ensure that his state always comes first in the primary calendar and has fended off many other state challenges to New Hampshire’s position in the past, too.
Some Nevada Republicans have expressed that they were satisfied with Nevada currently being third in the primary process. However, considering the sponsors of the bill are Democrats, the assembly is controlled by Democrats, and the governor of Nevada is a Democrat, the bill is highly likely to pass. This could mean Nevada will hold Democratic and Republican primaries on different dates if Nevada Republicans are not on board.
In any case, we could be in for a long, drawn-out battle between Nevada and Iowa and New Hampshire in who gets to be first in the primary calendar. Whether or not New Hampshire manages to fend off another challenger to its first-in-the-nation status remains to be seen.