Why staggered primaries?

eHero

The question pretty much asks itself. I'm no political science major whatsoever, and I don't have any friends who've been able to answer it. But why have primaries that are so far apart from one another? I understand that it's done on a state by state basis, and some states use caucuses, but wouldn't it be better to hold one primary just like the general election?

So essentially, you'd have one day in all 50 states (and Puerto Rico if I had my way, but that's another debate topic), where people would come out and vote for the party candidate of their choice. None of this republicans voting for Hillary because she's a weaker candidate than McCain crap. It's just one day of awesome, and then everyone shuts up for awhile and we go to the general election.

The advantage I can see would be a candidate with a low money reserve would be able to compete better, since actual campaigning time would, theoretically, be shorter. Also, we wouldn't have to deal with 2 years of nonstop campaigning.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of information, but I can't help but think someone's up to no good. I'm also paranoid, so I always think that, but I especially think that in this case. Help me understand why my simple world of goodness can't exist.

GoodOmens

The most reasonable argument that I've heard against a single day of primaries is that the current system requires candidates to actually pay attention to smaller states that would otherwise be ignored. If all states voted on the same day, no candidate would ever visit New Hampshire or Iowa, for example, as there aren't enough people there to matter.

Of course, the current system gives those states WAY too much influence.

myspicybrains

The short answer is because there are generally many people campaigning for the party nominations, and staggered primaries allow parties to come to a better consensus. Candidate A may have the support of 20% of the voters, while candidates B, C, D, E, F and G all have a bit less, but the vast majority of the people who don't have A as their first choice would vastly prefer B to A. You could also have a national free-for-all primary followed by a run-off, but that doesn't solve the problem of nationwide campaigning being extremely expensive. Starting with a couple small states gives poorer candidates a shot at the nomination and helps narrow the choices for people in later states.

Now if only they'd get around to rotating the primaries...

moniker

Retail politics > buying ad time.

It also lets the nominating process shed contenders that would otherwise be stealing votes ala Edwards between Clinton and Obama because there will never be a runoff election in the primaries.

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eHero

I guess that does make sense then unfortunately. Thanks for the information!

Unknown

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PeekingDuck

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