Examples Of Primaries And Caucuses

Primaries and caucuses are held before an election in order to allow the states to help determine the political parties’ candidates for the general election. Most states hold primaries where you as an individual, vote for who you would like to be your party’s candidate. Other states hold caucuses where small groups of people in each precinct meet and discuss who they would like to vote for to be their party’s candidate. New Hampshire has the first primary every year and Iowa has the first caucus. The rest of the primaries and caucuses occur throughout the entirety of the spring, most of them occurring on Super Tuesday, the first Tuesday in March. The result of the primaries and caucuses determines the number of delegates a candidate wins. Delegates are members of a political party who choose the party’s official candidate at their convention. The candidate who wins the most delegates usually wins their party’s official nomination and candidates who don’t do well drop out of the race.
Some people believe Iowa and New Hampshire have too much influence because their primary elections are always first, therefore shaping the rest of the election. USAToday’s “Why Should Iowa and N.H. Always Go First?” suggests a rotating, regional primary system that would allow this influential vote to occur somewhere else for every election. Other people suggest getting rid of the primary process completely because they believe it isn’t democratic, and others think there should be a new way of running the primary elections. According to “The Best Way to Fix Our Presidential Primary System” people suggest using a National Primary where all primary/ caucus elections would happen on one day, shortening the amount of time that primaries span over, or separating the country in to different regions and holding primary elections on specific dates in those