The NPR Politics Podcast - Caucuses & Primaries: A Beginner's Guide

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Between primaries, caucuses & different processes across the 50 states and other territories, there's a lot that goes into how Democrats and Republicans pick their presidential nominees. We walk you through what will happen in 2024, and when we might know who will be on November's ballot. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This episode was edited & produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And as we get ever closer to the primaries and caucuses, we wanted to take some time to just run through that whole process. What's at stake? How they work? How soon we should know when Republicans and Democrats alike will have their presumptive nominees for the presidency? But before we get into the calendar, let us just talk about nuts and bolts. Mara, schoolhouse rock time. How does this work? In most Republican states, they have a winner

take all system or a combination of proportional and winner-take-all. But the prizes, the delegate prizes for winning Republican primaries are bigger. On the Democratic side, it's really an accumulation of one delegate at a time. And that's why it takes longer to see who's going to be the Democratic nominee usually. And for the Democrats, you Democrats, it's mostly proportional. You go state by state and it can take a longer time as we saw in the past couple of elections to get a nominee to that magic number of winning a majority of the delegates. Of course, there's no nominee who is actually picked until the conventions when honestly the know, honestly, the open secret is that you can change at any time if you're a delegate, you're not 100% bound to these results, but you're

supposed to vote the way that your state voted. But for the Democrats, it's, you know, this is far less of a contest, you know, President Biden is the incumbent president. And he is seen as really the presumptive nominee at this point, with some token opposition from Dean Phillips, who's the Minnesota congressman who's challenging Biden mostly on electability and running against him largely in New Hampshire. Let's go to Iowa. The state's famous first in the nation caucuses will be held on January 15th. What's at stake for Republicans there? Well, short of everything. I mean, there's...

Everything and nothing. Right. Well, that's very close to true because there aren't that many delegates in Iowa. But considering the amount of, you know, time, energy that they spend there, they certainly are banking on the momentum coming out of that state to help propel them going forward. Principally, it's very, very, very important for Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who has staked his entire campaign on doing well in Iowa. Nikki Haley is the person who's kind of on DeSantis' heels in Iowa. And if she leapfrogs DeSantis, that could be good for her. So, you know, watching the positioning of those three, how close the margin is and whether or not Trump has a massive victory could really start to spell whether or not this primary race can be over faster than we think. Mara, I think that there is a saying that there are only two or maybe three tickets out of Iowa. And we know that former President Trump has a massive lead in the polls.

But isn't Iowa also sort of about expectations? So if going in, he has this massive lead and then somehow it's somewhat less, but he still wins? It would depend on how much less. Look, historical rules only work till they stop working. And yes, in the past, there were a couple of tickets out of Iowa, but this year is different because guess what? He's an incumbent. He is for practical purposes, an incumbent. And what's really interesting to me about the Republican primary is initially we thought Republicans had the same kind of collective action problem they had in 2016. In other words, all of the Trump alternatives were not willing to drop out and coalesce around the strongest one. Theoretically, in 2016, that could have defeated defeated Trump but as long as there were a whole bunch

of candidates running against him splitting the anti-Trump vote he could squeak by and win all the delegates just by getting 30 percent or 35 percent in these states this time they might not have a collective action problem to solve because he's so far ahead in other words even if they did all drop out and coalesced around Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, he would still win because the gap between him and the rest of them in the polls is just so huge. I was going to say arguably, maybe not arguably, Trump is a stronger candidate in the Republican primary this time around than he was in 2016, right? I mean, he's got a majority of the vote. He's the incumbent president for all practical purposes in this republican world.

I totally agree with that. He is basically their president, right? Yes. Yes. That's what I'm trying to say. And we've seen that his lead is stronger. The intensity of support, which is really what I think is interesting, is stronger than we've seen for any other candidate. And remember in 2016, Trump lost Iowa. People sort of like forget this. But then he went on to obviously win the nomination. This time around, I mean, it doesn't even look close right now. It's hard to see which primary would Trump lose now. Very hard to predict that. Very hard to see

which state would he lose. Not even South Carolina. He's way ahead of Nikki Haley in her own state. Yeah. I mean, those things can change. Yes, of course. Because if narratives suddenly are different, if he wins by far less than people thought he would in a place like Iowa, oh, Nikki Haley beat the polls and DeSantis, DeSantis drops out and, you know, any number of things can happen. And we've seen South Carolina voters, for example, move very quickly in past elections, you know, rather than stick to where they say they're going to be backing somebody a month and a half out from the primary. But at this point, you'd rather be Trump than anyone else. All right. Let's move to New Hampshire quickly. That is on January 23rd.

It is the first in the nation primary. If the field has narrowing down. And the fact is Haley is doing fairly well in New Hampshire, but still, you know, trailing Trump there. But if she has a significant, you know, she does significantly well in a place like New Hampshire, that is really her path to this thing. When I talk to people who help run her super PAC, is to do well in Iowa, meaning slightly behind DeSantis or leapfrogging him, they would hope, to really kind of put him aside, to do a strong second place in New Hampshire, and then to try to bank shot that into South Carolina, where she can either win or do well against Trump and then try to consolidate the people who don't necessarily want Trump to be the nominee and take it to a long, drawn out primary fight. is staking so much on Iowa, Christie is staking a lot on New Hampshire. So depending on his performance in New Hampshire, he may or may not make it to South Carolina, for instance.

Yeah, I mean, I think Christie's people have been very clear-eyed about what his chances are in this race. They do not expect him to be the nominee. He has really wanted, as we saw in the last debate, to really try to undercut Trump and to make it known to Republican voters in the best way that he can to say that he is not somebody who should be nominated as the Republican to be president because he shouldn't be president. And he's really been the lone voice making that case now that someone like Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has been cast aside from the debate stage. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Super Tuesday. Hey, it's Asma Khalid. As the year wraps up, and we're reflecting on a huge year of political news with an even bigger year coming up in 2024 with a general election, we will continue working to help you keep up with all the political news happening in Washington,

D.C. and around the country. And we hope we can count on your help. This is where we want to say a big thank you to our NPR Politics Plus supporters and anyone listening who already donates to public media. Your support ensures that everyone has free access to reliable news and podcasts, including those who can't afford to give this holiday season. And to anyone out there who is not a supporter yet, right now is the time to get behind the NPR network, especially ahead of a big election year. Supporting public media now takes just a few minutes and makes a real difference. So join NPR Plus at plus.npr.org or make a tax-deductible donation now at donate.npr.org slash politics. And thanks. And we're back. And although we've been talking a lot about the Republicans and we will talk about them a lot more, let's talk briefly about the Democrats.

They are trying to have a new and different calendar this time around, right? really take Iowa and New Hampshire out of the first two states because – and people might remember last time Iowa messed up the counting of results. There's been a lot of bad feelings among a lot of Democratic National Committee members who also feel like Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the sort of big tent diverse party that the Democratic Party is and they've been looking to sort of change things up. But when you have states like Iowa and New Hampshire that have been so entrenched in doing this for so long, they're not giving up without a fight. And this has taken some doing. But the Democratic National Committee moved South Carolina ahead at President Biden's request, and they're penalizing a state like New Hampshire, which is insisting on continuing its

quote unquote, first in the nation primary status because it's in their state constitution. But, you know, this really has to do with the Democratic National Committee's preferences and the president's preferences. And it's been a huge fight. I think South Carolina reflects the Democratic Party's base more than Iowa or New Hampshire does. And that was one of the reasons the DNC wanted to change this and Biden wanted to change this. And as a result of this fight, now President Biden isn't even going to be on the ballot in New Hampshire. The first primary where President Biden will be on the ballot is South Carolina. Domenico, that is a state that really made him president.

Yeah, no question about it. I mean, he did not finish well in Iowa. And, you know, he decided to reward South Carolina, which has a huge number of Black voters traditionally. And he wants to, you know, reward this early state and say that they belong further up. Mara, Jim Clyburn is a key figure in South Carolina and was a key figure in helping Biden win in 2020. There's no doubt about that. I think at the time, Jim Clyburn was the highest ranking African-American in the Democratic leadership in the House. He endorsed President Biden.

I think Biden probably couldn't have been the nominee without him. And this is partially a change that honors the importance of Jim Clyburn. Moving ahead in the calendar, there are caucuses in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Idaho, Missouri, and North Dakota, primaries in South Carolina, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. And then Super Tuesday. March 5th, when, I mean, it's called Super Tuesday for a reason, a ton of delegates will be awarded that day because so many states are having primaries. Yeah, so many states. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see if there's any suspense left when we get to Super Tuesday. Generally, after Super Tuesday, it's all over but the shouting. I think that's probably what will happen this time. This time, we'll see how

strong a candidate Trump looks like after Super Tuesday and the same for Joe Biden. And Domenico, looking at the calendar and, you know, this definitely could change, but Super Tuesday could come the day after the trial starts in Washington, D.C., the January 6th trial that Trump is facing. Yeah, I don't think people quite have their heads wrapped around the fact that this primary race is likely to be over a lot sooner than people think. You know, we're in 2023. So we were like, oh, next year.

No, this is going to be over, it looks like, in about four months. And that's because March, 70% of the delegates by the end of March are going to be allocated in the Republican primary race. And like you said, March 4th is right now when the first trial date is for Trump when he's dealing with his legal problems and we have this great convergence of the legal and political calendars. March 5th is Super Tuesday. So if we're talking about the fact that a potential conviction might dislodge some Republicans from voting for Trump, there isn't going to be a conviction. Any time close to before a nominee is going to be selected through the primary process. Right. So I guess that leaves us with the question I feel like we're asking a

lot of the time, which is like, is this all a fait accompli? Well, even if it's a fait accompli, it still matters. I mean, I think that there will be some indications of the strengths of these two presumptive nominees, even if the results seem to be a foregone conclusion. Yeah, I think no doubt about it. And look, nobody's voted yet. So of course it matters. I mean, we can't be going off of polls and saying, oh, you know, this is done and nobody should even go vote. I mean, no, this is about people having the opportunity in each state to register what they think should happen. You know, polls are fine and they can indicate a lot of things about where the electorates are at the point that those polls

are taken. But, you know, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, they certainly have lots of money that they're willing to spend on television ads and trying to make a case to an extent against former President Trump. Without saying his name. Or saying anything that has to do with the legal calendar and everything about things like the debt or not making – not following through on promises. Chris Christie's point, former governor of New Jersey would say, you've got to take them on directly. And a lot of Republican strategists have been telling me that as well. And it just at this point, they really haven't. And the lion's share of elected officials are behind Trump at this point who are Republicans. And we are going to leave it there for now. But stick with us

throughout the primaries and caucuses for our coverage of all of them. And the poll that matters most is the poll on Election Day. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.