The presidential election is in November. Why are the primaries now?
The primary season has been slowly creeping forward and becoming more compressed since the 1970s when voters in the states replaced the party conventions as the power behind the nomination. For the 1972 and 1976 elections, the primaries started slowly allowing, for example, an outsider like Jimmy Carter to build momentum and campaign fighting funds. Soon after, states sought to increase their influence in the nominating calendar by moving their primaries forward. Attempts by the parties to limit the sprawl of early voting states by imposing a March and now February firebreak on the rest created the Super Tuesday phenomenon. However, not all state parties accept this and 2008 sees a number of primaries held without the backing of the parties’ national committees – including Florida’s on January 29. Flordia’s Democratic party has been told it can send no delegates to the Denver nominating convention, while the state’s Republicans have cut the state’s allocation by half.
