Nominating Calendars: Who Votes First, and Why It Matters

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Every four years the United States chooses a president. Long before the November election, each major party has to decide whom it will put forward. That decision is made through a long sequence of state contests, and the order in which those contests happen is called the nominating calendar.

The calendar matters because the contests do not happen all at once. A state that votes in January is covered intensely by the national press. A state that votes in June may be voting after the outcome is already clear. Candidates spend their time and money where the early votes are, so going early is valuable, and states compete for the privilege.

How states vote

States use one of two methods. A primary is an ordinary election. Voters go to a polling place or send in a ballot, mark a name, and leave. Most states now use primaries, and most primaries are organized and paid for by the state government.

A caucus works differently. Voters gather at a set time in a school gym, a church basement, or a community center. They listen to speeches, sometimes divide into groups by candidate, and the count is done in the room. Caucuses are run and paid for by the political parties rather than the state. They take hours rather than minutes, which is one reason turnout is usually much lower.

Delegates and the convention

Neither primaries nor caucuses choose the candidate directly. What they do is award delegates, people who will attend the party’s national convention in the summer and formally cast a vote there. A candidate who wins a majority of delegates becomes the party’s nominee.

Democrats divide delegates into two groups. Pledged delegates are won in the state contests and are expected to support the candidate they were won for. Automatic delegates, usually called superdelegates in press coverage, are members of Congress, governors, and party officials who hold their seats because of the positions they occupy. Since a rule change in 2018, automatic delegates may not vote on the first ballot at the convention unless their votes could not change the result.

Democratic contests award delegates in shares that match the vote. This is called proportional allocation: a candidate who wins forty percent of a district receives roughly forty percent of its delegates. There is a floor, however. A candidate who falls below fifteen percent receives nothing, a rule known as the viability threshold. Democrats have used a flat fifteen percent since the 1992 cycle, and the party reviewed the number again in 2026 and left it unchanged for 2028. Republicans use a mix of methods and permit some states to give every delegate to the statewide winner.

Who actually sets the calendar

This is the part that surprises people. The calendar is not set by Congress, by any court, or by any election authority. Each party’s national committee writes its own rules and decides which states may vote before the rest. A state granted permission receives a waiver placing it in the early window, the stretch of the schedule before the large multi-state voting day known as Super Tuesday. A party can punish a state that votes without permission by imposing a sanction, such as reducing or refusing to seat that state’s delegation.

But parties do not run elections. States do. A state legislature can set a primary date the national party dislikes, and the party cannot move it. New Hampshire has a law requiring its secretary of state to schedule the presidential primary at least seven days before any similar election anywhere else, and the statute says plainly that its purpose is to protect the state’s first-in-the-nation tradition. New Hampshire officials have long treated caucuses as not “similar,” which is how Iowa’s caucuses could open the calendar without triggering the law. The result is a system in which party rules and state law can point in opposite directions, and neither side can simply overrule the other.

How Iowa and New Hampshire came first

New Hampshire has held the first presidential primary since 1920. Iowa’s position is more recent and partly accidental. After a bitter 1968 convention, Democrats rewrote their rules to give ordinary voters more say in choosing the nominee. Iowa’s caucus process had several stages spread over months, so the party scheduled the first stage early to leave time for the rest, which happened to place Iowa ahead of everyone in 1972. Four years later Jimmy Carter, a little-known former governor, spent months in Iowa and turned a strong showing there into national attention. The lesson stuck, and both states defended their positions for the next half century.

The Current Argument

Democrats have now moved away from that arrangement twice. For 2024 the party put South Carolina first and dropped Iowa from the early window. New Hampshire held a primary on its own schedule anyway. Its delegates were initially stripped and later restored.

On 24 July 2026, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee proposed a 2028 calendar with six early states instead of the four or five originally planned, saying the expansion reflected the number of strong applications. The proposed order is South Carolina on 22 January, Nevada on 1 February, New Hampshire on 8 February, New Mexico on 15 February, Michigan on 22 February, and Virginia on 29 February, with Super Tuesday on 7 March. The full DNC is due to vote on it at its August meeting in Austin. Iowa was not selected. The Iowa Democratic Party said it would decide after the November midterms whether to hold early caucuses regardless, which would risk losing all of its national delegates and paying a fine of $270,000. Republicans do not name states in their national rules, and Iowa Republicans are expected to caucus first again.

The case for keeping small states early

Defenders of the traditional arrangement argue that small, cheap states allow retail politics, the face-to-face campaigning of house meetings and diner visits, which lets candidates without money or fame be heard. Starting instead in large, expensive media markets, they say, would effectively hand the nomination to whoever raises the most money before a single vote is cast. New Hampshire’s congressional delegation, including Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, called the 2026 decision wrong for Democrats, for New Hampshire, and for the country. Iowa Democratic chair Rita Hart described the process as very messy and said the national party was out of touch with voters.

The case for changing the order

Critics answer that Iowa and New Hampshire are both far whiter than the Democratic electorate, and that a party whose voters are heavily Black, Latino, and urban should not have its first verdict delivered by two rural, mostly white states. They also point to 2020, when a failure in Iowa’s reporting system delayed results for three days. Supporters of the new calendar note that Joe Biden finished poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020 and revived his campaign in South Carolina, which they treat as evidence that the old order was measuring the wrong thing. DNC chair Ken Martin said the calendar would test candidates broadly and would let voters, rather than money, decide.

Disagreements inside the change

The argument is not only tradition against diversity. The choice between South Carolina and Nevada for the first slot was itself contested, weighing the long loyalty of Black voters against outreach to Latino voters, a group with whom Republicans gained ground in 2024. A separate argument holds that the earliest states should be general-election battlegrounds, since a nominee tested in competitive territory is more likely to win in November. That logic favors Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Virginia over states that reliably vote one way. These three goals, rewarding loyal voters, reaching persuadable ones, and testing candidates in swing states, do not always select the same lineup.

What remains unresolved

None of this settles the conflict between party rules and state law. New Hampshire’s seven-day statute has not changed, and the proposed calendar places two primaries ahead of its slot. Whether New Hampshire complies, and what the party would do if it does not, is an open question as of July 2026. There is also a longer-running concern that applies whatever order is chosen. As states move earlier in order to matter, the calendar compresses. This is called front-loading, and a compressed calendar leaves less time for an unknown candidate to build support after a surprise result, which rewards money and name recognition. That is close to the opposite of what an early small state was supposed to protect, and it is a problem no reordering of the first six states solves on its own.

Glossary

A state that votes late on the nominating calendar may be voting after the outcome is already clear.
Both parties publish a nominating calendar more than a year before the election.

Most states now use a primary, organized and paid for by the state government.
Voting in a primary takes only a few minutes.

A caucus can take several hours, which is one reason turnout is usually low.
Iowa held the first caucus of the season for decades.

Winning a state means winning a share of its delegates, not the nomination itself.
Each delegate travels to the convention in the summer.

Delegates travel to the national convention to cast their votes.
The national convention also adopts the party platform.

A candidate who wins a majority of delegates becomes the party nominee.
The nominee then faces the other party in November.

Almost all Democratic convention votes come from pledged delegates.
A pledged delegate reflects how people in that state actually voted.

An automatic delegate is usually called a superdelegate in press coverage.
Since 2018 an automatic delegate cannot vote on the first ballot in most situations.

Under proportional allocation, forty percent of the vote yields roughly forty percent of the delegates.
Democrats use proportional allocation in every state.

Democrats have used a fifteen percent viability threshold since the 1992 cycle.
A candidate below the viability threshold leaves that district with nothing.

Each national committee decides which states may vote early.
The national committee cannot change a date written into state law.

Six states received a waiver under the proposed 2028 Democratic calendar.
Twelve states applied for a waiver, and half were turned down.

Iowa was left out of the early window for the second cycle in a row.
Being in the early window brings enormous press attention.

Super Tuesday is proposed for 7 March in 2028.
A candidate who is short of money often cannot compete everywhere on Super Tuesday.

A sanction can include refusing to seat a state delegation at the convention.
Iowa Democrats would face a heavy sanction if they caucused early without approval.

Defenders of small early states say retail politics helps candidates without money.
In a large state, retail politics reaches too few voters to matter.

Front-loading can favor candidates who already have money and name recognition.
Parties have tried for years to slow front-loading with rules and penalties.

Discussion Questions

Before reading this, did you know that political parties, not the government, set the order of the contests?
Would you rather vote in a primary or attend a caucus? Why?
Should any state get to go first every time?
Is it fair that a party can refuse to seat a state’s delegates?
Which argument for choosing early states do you find strongest: diversity, battleground status, or cost?
Why do you think New Hampshire wrote its first-in-the-nation position into state law?
Does the fifteen percent viability threshold help voters or hurt smaller candidates?
How does your own country choose party leaders or candidates? Is it more or less open than this?
Should the states all vote on the same day instead?
What do you think happens to a party when its rules and a state’s law disagree?
Is it a problem that a candidate can be effectively chosen before most states have voted?
Imagine you are on the committee that sets the calendar. Which three states would you put first, and what would you tell the states you left out?

Learn: How Presidential Nominating Calendars Work and Why Parties Fight Over Who Votes First