Tag Archives: Open primary

Sleeper Senate Race:Louisiana

By tmess2 | Published August 9, 2016

Louisiana is one of those states that does things differently than everybody else.  (Louisiana also tends to change the rules every cycle.)  This cycle, like Washington and California, everybody runs in one primary regardless of party.  However, Louisiana differs from Washington and California in two significant ways.  First, unlike Washington and California, where the primary is simply a primary and the top two advance to the general regardless of whether anybody gets a majority of the vote, the Louisiana primary is actually the general election.  Thus, if somebody gets a majority, they win the election.  It is only if nobody gets a majority that the top two advance to a run-off.  Second, because it is actually the general election and not the primary, the first round of the election is on November 8.  Because of these two features, close elections in Louisiana tend to go to the December run-off.  Thus, if the Senate comes down to Louisiana, we may not know who controls the Senate until mid-December.  Because Louisiana will be an open seat, there is a great likelihood that this race will go to a run-off.

Posted in Senate | Also tagged , Comments Off on Sleeper Senate Race:Louisiana

Preparing for 2020

By tmess2 | Published May 22, 2016

While there is still plenty of time left in the 2016 election, discussion has already started about the rules for the 2020 election.  Changes to the delegate selection process tends to be driven by “fixing” what the party sees as the problem in the last election cycle.  For example, a lot of the changes on the Republican side (e.g., the binding rules, penalties for states violating the rules) were driven by what the party leadership thought went wrong in 2012 — Ron Paul doing better at state conventions than he did on caucus nights, states violating the timing and proportionality rules.

The two parties are at different stages of the process for modifying the procedures for 2020.  For the Republicans, the process for convening the next convention is part of the party rules .  Normally, the rules can only be amended at the convention.  In 2012, the convention granted limited “one time only” authority to the Republican National Committee to change the process.  Given the difficulty of making changes on the fly during a convention, it is likely that the Republicans might give the RNC this power again.  For the Democrats, the actual drafting of the rules for the next convention is done by the Democratic National Committee after the convention.  Typically, the most that has happened during the nomination process is an agreement to have a study commission to look at revisions to the rules.

Continue Reading...

Posted in DNC, Elections, GOP | Also tagged , , , , , , , Comments Off on Preparing for 2020