Why are American Presidential primary elections not held on the same day?

States rights. Primaries are State functions – not Federal functions. States (and the party and legislative structures within each state) have the responsibility and authority to decide on their own primary elections.

Sure, if all the states decided on the same primary date, @SquirrelEStuff , then it might happen the way you want. But as a rule, states don’t want to do that – Iowa wants to be the first. New Hampshire always wants to be early.

So you’ll never get the states to agree on a single date, as long as states have the authority to make their own decisions.

If they did that, it would be much harder to hide the date and time from the people they don’t want voting.

Small states won’t agree. Why would Iowa agree to be on the same date as California? Then the candidates would be in California to pick up a huge chunk of delegates instead of the few from Iowa and New Hampshire.

Spreading them out over a longer period means more people watching adverts and more advertising revenue.

Why doesn’t California just move up its date to be first?

They jostle dates all the time. I remember it being a big thing before the Bush Jr. 2.0 election, I think.

@rojo – ask the legislators there.

If you figure that the reason for a primary is to have some effect on the candidates chosen, then being early is not a good place. Look at 2012 where Herman Cain (remember him) did well in the early primaries and crapped out by mid-Spring. That might happen again—Trump might win the New Hampshire primary in January and be dogshit by May.

@rojo California tried that, but it meant moving all the other things up from June to early March or else having a separate election for all the other offices and ballot measures. It was too much money.

Also, Iowa and New Hampshire passed laws that they would aways be first. So when South Carolina tried to be mid-January, Iowa and New Hampshire were looking at mid-December. The Party Committees finally threatened to not recognize delegates.

What is interesting to me is that states that hold primary votes pay for the election of delegates to a convention. Quite a subsidy to the parties.

While you’re at it. @SquirrelEStuff, you might as well beat your head against the “Why not one person, one vote, instead of delegates?” tree, too. lol

We have the technology.

@SquirrelEStuff I agree, it seems like a no-brainer to me.