What Went Down In The Arizona, Florida And Illinois Primaries

Fair points, Micah and Nate, but I still think maybe it was all very unlikely too — maybe more than we realized 🙃.

2020 really is … unprecedented in a lot of ways.

Reader question

https://twitter.com/RevolutionSky/status/1240075670363025410

Answer

Assuming Ohio holds its presidential primary after moving it back to June 2, there are 20 states in 2020 that will hold concurrent presidential and down-ballot primaries. That number actually went up by one because Georgia moved its presidential primary back to May 19, the same date as its down-ballot primary, thus aligning them.

Why don’t more states hold them together? Well, there are a few reasons.

First, the presidential primary process tends to be over in the first half of the year, but many states traditionally hold primaries for other offices during the summer and even into the early fall. Take New Hampshire — it holds the first presidential primary but then doesn’t hold its down-ballot primary until early September. Some states want to have presidential primaries early in the year to influence that process but not necessarily decide nominations for other offices so early.

Second, seven states don’t have presidential primary laws, which is actually a smaller number than in the past as some former caucus states like Colorado, Maine and Minnesota added them ahead of 2020. There’s also Louisiana, which has its jungle primary system that takes place in November, so it also wouldn’t be able to have a concurrent primary. So those states couldn’t line them up really even if they wanted to.

To put Nate’s answer a little differently: I think a contested convention was very likely at one point and a number of things just broke perfectly for Biden. The funny thing is: A lot of those things Biden had little to do with!