Bye bye backdoor winner-take-all
The Republican delegate rules for 2028 have one less allocation loophole than in past cycles
Over at FHQ this week:
This is not a new idea or even one unique to FHQ, but over the years I have often talked about how the overlap between the new reforms to the presidential nomination system in the early 1970s and the unified Democratic control of state governments across a wide swath of the United States at the same time greatly helped facilitate the rise in the number of presidential primary elections. In fact, it was often thought that one of the consequences, if not the intent, of the McGovern-Fraser reforms was a more robust caucus system.
It did not turn out that way. And it did not happen all at once. But actors in a number of states found it easier to simply tack a presidential preference line onto the existing state-run primaries for other offices that fit into the window during the front half of the year ahead of the national conventions.
And the tie that bound all of this?
Democrats were largely pulling the strings. The national party had put in place a new and vastly different set of delegate selection rules, and Democratic decision makers on the state level were responding to those changes in order to come into compliance with them. However, the infrastructure that was built did not affect just Democrats. As it was state run, and perhaps more importantly, state funded, it often drew in Republican actors and the Republican presidential nomination process as well.
But again, the infrastructure was built by Democrats and not Republicans. And as a result, the latter found themselves playing catch up in a new system over which it often had little control. It also did not help — or hurt, depending on the perspective — that this formative era for the new system was occurring during a period when Republicans more often than not occupied the White House. So while Democrats tested, retested and tweaked delegate selection rules in an effort to 1) find the proper mix of rules and/or 2) retake the presidency, the stakes were much lower for Republicans. The urgency to put their nomination rules under the spotlight just was not the same as it was for Democrats.
It is not that the Republicans did not make changes to their delegate rules over time. Rather, it was that they often did not face the same incentives or constraints that Democrats did. As a result, there were often disjunctures in how the two major national parties dealt with common issues from within the new system that had been put in place. While Democrats, for example, largely banned winner-take-all contests after the 1970s, Republicans still allow the practice even now. But it was only recently that the RNC curtailed its use in early contests. And it took them a couple of cycles — 2012 and 2016 — to get it “right,” or at the very least stabilize the institution of a proportional window at the beginning of the presidential primary calendar.
Similarly, Democrats created a defined window in which delegate selection events could occur by 1980. Yes, it expanded and contracted some over the years, but it has always been clearly defined in the national party rules since 1980.1
The Republicans?
Well, their window has been less well defined. True to form, the national party traditionally deferred to the states and state parties to determine the contours of their delegate selection processes, including when the contests were scheduled. The rules adopted for the 1996 process at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston gave the barest of instructions, indicating that “the selection process for choosing those who will select delegates or alternate delegates shall not begin before September 1 of the year before the year in which the national convention is to be held.” And that particular guidance was influential to the national party because of the chaos that erupted in Michigan during the 1988 cycle where those who selected delegates to the national convention were chosen in 1986.2 The whole process in Michigan devolved into competing state conventions run by different candidate factions within the state party in early 1988.3
But it was not until the 1996 cycle that the Rules of the Republican Party ever set a fully defined window for the selection of delegates, the first Monday in February until the third Tuesday in June.
In both cases, limiting winner-take-all practices and defining the window in which primaries and caucuses could be conducted, Republicans lagged their Democratic counterparts in dealing with a similar issue in their respective delegate selection processes during the post-reform era. And whether one chalks that lag up to deference to the states, a lack of urgency, occupying the White House for the early years of the post-reform era or some combination of them, it has typically been the Republican process that has played catch up with similar rule changes mostly already established on the Democratic side.
Yet, it does not always work in that direction. Republicans actually have an innovation in the rules that emerged from their 2024 convention in Milwaukee that Democrats have not dealt with to this point in the post-reform era. [There is a good reason for that, and we will get to it below the fold.]
Let’s dig back into the backdoor winner-take-all allocation rules that have been a part of the Republican nomination process for the last few cycles…