The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations

239 Pages·2004·0.77 MB·English

by  William G. Mayer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Mayer, William G., 1956–
The front-loading problem in presidential nominations / William G. Mayer,
Andrew E. Busch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8157-5520-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8157-5519-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Primaries—United States. 2. Caucus. 3. Presidents—United States—
Nomination. I. Busch, Andrew. II. Title.
JK207.M39 2003
324.273'154—dc22 2003019912
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Typeset in Sabon
Composition by Stephen D. McDougal
Mechanicsville, Maryland
Printed by R. R. Donnelley
Harrisonburg, Virginia
To our wives,
Melinda Busch and Amy Logan
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
chapter one
Introduction 1
chapter two
The Rise of Front-Loading 4
chapter three
Explaining Front-Loading 23
chapter four
The Consequences of Front-Loading 56
chapter five
Proposed Solutions 95
chapter six
The Politics of Nomination Reform 125
chapter seven
Conclusion 153
appendix a
On Measuring Front-Loading 169
vii
viii contents
appendix b
Specification of the Regression Equations
in Tables 3-4 and 3-5 172
appendix c
A Note on Delegate Counts 176
Notes 181
Index 217
Acknowledgments
A
ll research, we were both taught in graduate school, is
a communal effort, in the sense that it builds upon and responds to issues,
concepts, and questions developed by previous work in the field. But this
book is a communal product in a somewhat stronger sense. Front-loading
is a complicated phenomenon that is caused by or has ramifications for a
wide range of significant forces in contemporary American politics. In our
attempt to do justice to that complexity, we received important assistance
from a large number of people who provided us with data or helped us
understand the nuances of the presidential nomination process.
We wish to express our particular thanks and appreciation to Lois Timms
Ferrara, God’s gift to the public opinion community, and the Roper Cen-
ter for Public Opinion Research, for making available to us the national
survey data analyzed in chapters 3 and 4; David Goodfriend of the Asso-
ciated Press, for providing us with a considerable number of unpublished
AP delegate count stories; Rhodes Cook, former reporter extraordinaire
with Congressional Quarterly, now the editor of an invaluable newsletter,
for helping us understand the history and development of front-loading
and for providing us with the preference vote from the 1984 Illinois Demo-
cratic primary broken down by congressional district; Anthony Corrado
of Colby College, for answering innumerable questions about the com-
plexities of campaign finance laws and reporting forms; Richard Noyes,
then of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, for sending us a detailed
printout of media coverage by state during the 1988 and 1992 nomina-
tion races; and Michael Tolley of Northeastern University and Emmet T.
ix