Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on July 17, 2009
Public Opinion Quarterly 2009 73(3):578-589; doi:10.1093/poq/nfp036
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Trends—Public Support for Presidential Nomination Reform
Address correspondence to Barbara Norrander; e-mail: norrande{at}u.arizona.edu
The presidential nomination calendar has become increasingly front loaded in recent years as more and more states try to squeeze into the earliest possible dates. This front loading has produced conflict between the national parties and the states and culminated in a nomination calendar with little rhyme or reason to its schedule. Thus, various reform proposals have been suggested. This paper reviews public opinion on two avenues. First, it reports on public evaluations of the current system, which is lukewarm, but public dissatisfaction tends to focus on elements other than the calendar. Second, public support for regional primaries, population-based groupings of primaries and a single-day national primary are examined in polls from 1968 to 2007.
BARBARA NORRANDER is with the Department of Political Science, University of Arizona, 315 Social Science Building, 1145 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.