Biden Recommends South Carolina’s Presidential Primary Go First, Iowa Bumped From Early State Window

(Radio Iowa) President Biden is asking national Democratic Party leaders to make changes for the 2024 campaign — bumping Iowa’s Caucuses out of the lead-off spot and putting South Carolina’s Presidential Primary first.

Biden finished fourth in the 2020 Iowa Caucuses, but won the South Carolina Primary a few weeks later. Biden’s list for state contests in 2024 starts with South Carolina on February 5th, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada a week later, then Georgia on the 19th and Michigan on the 26th of February. Iowa Democratic Party chairman Ross Wilburn says Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in the heart of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party for a generation. He also emphasizes that Iowa law requires that both major political parties hold Caucuses before any other state votes. New Hampshire also has a state law that requires its primary to be held before a similar election in another state and New Hampshire’s Democratic Party chairman says his state’s primary will be held first in 2024. The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee is meeting in Washington, D.C. to recommend which states will hold the early voting contests in 2024.

The full Democratic National Committee will meet early next year to vote on its calendar for state primaries and caucuses. In the past, states that did not follow the party’s schedule were penalized with a reduced number of delegates to the Democratic National Convention.