Democrats set January deadline for states to apply for early 2028 primary contests

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Not even a year out from the last presidential election, the Democratic National Committee has begun setting up a framework for the party’s next round of presidential primary elections, which could upend the early-voting calendar yet again.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee on Monday approved a plan giving states until January 16 to submit applications to hold voting contests in the early window ahead of Super Tuesday, when a massive haul of delegates will be awarded.

No huge tranche of delegates is necessarily at stake in the early-voting contests, but their heft has traditionally played a pivotal role for candidates seeking to lead their parties, with heavy travel rotations meaning high visibility for the states involved.

“We are committed to executing a fair and transparent process that will deliver a battle-tested nominee who will win back the White House for Democrats,” the committee co-chairs Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt, Jr. said in a joint statement.

It will be months — and potentially years — before the 2028 calendar is set. In June, several members of new DNC Chairman Ken Martin’s leadership team said the party was considering scrambling its voting order for the next election cycle. That also happened in 2024, when — at President Joe Biden’s behest — South Carolina hosted the Democrats’ first-in-the-nation contest, giving the incumbent president a resounding win in the state that had helped resurrect his flagging campaign four years earlier.

That move was also a nod to the party’s loyal base of Black voters, while adding Georgia and Michigan to the so-called early window.

At some level, the next presidential primary has already begun — informally, at least. A half dozen presidential prospects have already begun to make early pilgrimages to the states that topped the calendar last time: South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa chief among them.

As Democratic officials gathered in Martin’s home state of Minnesota for their summer meeting earlier this year, there were several private conversations about whether South Carolina, which is a reliably Republican state, should be replaced by another Southern state that is considered a swing state in the general election. North Carolina and Georgia are considered the early favorites if a change is made.

Martin himself said South Carolina could lose its top spot. But he expressed confidence that a state with a large Black population, if not South Carolina, would be featured prominently in the Democrats’ next nomination process.

“Clearly, the most reliable constituency of the Democratic Party are Black voters, and they will have a prominent role in the selection of our nominee,” Martin said then. “And whether it’s South Carolina or some other states, rest assured that making sure that there’s a state in the mix that actually will battle test your nominee with African American voters is really critical to making sure we can win in November.”

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley, one of the few veterans who retained their seat on Rules and Bylaws, previously noted that New Hampshire is bound by state law to host the nation’s opening presidential primary election regardless of the DNC’s wishes.

New Hampshire, of course, bucked the DNC’s 2024 calendar. And Iowa has threatened to go rogue as well in 2028 if its skipped over again.

In a release issued after Monday’s vote, Nevada State Democratic Party Executive Director Hilary Barrett said her state should go first, calling Nevada “the only state that meets all of the DNC’s new early state criteria set forth with unmatchable rigorousness, efficiency, and fairness.”