South Carolina is set to open the Democratic presidential primary calendar for a second consecutive cycle, after an influential party panel voted Friday to keep the state first in the nation in 2028.
The decision, which requires final approval from the full Democratic National Committee next month, is among the most consequential the party will make ahead of the presidential race. The order of the early states shapes which candidates gain traction, which fade away and which constituencies the candidates spend the next year-plus courting.
“We have demonstrated that South Carolina picks presidents,” Carol Fowler, one of the state’s DNC members, said before the vote.
Nevada and New Hampshire also competed for the leadoff slot, but will instead be included in what the party calls the “early window.” The slate of six states, which is set to also include Michigan, is expected to be decided by the panel later Friday.
There’s an inside baseball element to all this that borders on confusion. But the decision about which states go early has clear stakes from recent history, as they’ve wielded influence that can define an election cycle.
In 2020, the calendar began with Iowa’s caucuses, which were beset by problems, before shifting to New Hampshire followed by Nevada and then South Carolina — where Joe Biden’s victory saved his campaign, consolidated a divided field of challengers, and bolstered the electability argument that carried him to the nomination.
Biden rewarded the state four years later: Under Biden’s leadership, the party vaulted South Carolina to the top spot for 2024 and demoted Iowa.
That reshuffle also put New Hampshire at odds with the DNC. New Hampshire state law requires officials to hold the nation’s first presidential primary regardless of what the national parties decide to recognize. After Democrats put South Carolina first, New Hampshire went ahead with an unsanctioned contest beforehand anyway, in which then-President Biden was only a write-in option because he declined to file for ballot access in a race his party had not authorized.
The reshuffle ahead of 2028 unfolds against the backdrop of a party still reckoning with 2024: the collapse of Biden’s re-election bid, Vice President Kamala Harris’ 107 day sprint as his replacement, and the Democratic losses that followed. Also hanging over the decision is a recent Supreme Court ruling that created an easy opportunity in the south for Republican-led states to break apart a number of Democratic districts with large minority populations — [something like:] diluting the political representation of Black voters, who have been a cornerstone of the Democratic Party for decades,
Underneath the procedural arguments were the party’s longest-running fault lines — over which voices, communities and regions Democrats should be organized around.
New Hampshire had tradition on its side, but has struggled to contend with concerns about its lack of racial diversity.
“The point that we want to underscore is that we don’t decide for the rest of the country,” Rep. Chris Pappas, a Democrat who is running for the state’s U.S. Senate seat this year, said earlier this week. “We help kick off a process that ensures that it’s centered on the voters and that the conversations are in people’s workplaces and living rooms and coffee shops.”
South Carolina’s case rested on the influence of Black voters in the Democratic Party’s base, even though the state itself is reliably red in the general elections.
“Since the early 2000s, South Carolina has been the first in the South contest and our party’s most reliable read on Black voter sentiment, the group that this party most depend on,” Christale Spain, chairwoman of the state’s Democratic party, told fellow DNC members.
Nevada made a robust and concerted case, arguing that it is both a presidential battleground and a state with critical diverse coalitions for the party. But its election law quirks were used to make cases against it, conjuring the specter of another cycle beginning Iowa-style uncertainty.
“All roads to the White House to build that coalition that we need to take back the White House in 2028 starts in the state of Nevada,” said Daniele Monroe-Moreno, the state party chairwoman.
The calendar the panel is assembling this week will govern a primary that appears likely to be wide open — and crowded enough that candidates will struggle to break through. So will the question of what the party stands for.
“We’ve had some bruising realities to deal with about our ability to continue to have credibility with our base and our voters,” said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has attempted to steer her state into being among the first primaries as well.
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