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Democrats are poised to shake up the order of their presidential nominating process, with Iowa falling off the calendar in favor of states including South Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.
While the schedule isn’t final, the proposed changes would create a more diverse primary electorate in early states. Iowa is a predominantly white state that has trended toward Republicans over the past decade. South Carolina and Georgia have large populations of Black voters, a key component of the Democratic party’s base, while more than half of Nevada’s population is non-white.
The demographic breakdowns listed here encompass statewide Census data. In these early primary states, voters who are likely to cast ballots in a Democratic primary tend to be less white than the states’ overall populations.
2
New Hampshire (1.4 million)
4
South Carolina (5.1 million)
the early states in 2020.
Proposed order of primaries
1
South Carolina (5.1 million)
2
New Hampshire (1.4 million)
5
Michigan (10 million)
and more than double its size.
Under the new presidential primary order, South Carolina — which had the greatest share of Black voters among the early states in 2020 and helped now-President Joe Biden make a comeback after underperforming in other early states — would move from the fourth state to the first. Georgia, a larger state with a similarly high share of Black voters, would slot in fourth, while New Hampshire and Nevada would remain second and third.
Michigan would become the fifth state to vote ahead of the famed Super Tuesday, replacing Iowa as Democrats’ early state in the Midwest. Michigan is far more populous than Iowa and would also increase the representation of Black voters.
White voters will still account for a majority of voters in the early primary states overall, though that isn’t the case for the Democratic primary electorates in some individual states. In South Carolina, for example, Black voters accounted for roughly 56 percent of those casting ballots in the state’s 2020 Democratic primary electorate, according to exit polls, despite compromising a bit over a quarter of the state’s overall population.
The cumulative share of nonwhite voters in early primary states will be closer to the national average, according to a POLITICO analysis. Nationwide, 60 percent of Americans are white. Across the first five new primary states, 63 percent of people are white — down from 68 percent across the previous first four primary states.
Percent of early-state population that is white, calculated cumulatively
100% white
Nat’l avg. 60%
0%
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Total pop.
Iowa
Nev.
N.H.
S.C.
N/A
12.6 M
Use the tool to see how racial makeup the cumulative percentage of the early-state primary population changes based on which states are included. Other states that sought to join the early primary window include Minnesota, Illinois and Washington.
Make your own primary states: Percent of early-state population that is white, cumulatively
100% white
Nat’l avg. 60%
0%
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Total pop.
Iowa
Nev.
N.H.
S.C.
N/A
12.6 M
First state
Second state
Third state
Fourth state
Fifth state
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Jessica Piper, Beatrice Jin, Kai Elwood-Dieu and Andrew Milligan
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