It seems like half the places I like to read are asking “what went wrong” and “what’s wrong with the Democratic party”?

Lots of ideas, but nothing concrete, and nothing that strikes me as particularly helpful useful.

My thoughts are this: I wasn’t pleased when Kerry was nominated. I had nothing personal against him, but I felt that he wasn’t the best candidate–that he wasn’t going to appeal to the voters needed to win the election.

That led me to wonder if perhaps something is wrong with our primary process. Which led me to this question:

How much of a say do the swing states–those states where the election was close (or should have been)–have in the nomination process? I know that personally I’m rather frustrated by the fact that I have never had a say in the nomination process–our primary is in May. This year the primary was essentially over in the beginning of March.

Sure, the first two states to hold primaries are Iowa and New Hampshire–major swing states. But do Iowa and New Hampshire reflect the rest of the country?

Here is a list of state that held their primaries after 9 March, and the number of electorial vores for each of those states:

Kansas 6
Illinois 21
Alaska 3
Wyoming 3
Colorado 9
North Carolina 15
Pennsylvania 21
Indiana 11
Nebraska 5
West Virginia 5
Arkansas 6
Kentucky 8
Oregon 7
Idaho 4
Alabama 9
New Mexico 5
South Dakota 3
Montana 3
New Jersey 15

In bold are the states with elections that were relatively close
In italics are state that went for Kerry

19 states, all but four of which went for Bush. States with 159 Electorial votes had no say in the primary process.

Does all this mean anything? I don’t know. But I do know that I’ve felt frustrated by my lack of say in the primary process, and felt it difficult to rally behind a candidate I felt only half-hearted about.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/primaries/pages/scorecard/
http://www.cspan.org/
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/

ADDENDUM the First: Here’s the table I complied.