Much of the literature on front-loading emphasizes a variety of consequences of the sequential nomination calendar on presidential nomination campaigns such as compressing voters’ effective decision-making period, influencing the types of presidential hopefuls who are nominated, giving advantage to the front-runner, making the nomination phase more media centered, and settling the nomination races in the early spring (Mayer and Busch, 2004; Atkeson and Maestas, 2008). Because studies of presidential primary elections have not focused profoundly on the impact of the front-loaded calendar on turnout, the purpose of this paper is to add one more layer to the understanding of participation in presidential primaries by investigating whether, and to what extent, the timing and scheduling of delegate-selection events affect electoral participation.
Employing data from presidential primary elections in Michigan from 1992 to 2012, we find evidence of a partial, yet effective, impact of front-loading in shaping primary turnout. The research shows that only Republican partisans seem to have been positively affected by the increasingly front-loaded calendar. Democrats, in comparison, simply lack the opportunity to be impacted by front-loading. Indeed, Michigan Democrats have been compelled to hold caucuses according to national party rules. In addition to the influence exerted by the nomination calendar, voters in Michigan were mobilized to cast ballots in the primaries by aspects of the campaign and by legal structures. What our comparison with the state of Indiana suggests is that front-loading did not have a depressive impact on voting rates in these Midwestern late-scheduled contests. Instead participation in Hoosier primaries was influenced by both contextual and individual factors. These findings suggest that front-loading can best explain the behavior of primary voters in early-voting states.
