Today was the big, much hyped, primary in New Hampshire.

Putting all the hype aside, do primaries make sense? Let’s take a quick look at how primaries work. There are closed, semi-open and open primaries. The difference is whether voters not registered with a political party (either Democrat or Republican) may vote in the primary. In closed only voters registered with the party my vote. Semi-open primaries allow independent voter to vote. Open primaries anyone even voters registered with the competing party my vote, but they may vote in only one primary. That goes for independent voters as well. (for more details see Wikipedia)

State by state primaries are held. Those states holding the primaries first give candidates a psychological boost going on to the next primaries. These, historically, are Iowa and New Hampshire, which are small states not very representative of the nation as a whole.

Candidates spend a humongous amount of money to campaign for these elections. The top three candidates for the Democrats have already spent more than $100 million (according to cnn) and only two primaries have yet taken place.

To sum it up, candidates are not just nominated by their party supporters, but also independents and in some cases also from the opposing party members. Does this make sense? Candidates publicly compete with each other in primaries at times attacking each other. Does this make sense? A few small, not representative states favor candidates winning there. They can then take advantage of the momentum to improve their chances in later (more important) primaries. Does this make sense? Finally, the financial burdens for presidential candidates, which may exclude possible candidates from running for president, are substantial. It definitely makes candidates dependent on donations and forces them to exert much energy in raising money. Does this make sense?

All the hype about the primary in New Hampshire may make sense, but presidential primaries are definately nonsense.

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