With state primaries quickly approaching, it’s crunch time for presidential candidates who want to have their names appear on state ballots. For incumbent Joe Biden, he’s already being left off the very first primary ballot.
If you’ve been paying attention to the happening surrounding the 2024 presidential election, you know that the Democratic National Convention tried to change things up a bit this year to give Biden a supposed leg up.
For the last four decades now, Iowa has held the nation’s first caucuses, followed by New Hampshire’s primary, held on the following Tuesday. But in 2020, Biden didn’t perform well in either. In New Hampshire, Biden actually came in fifth for his party.
It wasn’t until South Carolina held their primaries weeks later that things started to look up for Biden. And so, the DNC has decided to leapfrog South Carolina to the front of the line. Naturally, the hope here is for Biden to avoid all the early state losses he experienced in 2020.
However, it seems that move has shot them in the foot a bit.
You see, New Hampshire isn’t at all happy about not being first. In fact, their state laws actually dictate that they must be first to primary.
And so they have decided to ignore the DNC’s new rules and primary first, as always. This means the likely, but so far not scheduled date will be January 23, the Tuesday following Iowa’s caucuses and before South Carolina primaries on February 3.
It also means Biden’s name won’t be on the New Hampshire ballot.
Now, as you may know, this doesn’t necessarily mean Biden won’t win the nomination or even the state.
For starters, as 2020 proved, even with his name on the ballot, Biden didn’t win New Hampshire. And yet, he still became our 46th president.
There is also the option for him to win as a write-in candidate, where voters literally write his name in at the bottom.
However, it’s not a very good look for a presidential candidate, especially an incumbent, to not officially be on the ballot in such a pivotal swing state.
As you likely know, things are only getting more interesting…
