“The RNC and DNC like having smaller states earlier, simply because that allows candidates to be on the ground doing the sorts of retail politics that put them in front of voters,” said Josh Putnam, a North Carolina-based consultant who runs the primary-focused website FrontloadingHQ, referring to the Republican and Democratic national committees. “They see that as a more valid test of what candidates can or should be able to do rather than automatically defaulting to a setup where a large state, a populous state, or a large group of states are going first.”