David V. Johnson

The presidential primary season has finally left the states of the former Confederacy behind for good. It’s about time.

Last week’s "Super Tuesday 2" contests marked the halfway point, with more than half of the 50 states selecting delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions. By then, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and real estate mogul Donald Trump had emerged with commanding and perhaps insurmountable leads in their respective contests.

But lost in the horse race is the fundamental unfairness of the primary schedule and how it has tilted the contests in favor of the front-runners. In short, the South has had too large a say too early in the primaries.

This is especially clear in the Democratic race. Twenty-six states have voted so far, but the total includes every Southern state except Kentucky. Although Southern states host about a quarter of the total delegates, they have awarded more than half of all delegates so far.

This is no accident. Southern leaders moved their state primaries earlier in the schedule and even called the first Super Tuesday on March 1 the “SEC Primary,” referring to the Southeastern Conference and its college athletic teams. This scheduling was not unprecedented; in 1988 Democrats slated Southern states earlier in the primary calendar to boost a moderate candidate.

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The result of this calendar switch is clear: Clinton has not only won all Southern states, but she has done it by a greater than 2-to-1 margin. Her performance in that region alone boosted her lead in pledged delegates (those assigned according to primary results) by a whopping 372. Outside the South, however, Sen. Bernie Sanders actually led Clinton by 52 delegates on the eve of the Arizona, Idaho and Utah contests.

The effect of the Southern-leaning calendar is far more profound than the straight delegate numbers, because of what psychologists and political scientists call the bandwagon effect — the proven tendency individuals have to follow the beliefs and behaviors of what is seen as popular. The more the voting public appears to favor Clinton, the more voters will tend to do so in the future.

This effect is likely even more pronounced due to the influence of superdelegates, the 712 party leaders who will join the 4,051 pledged delegates in selecting a nominee. Clinton leads Sanders in superdelegates 467 to 26, according to AP, unsurprising given her and her husband’s standing in the party. Although superdelegates have only promised to vote along these lines at the convention, are unconstrained by primary results and can change their minds, media organizations often report these delegates as “won” by Clinton, giving her an overwhelming overall lead of 1,630 to 870.

Though the Republican Party does not have superdelegates, its primary schedule is also slanted in favor of the South. This has helped Trump, though not as strongly as it has boosted Clinton. All Southern states have already hosted their GOP primaries and all save Texas have voted for Trump. The region boosted him 182 delegates over his closest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. In the rest of the country, by contrast, Trump held only a 66-delegate lead after Super Tuesday 2. More importantly, he had about 56 fewer delegates than Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich combined. Trump also benefited from the winner-take-all rules of South Carolina and Florida, though Kasich had the same advantage in Ohio.

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This year’s Southern-fried scheduling is profoundly undemocratic. No one region of the country should have more of a say than any other in selecting our presidential candidates. Yet if Southern states — a quarter of the country — allot all their delegates in the first half of the primary season, they will inevitably have more say. They will end the hopes of most candidates, and if they coalesce behind a single candidate, they will inevitably influence the rest of the country to do the same.

In future years, party leaders should avoid this problem by insisting on a schedule that is more balanced regionally, giving Americans from all sections of the country a more equal say in who should be president. There are many sensible proposals for how to do so, such as the interregional primary plan favored by Rep. Sander Levin. It would break the United States into six regions and at least one state in each region would vote on each of six primary days between March and June.

As for the Democratic Party’s superdelegates, let them hold off on voicing their preferences until after the primary season is over, so that they do not unduly influence the vote. As political leaders, they should be responsive to the voters — the opposite of the role they have now.

David V. Johnson is senior opinion editor at Al Jazeera America.

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