bucy wrote:

Why wouldn't you just have a single nationwide primary?

Because that would marginalize the smaller states even more.

A benefit of the per-state primary system is that candidates who would otherwise ignore a state or region are compelled to try to directly address them. Why hit any of the Dakotas when Florida outvotes all of them? Candidates would carve up the map -- as they do along party lines in the post-primary -- and fight over the battleground states. The cost of running a primary campaign would quickly spiral out of control, because you'd immediately have cause to invest in national campaigning.

But the per-state system is obviously broken. They will continue to become more clustered, because all the states want initial candidate attention. By the time Pennsylvania's primary happened, if Kerry didn't already have all the votes he needed to be candidate, it was too close to that to matter.

Staggering primary clusters by region would benefit both candidates and the regions. For one month, each region would have all of the candidates' full attention. It seems like a very strong idea.