The Iowa caucuses have been the first “nominating event” in every presidential election cycle in the United States for 50 years while New Hampshire has staged the nation’s first presidential election-year primary now for a century.
As of Nov. 17, 2022, that means the 2024 presidential campaign “officially” kicks off in 445 days with the Feb. 5, 2024 Iowa caucuses followed by New Hampshire’s primary, preliminarily set for Feb. 13, 2024.
Critics in both parties, but especially Democrats, have long contended that Iowa and New Hampshire, with relatively small and predominately white populations, are not demographically representative of the nation as a whole.
Despite moves by state legislatures to push primaries to earlier dates on presidential election-year calendars, Florida most notably between 2008-12, the lineup has remained the same since 2016: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina….}