Former President Donald Trump reacts to crowd applause during a campaign event on July 1, 2023 in Pickens, South Carolina. The previous president faces a growing list of primary challengers within the Republican Party.
Sean Rayford | Getty Images
Iowa Republicans have scheduled the party’s presidential nominating caucuses for Jan. 15, 2024, putting the primary votes of the following election somewhat greater than six months away.
The Iowa Republican Party’s state central committee voted unanimously Saturday to carry the leadoff contests on the third Monday in January — on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day federal holiday.
Though Republican presidential candidates have been campaigning in Iowa since last winter, there was some uncertainty about when the normal leadoff contests could be held. That’s partly as a consequence of the Democratic National Committee’s reshuffling of its calendar and dropping Iowa as its first contest.
The GOP date is earlier by several weeks than the past three Iowa caucuses, though not as early as 2008, once they were held just three days into the brand new yr.
Caucuses, unlike primary elections, are contests planned, financed and carried out by the parties, not state election officials. The Iowa announcement Saturday allows Latest Hampshire, which has not set a primary election date yet, to guard its first-in-the-nation status, which is codified in state law that requires that contest be held at the least seven days ahead of some other primary.
Last month, South Carolina Republicans adopted Feb. 24 because the date for the normal first Southern primary, leaving loads of time for Nevada to schedule its Republican caucuses without crowding Latest Hampshire.
“We remain committed to maintaining Iowa’s cherished first-in-the-nation caucuses, and stay up for holding a historic caucus in the approaching months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024,” Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a press release.
Saturday’s decision could have implications for each parties because Iowa Democrats had been waiting on the state’s Republican Party to set its caucus date as they fight to regulate to latest DNC rules on the order of the 2024 presidential primary.
Iowa Democrats have proposed holding a caucus on the identical day because the state’s Republicans and allowing participants to vote for president via mail-in ballot. But Iowa Democrats have said they could not immediately release the outcomes.
That would allow the state party to still hold the first-in-the-nation caucus without defying a latest primary calendar endorsed by President Joe Biden and approved by the DNC that calls for South Carolina to exchange Iowa within the leadoff spot and kick off primary voting on Feb. 3.