Nevada’s 2024 GOP presidential caucuses will be on Feb. 8 of next year, jumping ahead of the South Carolina primary for the first time in an open race since 1988, the state GOP announced Monday.
The caucuses are the latest piece of the 2024 GOP primary puzzle to fall into place: Iowa’s state Republican Party already said it will hold the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 15, while South Carolina’s party-run primary has been set for Feb. 24.
New Hampshire’s secretary of state won’t announce its primary date until later this year, but it’s widely expected to occur on or around Jan. 23.
That schedule would put Nevada squarely between New Hampshire and South Carolina on the GOP calendar, and a state party statement said its caucus date “amplifies Nevada’s significance in the national political landscape.”
Nevada’s state legislature in 2021 passed a law establishing a state-run presidential primary, which is scheduled for two days before the caucuses, Feb. 6. But Republicans are effectively ignoring it: They’ve sued to block the primary, which won’t be held anyway if no or only one Republican files to run in it.
And even if the primary is held, it won't have any sway over the real purpose of a nominating contest: to allot delegates. The Republican National Committee will only recognize delegates awarded in the caucuses later that week. It will, however, occupy the second slot for Democrats, as sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee in its efforts to reorder its early-state calendar.
Overall, Republicans’ early-state schedule includes the same four “carve-out” states, which are allowed to hold their nominating contests before March 1, as in 2016. But that year, the contests were more compressed: Iowa kicked off voting on Feb. 3, 2016, with Nevada’s caucuses wrapping up the early states on Feb. 23.
Instead of a 20-day sprint, the first four states will vote over a nearly six-week span, potentially making it harder for poorly performing candidates to stay in the race.