Presidential primary filing has now closed in fifteen states. In every Republican presidential primary so far, there are at least twelve candidates on the ballot. That is a stark difference from the past. If one looks at the previous election years in which a Republican president was not running for re-election, there were always some Republican presidential primaries with many fewer candidates. Examples: in 2012, Virginia had two; in 2008, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Oregon had two; in 2000, D.C., Indiana, New Jersey, and Oregon had two; in 1996, Arkansas, D.C., Indiana, New Jersey, and New York had three; in 1988, New Jersey had one; in 1980, Ohio had two.
Of course, in the states in which filing hasn’t yet closed, chances are there will be some states with fewer than twelve, as candidates drop out. The last state in which the list of candidates will be set (for Republicans) is South Dakota, where the date is March 29, 2016.
Actually, the 1980 GOP presidential primary ballot had 8 candidates.
The order in which they appeared was:
Bob Dole
Benjamin Fernandez
George Bush
Harold E. Stassen
John Connally
Gerald Thomas De Felice
Bedo Istvan Karoly
Howard Baker
Additionally, there was a write-in space.
The 1980 Democratic Primary presidential preference ballot had 5 candidates: Jimmy Carter, Edward Kennedy; Edmund G.Brown; Marlin D. Thacker and Robert J. Roosevelt. The Delegate Selection Ballot had Carter and Kennedy in all districts, and Brown in some districts.
The 9th USA Parliament will have 684 names, plus new nominees from February and March, on our ballot in 2016.
We have been using pure proportional representation (PR) for twenty consecutive years and PR works very well for generating a new unity phenomena like nothing before in politics.
Our US Presidential candidates are mixed in with all other names as one at-large national district.
With 684 consecutively ranked names, #1 Ralph Beach (Independent) is President and #2 Miss Joy Waymire (Decline to State) is Vice President.
After 44 years the national Libertarian Party has probably never elected one name to partisan election but last year our United Coalition elected three names to the California Assembly.
Nobody has it as good as our team.
http://www.usparliament.org
Dear Juan Nolla, thank you for that information about the Puerto Rico presidential primaries of 1980. I have corrected the post. I find it difficult to get information about Puerto Rico elections and presidential primaries.