Wisconsin Presidential Primary As A Movable Feast Part 2

Wisconsin GOP House Speaker Robin Vos was on Dan O’Donnell’s talk radio show on WISN 1130 in Milwaukee today defending their power grab during this lame duck session: Speaker Vos Explains Extraordinary Session

Related to the discussion of when the presidential primary should be held…amongst the gobbledy gook was this nugget. It is unusual for the Wisconsin Presidential Primary to be held with the spring general election in April. It’s something that happened very recently and shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place. But we were being nice and agreed not to interfere with Iowa and New Hampshire’s first states traditions. He said that Wisconsin had earlier primaries traditionally that weren’t tied to the spring election until he thought 2012.

Well if this were Politifact this statement would probably be flagged as mostly false. Well, I didn’t go too far back but it looks like the April general election has been the usual date for Wisconsin’s presidential primary for quite some time with February being the exception.

2016 – April 5
2012 – April 3
2008 – February 19 *
2004 – February 17 *
2000 – April 4
1996 – March 19 #
1992 – April 7
1988 – April 5
1984 – April 3
1980 – April 1
1976 – April 6
1972 – April 4

* these were held with the non-partisan state primary elections.
# not sure what this date signifies. If anyone comes across the background on this, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

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