The Democratic Party's presidential primary lasts too long-and that may hurt the eventual nominee

In the lead-up to the 2016 Democratic primary, most commentators believed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would easily win her party's nomination while the Republican field would be consumed by infighting. While Donald Trump became the Republican nominee in early May of 2016, Clinton took a further month to secure her own party's nod. In new research Josh M. Ryan finds that Clinton’s delay was not an outlier – since 1980, Democratic candidates who make it through the first three months of a nomination race are less likely to drop out than are Republicans. He writes that the GOP gives its candidates an electoral bonus for winning a state’s primary election, meaning that their field tends to clear earlier than the Democrats’.