Democrats open door for another state to jump the Iowa caucuses. Where could the 2024 primary start?

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If not Iowa, then where?

The Democratic National Committee will spend the next several months answering that question after a party committee voted this week to strip Iowa of its guaranteed first-in-the-nation status.

The decision to open the floor for other states to make their pitch as the first party nominating election of the 2024 presidential cycle came after advocates for changing the calendar questioned whether Iowa was representative of the rest of the country.

Moving Iowa off its perch isn't the only change on the table, though. The move puts the DNC in position to reshuffle the entire Democratic nominating calendar and opens the possibility of ditching other early elections in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Related: What's next as Iowa fights to keep its first-in-the-nation caucuses?

Running the first presidential nominating election of the cycle isn't just a feather in a state's cap. The first primary or caucus can launch campaigns or tank them.

President Barack Obama's surprise win in the 2008 Iowa caucuses helped supercharge his campaign for president. In 1980, George H.W. Bush's surprising win in Iowa would end up propelling him to the vice presidency under Ronald Reagan. In 2016, Bush's son Jeb's paltry showing was a harbinger of a sinking campaign that eventually stalled out in South Carolina.

Iowa Republicans have chosen Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, none of whom became the party's nominee for president. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire's Democratic primary twice but didn't make it to the general election ballot.

And the White House's current occupant, President Joe Biden, had poor showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020.

Even if they don't always determine who wins the presidency, early states still take on outsized importance in nominating major party candidates. They often winnow the field, giving voters in later states fewer choices on their ballots.

In some ways, Iowa closely resembles the rest of the nation. Its median income and the share of residents who are religious has trended close to the national average, according to an NPR analysis.

But both Iowa and New Hampshire are whiter and more rural than the U.S. as a whole, even though their populations – like much of the rest of the country – are migrating toward urban areas. 

More: Iowa Democratic caucuses: Who won and when we will we find out? Unanswered questions linger

“When you’re a party that’s inclusive and talks about diversity and having a lot of voices involved you can’t stay with the status quo," said Amy Dacey, a former DNC CEO who now serves as executive director of American University's Sine Institute of Policy & Politics. "And most people, I think a lot of people, are saying the status quo is not acceptable"

Who should go first?

Every state will have a chance to make their case for being part of the early schedule, but Michigan and New Jersey appear most ready to make a push.

Michigan officials have campaigned for being part of the early primary group in the past, and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., told the Detroit Free Press they will get into the mix again.

“No state should have a lock on going first,” she told the newspaper. “Every state, every region, should have the opportunity to have the candidates visit them.”

In 2008, Michigan and Florida tried to jump the DNC's election calendar but suffered the consequences when the DNC stripped the states of some delegates to that year's nominating convention. Now, the floor is open.

Dingell already is touting the state's diversity and its mix of farming communities and manufacturing. Michigan more closely resembles the national picture of racial diversity than the first four states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Its mix of urban and rural populations also more closely mirror the nation than all but South Carolina.

New Jersey Democrats also have told the DNC their state should be considered for an early primary, touting a tightly packed and diverse population into the fourth-smallest state in the nation.

The state party's Chairman Leroy J. Jones Jr. wrote in a letter last month to the DNC that New Jersey's compact size "would save candidates valuable travel time and resources and encourage the kind of retail campaigning that has always been a hallmark of the Democratic presidential primary process."

New Jersey Democrats are even more diverse than the state's overall population, Jones said in his letter, and the state offers a mix of rural areas and urban centers. The 2020 Census shows about three-quarters of New Jersey identified as white, a few points less than the rest of the country.

"In many ways, we are truly a microcosm of the country," he wrote.

Why does it matter?

The decision about which states hold their nominating elections early is critical, experts say, because results in early states affect the field in all the states that follow.

That means voters in Iowa and New Hampshire traditionally have had more choices than those in Pennsylvania and Texas because candidates who falter early can't hang around for later elections.

"It's about who looks like the party and who gets to chime in early," said Andrea Benjamin, associate director of African & African American studies at the University of Oklahoma. "In my opinion, we should be hearing from a diverse set of Democratic voters sooner. They shouldn't be the last state."

The party could solve some of those problems by having multiple states hold their primary on the same day, but that would require working with state legislatures to move dates and potentially set up multiple costly elections in the same year, said Caitlin Jewitt, a political science professor at Virginia Tech who studies party politics.

“Any one individual state is always going to have its peculiarities and its type of Democrats. New York Democrats are not the same as Florida Democrats or Nevada Democrats," she said. "By placing one state first you’re prioritizing and elevating those voice of voters at the expense of others.”

Democrats also will consider an early state's competitiveness for the general election, Dacey said. Strategists might prefer to put more resources into the handful of states that decide the general election.

The combination of Michigan's status among those battleground states and its mix of urban and rural population could put the state "in play to do this," she said.

Benjamin said Georgia is an appealing option because its diverse set of Democratic voters who helped decide the 2020 election and the House majority. Georgia already is setting up as a battleground again in 2022, with hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate.

"It's 2022," Benjamin said. "We can't wait to hear from that diverse set of voters where then they feel like my choices don't matter."

Why do Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada go first?

Iowa has had a lock on being the first state to vote for presidential nominees since 1972.

New Hampshire's primary has followed the Iowa caucuses on the basis of a state law in the Granite State that requires it to be the first traditional primary of the cycle. If any state schedules a primary before New Hampshire, the secretary of state can bump it seven days earlier.

The DNC has made changes in recent election cycles, though, in part to address concerns about representation among the early states. In 2008, it moved South Carolina and Nevada, which are more diverse, earlier in the cycle. 

"I will say it right now, caucus states are going to be a hard sell for me," committee member Mo Elleithee said, according to the Register. Some advocates for reform say caucuses hurt participation because they require voters to be present for long periods of time and don't allow for a private ballot.

Delays in tabulating results in the 2020 Democratic caucus also have hurt Iowa's standing.

Iowa started going first because of its complicated process, Jewitt said. The party scheduled its state convention in June and worked backward on the calendar to give it enough time for its entire process. That landed it before any other nominating election in the country. 

The Democratic Party didn’t mind letting smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire go first because they leveled the playing field for candidates who couldn’t raise as much money to run in large states, she said. A win in an early state could generate momentum that led to more fundraising and a better shot for those candidates to compete in larger states later in the cycle.

Now, though, candidates need robust fundraising and a national profile months before Iowa to qualify for early debate stages, Jewitt said.

More: OnPolitics: The 10 primary elections that may decide control of the House

And shifting which states vote early could be complicated, she said. The DNC would need the New Hampshire to either loosen its rules or discourage candidates from campaigning there.

'You do not reflect the nation'

Members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, who voted to adopt the plan to restructure the early nominating window, plan to evaluate states' applications for reflections of the modern party and its values, like diversity, competitiveness and the "feasibility" of holding an early contest, the Des Moines Register reported. 

The four states that have historically gone first don't really reflect America's racial makeup, though some are closer to parity than others.

About 168.3 million Americans are registered to vote, according to the 2020 Census. About 80% identify as white, 12.4% are Black, 4.4% are Asian, 11.1% are Hispanic, of any race, and 3.7% identify as more than one race.

The pool of Democratic voters is more diverse though, with far fewer white people and higher proportions of racial minorities, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study.

For the most part, early states don't closely resemble the nation's demographics. For example, Iowa has higher proportions of men and white voters than the country at large, according to the Census. While Black voters make up about 12.4% of the national electorate, in Iowa they account for only 3.2%.

In New Hampshire, the racial diversity gap is even wider. More than 96% of New Hampshire voters are white, according to the Census, compared with 93% in Iowa and 80% across the country.

South Carolina and Nevada, where about 74% of voters are white, are closer to the national average. Among the early states, South Carolina also comes the closest to mirroring the nation's mix of urban and rural populations.

"Early states have the most influence," Benjamin said. "The question we have to ask ourselves is who's part of making those decisions? And right now – no disrespect to Iowa, New Hampshire – thank you for your service, but you do not reflect the nation."

Contributing: Brianne Pfannenstiel of The Des Moines Register, Todd Spangler of The Detroit Free Press