Everywhere across the country, people are heading out to their local primaries to cast their votes for who they want to see in the general election in November. As important as it is to vote for your favorite candidate, it’s just as important to understand what that vote goes to and how it impacts the race to candidacy.
What are primaries for? Primaries, statewide voting through ballots, and caucuses, where local groups decide candidates they’ll support and select their delegates for conventions, are conducted by each U.S. state beginning the January before the next president is to be inaugurated. After the people of each state cast their ballots for the candidates they want to see in the general election, the states determine how many delegates will be allocated to each presidential candidate.
The Democratic Party uses a proportional system in determining the number of delegates. So, basically, the more votes a candidate gets, the more delegates a candidate gets.
The Republican party, on the other hand, uses a winner-takes-all system. If a candidate gets the majority of the votes, all the delegates for the state are appointed to that candidate.
To sum it up, the primaries allow voters to tell the Democratic and Republican parties who they should nominate for the general election in November.
What are delegates? Delegates are the people who support presidential candidates. They’re usually party activists and local and state politicians who are nominated by their respective states to attend the Democratic and Republican national conventions in the summer before the general election to help decide the parties’ official nominees for the election.
Each state has a specific number of delegates based on population and congressional districts. Additional delegates are awarded to states based on rules set forth by the Democratic and Republican parties.
What are super delegates? The total delegates per state are comprised of pledged and unpledged delegates. While pledged delegates are those who support a particular candidate at the convention, which is decided upon after the primaries, while unpledged delegates are not bound to particular candidates and are decided upon outside of the primary elections.
Many super delegates are political leaders selected by their respective parties. These delegates make up 1/5 of the of the total delegates at the Democratic National Convention, meaning that 1/5 of the party’s delegates can select who they want for the nomination, regardless of the primary results for their respective states. Out of the 2,470 total delegates for the Republican National Convention, there are 437 unpledged delegates, meaning that about 17 percent of the delegates can select who they want for the nomination.
What happens if no candidate reaches the required number of delegates for nomination? Democratic presidential candidates need 3,823 delegates to win the nomination, and Republican candidates need 1,237 delegates to win the nomination. If no candidates receive these numbers of
delegates prior to their respective parties’ conventions, then a contested convention will be held. In this case, all pledged candidates are able to re-decide their nominations. Votes are re-casted at the national convention until a candidate wins the majority of the delegates’ votes and therefore receives the nominations.
However, many Democratic presidential candidates personally select their delegates, so even though delegates are technically able to re-decide their vote, they are unlikely to do so unless their candidate releases them from the relationship. In the case for Republican party, delegates are not hand-selected by candidates, so at a contested convention, delegates are more likely to vote for who they want, rather than who they are pledged to.
