Delegate Help 5¢

The Doctor is [IN]

Remember the Peanuts comic strips where Lucy sat under a sign that said psychiatric help 5¢?  While the doctor is out, I've borrowed her booth, and I'm here to answer your non-mathematics questions about delegates.  But before I do that, let me try to preempt some of your questions, which will in the process probably just prompt new questions which you hadn't previously considered.  

Before I do some Q and A, let's start with an excerpt from a brief primer on delegates I posted a few days ago:

There are two kinds of delegates.  About 80% of the 4,049 delegates currently allocated for the Denver convention are pledged delegates.  Pledged delegates are those who are "pledged" to a candidate based on the candidate's performance in a state's nomination contest.  Most states and territories have primaries, some have caucuses, and a few have hybrids or a state convention.  75% of a state's pledged delegates are allocated by Congressional district or similar boundary, with the remaining 25% allocated in proportion to the statewide results.  [This is for states with more than one Congressional district.]  

Republicans award delegates on a winner-take-all basis, usually by the entire state, although some places award delegates based upon winners of Congressional districts.  Democrats, however, award pledged delegates in proportion to their share of the vote.  If a candidate receives at least 15% of the vote in either a congressional district or statewide, he or she will receive at least one delegate from that jurisdiction.  Because delegates are parceled out mostly by Congressional district, it is possible and not rare for a candidate who finishes second statewide to actually get more delegates than the candidate who won the state.  What matters isn't just the number of votes, but also how they are distributed.  

Each state party has a process for determining the actual individuals who serve as pledged delegates in Denver.  Individuals submit their names to the state party and declare which candidate they would like to represent in Denver.  Those names are vetted with the campaign so they can determine that these individuals are in fact supporters of their candidate.  This is important, as there is nothing that binds the individuals, once at the convention, to vote for the candidate to whom they originally pledged their support.  But since the campaigns vet the names, it's extremely rare for someone to not vote for the candidate to whom they originally pledged support.  

Within a few months of the state's primary or caucus, the state party conducts a convention or a meeting of a leadership body and votes on the individual delegates.  A state's delegation must have an equal balance of men and women, and the state's delegation must represent the state's racial mix.  

The other 20% of the delegates in Denver will be unpledged delegates, who are often called "superdelegates."  These people are not obligated to pledge support for anyone in advance of their arriving at the convention.  Furthermore, just because someone publicly declares their support now for, say, Mike Gravel, nothing officially binds them to stick with that endorsement.  Thus, anyone who now declares support for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could show up at the convention and vote for someone else.    

Many unpledged delegates are elected officials.  All Democratic members of Congress and Democratic Senators are unpledged delegates.  Democratic governors are unpledged delegates.  Members of the Democratic National Committee are unpledged delegates.  And a small number of "party elders" are unpledged delegates; this group includes former Democratic presidents and vice-presidents, former nominees for President, former Speakers of the House, Senate leaders, or minority leaders in the House or Senate, and past chairs of the Democratic National Committee.  

OK, now that we've reviewed some of the basics, let's go over some questions.

How did they come up with these delegate counts for each state?  Iowa and Connecticut have similar populations; why does Iowa get 45 pledged delegates and Connecticut 48?

Pledged delegates are apportioned to states using a formula that factors in the number of electoral votes plus the number of votes for the Democratic Presidential nominee in the last two elections.  More Democratic states get more delegates.

OK, then that explains why DC gets 15 pledged delegates and Wyoming only 12.  But why does South Dakota get 15 and Montana get 16?

Ah, good question.  It's because the DNC calculated the delegates to leave a couple dozen left over, which they used as an inducement to keep every state from rushing forward to be part of Super Tuesday.  The ten states and territories with primaries or caucuses in April or later get bonus delegates.  That means more influence, and more people who get to go to the convention with delegate credentials so they can wear stupid hats and not hear what's being said from the stage.  

Wait, what's that?  Territories?
Yup, voters in Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico all get votes for our nominee and send delegates to the convention.  There's also a group called "Democrats Abroad" for Dems around the globe.  These territories and Dems Abroad also get slots on committees, such as the credentials committee and the platform committee.  Their votes, however, are fractional, and not worth as much as delegates from states and the District of Columbia, which all have electoral votes in the general election.  

Speaking of the credentials committee, isn't that the committee that will decide whether the Michigan and Florida delegations get seated at the convention?

Yes, but that's a big enough subject to warrant a piece by itself.  I'll post one later this week.

But at least tell me this: the delegates currently require 2,025 votes; does that include the delegates from MI and FL?

No, MI and FL are not factored in to the current totals.

Alright, a question about totals: why does every place I look have different delegate totals?

Short answer is that many in the media are nitwits and are mixing apples and anvils.  Remember upthread where I explained the difference between pledged delegates and unpledged delegates?  What's going on is that a bunch of media outlets are combining the totals of pledged delegates (which is a discernable and eventually unambiguous number) with unpledged delegates.  Unpledged delegates can say one thing and do another at the convention, so in my opinion they should be tallied separate from the pledged delegates.  

But why are even the pledged delegate totals often different?

A few reasons.  First, because of the proportional allocation of delegates, until votes are certified, you don't necessarily know who got how many delegates.  Furthermore, technically the delegates in most caucus states aren't finally determined for a couple months after the caucus.  The NYT had a good discussion of these vagaries yesterday; you should check it out.

Will either candidate get enough pledged delegates to officially lock up the nomination before the convention?

If one of the candidates goes on a run and wins contest after contests, there's certainly a possibility of a deal so we'll get a de facto nominee before Denver.  But mathematically, it's highly unlikely that either candidate will have 2,025 pledged delegates before the convention.  

So that means the unpledged delegates can overturn the will of the people at the convention?

Hold on there.  How do you determine the "will of the people?" in this kind of contest?  We've had open primaries, we've had closed primaries, primaries where Republicans could vote, others where only Dems and independents could vote but not Republicans, caucuses with a wide range of rules, and these contests are spread out over 5 months.  There's no way to compare popular votes.  So one can't easily know if the system doesn't reflect majority will like you can if the winner of the popular vote loses the electoral college.

OK, whatever, but the question remains, can't the unpledged delegates thwart the decisions of the voters and overturn the results of the primaries and caucuses?

No.  Only 20% of the delegates are unpledged delegates.  If I had to put money on it right now, I'd say that Obama will arrive in Denver without enough pledged delegates to lock up the nomination but only needing a couple hundred or fewer unpledged delegates to get the nomination.  Of course Michigan and Florida could really complicate this all of this—and in case you're wondering, the unpledged delegates are not currently slated to be seated at the convention—but there's also the chance that MI and FL will have to conduct new contests.  [I know, I said I wouldn't discuss MI and FL...]  

But the way to think about this isn't that the unpledged delegates will chose the nominee, but that the nominee, in order to secure the nomination, will require some
number of unpledged delegates to supplement his or her pledged delegates.  This happened to Walter Mondale in 1984, when he needed, I believe, six unpledged delegates to put him over the top.  Nobody claimed the unpledged delegates chose Walter Mondale just because he needed six of them to finalize
his nomination.

But doesn't it suck that people we didn't elect will have that much power?  

I'm only here to explain the process today.  But it is the process, and it's not going to change this cycle.  If people didn't like it, the time to change it was in 2005.

But I'll say this.  Most unpledged delegates are elected officials.  As elected officials, they live or die (politically) by keeping large or key blocs of voters and influential people happy.  Most of the people at DKos who are preemptively screaming about the unpledged delegates screwing "us" are Obama folks, and I think it strains credulity to think that if Obama continues to gain momentum and raise more money than Clinton, if he continues to win most contests, and he goes in to Denver having opened a gap on Clinton and looks like the stronger candidate in November, that the unpledged delegates will coalesce to back Clinton over Obama.  Most of them would face a revolt back home if they did that.  

Besides, don't overestimate the influence of the Clintons among party leadership.  Some love them.  Some would love to see someone different.  But if you want to influence the unpledged delegates from your state, figure out an effective way to get your voice heard and maybe even heeded.

Well at least tell me this much: is that weasel Joe Lieberman an unpledged delegate?

We may have a screwed up system, but there's a great rule in the DNC bylaws that unpledged delegates can endorse or not endorse anyone they want...as long as it's not a candidate from another party.  When Joementum endorsed McCain, he broke that rule, and is no longer an unpledged delegate.  

So we at least have that rule that we can all agree worked brilliantly.