the first two parts of this series, we looked at the some background information that applies to both parties (namely the roles of the national parties, the state parties) and state legislatures and some of the basic rules that the Democratic National Committee requires all state parties to follow.   As noted in the previous post, the Democratic National Delegate Selection rules recognize four separate categories of delegates — district level delegates, at-large delegates, pledged PLEOs (party leaders and elected officials, and unpledged PLEOs (a/k/a super delegates).  This post will look at how those delegates are allocated to the states (and then to the individual categories within the states).

The Democratic Party begins delegate allocation with a base of 3,200 district level and at-large delegates for the fifty states and the District of Columbia.  Each state’s initial share is determined by a two-part formula.  The first part averages each state’s share of the national Democratic vote over the last three Presidential elections.  The second part looks at each state’s share of the total electoral vote (e.g. California has 55 electoral votes out of the national total of 538, or slightly over 10%).  Those two numbers are averaged together to get a final ratio.  (The effect of this formula is that the more Democratic states do slightly better than a pure allocation based on electoral votes and the Republican states do slightly worse.  For California, rather than the 10.2% that California would get from electoral votes, this formula gives California 11%.)  When this formula leaves a state with a factional delegate,  .5 or higher gets rounded up, anything less than .5 gets rounded down.

After the base allocation, the Democratic Party gives a bonus for holding primaries or the first stage of a caucus (for those states using caucuses to award delegates) later in the process.  For states holding a regional primary (at least three adjoining states) on or after March 28, the states get a 15% bonus.  If a state begins in April, the state gets a 10% bonus.  If a state begins in May or June, the state gets a 20% bonus.  The bonuses for going after April 1 or on top of any regional primary bonus. Continue Reading...

As noted in the first part of this series,  the Democratic Party has adopted a set of rules designed to make the delegate selection process more uniform from state to state.  As a consequence, the Democratic Party’s rules are somewhat complex covering a lot of details of what states must do and what is optional.  In fact, the first rule requires the state parties to submit their state delegate selection plans to the Democratic National Committee’s Rule and By-laws Committee (a familiar body for those who followed the 2008 campaign closely) for approval.  Additionally, the rules require that the state parties have a period of public comment on the proposed plan before the state party adopts the plan and submit it to the DNC.  As a result, most, if not all, of the draft plans will be posted on-line.  (A good source for finding the draft plans is here.)  In theory, all of the draft plans should be available within the next week or two (as they are supposed to be adopted by May 4 with a minimum of a thirty-day period for public comment).