Tag Archives: Delegate Selection Rules

Presidential Primaries and Delegate Selection

By tmess2 | Published February 21, 2021

For most people, the presidential election begins sometime after the mid-terms — either when candidates start to announce, or when the parties start holding debates, or just before the Iowa Caucuses.  But the actual planning begins much, much earlier.  Over the next two years, the Democrats and Republcians will be deciding whether to make any changes to the rules for the 2024 Convention.

Technically, the Democrats begin every cycle needing to adopt rules.  Of course, there are rules from the last time, and those rules will be mostly readopted.  There may be changes to some provisions, but the Democrats do not start from scratch.

As noted in Sunday’s post, the Republicans officially adopt their rules for the next cycle at their national convention.  Any change to those rules requires an extraordinary majority on the Republican National Committee with a deadline of September 2022 to make any changes for this cycle. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — South Carolina

By tmess2 | Published February 23, 2020

Now that Nevada is over, we have a one-week break until South Carolina.  After South Carolina, the pace increases with multiple states per week holding contests (March 3, March 10, March 14, and March 17).  The next time that we have a break of this length will be between the multi-state contests on March 17 and Georgia on March 24.  In the seventeen days between South Carolina and March 17, over half of the national convention delegates will be allocated.  In short, the pace is about to pick up quickly.  South Carolina is also the last state in which Michael Bloomberg will not be on the ballot.

Additionally, as things stand now, assuming that nobody drops out as a result of Nevada, Vice-President Biden and Tom Steyer have both invested heavily in South Carolina as the state where they make their stand.  Additionally, while Nevada was the first state in which both African-Americans and Latinos each have more than 10% of the likely primary votes, South Carolina is the first primary that is likely to be majority-minority.  At least through New Hampshire, the newer candidates have had trouble getting much support from African-American voters in South Carolina according to the polls. If this does not change, the results in South Carolina may differ dramatically from the results in Iowa and New Hampshire.

One other complicating factor in South Carolina is the fact that the Republicans have cancelled their primary.  South Carolina is an open primary state and voters have the option to choose which party’s primary they wish to vote in.  With no Republican primary, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are free to vote in the Democratic Primary.    When we get the exit polls, we will have a good idea of whether a significant number of Republicans opted to vote in the Democratic Primary.  We may never know whether they opted to participate because they are tired of the would-be-dictator-in-chief and want to find an acceptable alternative or because they belong to the Church of Trump and want to eliminate the candidates most likely to beat Trump. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Nevada

By tmess2 | Published February 17, 2020

Welcome to the third issue of delegate math for the 2020 delegate selection process.

Nevada is the second caucus state of this cycle.  Like in Iowa, a key part of the caucus process is the opportunity of participants to realign if their initial candidate is not viable.  Generally speaking, in almost all precincts, it will take 15% for a candidate to become viable (except in precincts which elect three or fewer delegates).   Like in Iowa, based on the results in each precinct, each precinct will elect a number of delegates to the county conventions, and it is the count of delegates won (not the raw votes) that will be used to allocate the national convention delegates.

Because of the tourist-heavy nature of the Las Vegas economy, Nevada has two types of precinct caucuses — regular precincts and special “strip caucuses.”  The strip caucuses are held at several casinos for workers who have to work during the regular caucus hours.  The precinct caucuses, on the other hand, basically cover voters living in the individual precinct.  For the precinct caucuses, part of the vote will come from ranked choice-voting by individuals voting at early vote locations.  Like in Iowa, if a presidential contender is viable after the first vote (based on the alignment of in-person voters and the first preference vote of early voters), the supporters of that candidate may not switch to a different candidate prior to the second vote.  During realignment, the supporters of non-viable candidates may switch to a viable candidate or attempt to join with the supporters of other non-viable candidates to reach viability.  As best as I can determine from the rules and guidance published by the Nevada Democratic Party, the first preference of early voters will be considered in determining if a group has become viable — both for the initial alignment and after realignment.  If, after realignment, the first preference of early voters is not viable, those voters will be considered to have realigned to their highest viable preference, but those second preference will not help a non-viable group become viable. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — New Hampshire

By tmess2 | Published February 7, 2020

With Iowa’s vote earlier this week, the winnowing process has begun.  However, it is still early enough that there is a good chance that more than two candidates will reach the 15% needed to win delegates.  And that will complicate the delegate math with fractional delegates.

(Normally, the early states — starting with Iowa — perform a winnowing function.  Candidates who finish at the bottom of the pack in Iowa tend not to survive for much longer.  And candidates who do well in terms of finishing near the top of the pack tend to survive for several more rounds.  With the delay in reporting results, it is unclear if Iowa will have its usual impact this year.  But even if it does, it would not be unusual to have multiple candidates getting 10% or more of the vote in New Hampshire. Starting in 1976, five of nine primaries have had at least three candidates getting 10% of the vote, and three primaries have had three candidates getting over 15% of the vote.  Since three of the remaining six primaries occurred in races that were perceived — at least heading into Iowa — as only having two candidates who were viable, about half of the races that had more than two “viable” candidates resulted in three candidates winning delegates in New Hampshire.  In short, Iowa only starts the winnowing process.  And this year, that means that more than two candidates have a legitimate shot at winning delegates in New Hampshire.)

Now back to the basic rules that apply to all states.  A candidate needs to get 15% of the vote (either state-wide or in a district) to be eligible to win delegates. If there are enough delegates available, every eligible candidate gets a delegate even if that reduces the number of delegates that another candidate gets.  If there are more eligible candidates than delegates, delegates are awarded in the order of finish.  Generally speaking, the formula for calculating delegates is the share of qualified votes (i.e. only the votes cast for candidates who got 15%) times the number of delegate available.  Since that typically will result in a fraction (say 2.3 delegates for candidate X), you start by giving out the whole numbers and then the remaining delegates are assigned in fractional order (i.e. .7 is ahead of .6 for getting the next delegate).  Technically, the rules say round up and round down initially, but the ranking then comes into play if round up and rounding down results in the wrong number of total delegates. Continue Reading...

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Strategic Voting in Iowa

By tmess2 | Published February 1, 2020

Most voters in most states (heck even most voters in Iowa) have never experienced anything like the Iowa Caucuses.  For most people, voting is going down to your local precinct (or maybe putting a ballot in the mail).  You get a ballot from the election judge, fill it out in the privacy of a “booth,” and then drop it in the ballot box.  (Or maybe, you use a touchscreen terminal in your precinct.)  In any case, unless you have a long wait in line to get your ballot, you can be in and out of the precinct in less than fifteen minutes.

In Iowa, especially on the Democratic side, the precinct caucus is a meeting.  After some introductory comments and business (like electing the chair and secretary of the caucus), the local representative of each candidate will get a chance to make a speech.  The attendees will then divide into preference groups.  After the initial division, a count is done of each preference group and the chair calculates which groups are “viable” (i.e. have a high enough percent to qualify for delegates to the county convention).  At that point, there is a chance to realign.  After the realignment, there is a second count.  The actual allocation of delegates is based on the second count.

In the past, the first vote was a test vote.  Regardless of whether your candidate had enough votes to win delegates or not, you were free to change your mind before the second vote.  And this opportunity to change your vote gave the opportunity for strategic voting.  For example, imagine that your precinct gets 5 delegates and there are 101 attendees.  In the first round, 5 candidates get votes — candidate A got 31 votes, candidate B got 25 votes, candidate C got 20, candidate D got 14, and candidate E got 11.  Under the pre-2020 rules, the supporters of the top three candidate had a choice, some of them could defect to candidate D or candidate E to help those candidates get to 16 attendees so that they to would get a delegate.  Alternatively, they could make promises to those supporters (perhaps guaranteeing that if their candidate got a second or third delegate they would give that additional delegate to the supporters of the failed candidate).  What deal was given might depend on which candidates were not viable and who was leading.  If you were a supporter of candidate B and you thought that — if forced — the supporters of candidates D and E would support candidate A, you might be willing to send seven attendees to those two candidates so that everybody got 1 delegate from the precinct (effectively counting as a tied precinct toward the state numbers) rather than candidate A winning 3-1-1.  On the other hand, if you think that they would naturally support candidate B, you might offer the delegate slot knowing that it would get you a 2-2-1 split (losing nothing to candidate A and beating candidate C). Continue Reading...

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Delegate Selection Rules for 2020

By tmess2 | Published August 26, 2018

This weekend, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) held its “Summer” Meeting.  One of the items on the agenda was the RBC’s draft of the various documents that together comprise the rules for the 2020 nomination process.  For first time readers of this site, the Democrats have a multi-step process for drawing up the rules for delegate selection.   Typically, step one is a Festivus-type Commission in which the party head appoints a Commission drawing from all parts of the party for an airing of the grievances from the last cycle.  (Sometimes, this step is skipped when a Democrat wins the White House, particularly when a Democratic incumbent is re-elected.)  That Commission then drafts suggestions.  Step Two is the Rules and By-laws Committee (RBC) of the DNC actually takes those suggestions (and other suggestions by RBC members) and amends the rules from the last cycle to incorporate those suggestions that have the support of the RBC.  Step Three is that the full DNC then reviews and approves the new set of rules and issues them to the state parties.  Step Four is that the state parties then (taking into account both legislative changes in their state and the new national rules) draft the state rules.  Typically, the state rules need to be completed by the late spring/early summer of the year after the mid-term.  Step Five is that the state rules are then submitted to the RBC for review for compliance with the national rules and approval (or directions to make changes to comply with the national rules).

The reports out of the Summer Meeting suggests that the RBC drafts were adopted essentially intact; so what follows is based on the draft plans that were approved by the RBC:  the Call for the 2020 Convention and the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Convention.   (Both linked documents show the changes to the old rules.)   There are several important details/changes in the draft documents from the RBC.  (If you want to skip the technicalities of the rules, what these may mean in practical terms is at the end of this post.)

First, the 2020 Convention will take place in mid-July.  (Call, Preamble).  The DNC will select the site later this year or early next year.  The delegate selection process will end by June 20, 2020.  (Call, Part III). Continue Reading...

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2020 Democratic Convention — Unity and Reform Commission — Part 1

By tmess2 | Published January 7, 2018

While, in one sense, it is very early to talk about who will be President of the United States on January 21, 2021, there are many people who think that process has a lot to do with results.  And the drafting of the rules for 2020 have already started.

On the Republican side, there is no public effort to re-write the rules.  Unlike the Democratic Party, the Republican party has the basic rules (which are less detailed than the Democratic Party rules) for allocating delegates to the national convention within the actual Rules of the Republican Party and require a supermajority of the Republican National Committee to change those Rules.

The Democrats, however, keep the rules for delegate selection separate from the party by-laws.  So every cycle, the rules and by-laws committee drafts those rules and submits them to the full Democratic National Committee for approval.  The starting point for these rules is the rules from the previous cycle.  However, because no rules are perfect, most contested campaigns lead to complaints about the rules.  These complaints in turn have, in most of these cycles, caused the party to appoint a commission to study whatever rules were seen as being a problem in the last cycle and make recommendations. Continue Reading...

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