The Dummies’ Guide to US Presidential Elections
March 4, 2016 General 3 CommentsThe US presidential primaries
For those following the US presidential primaries from a distance, and wondering what is happening, here’s a brief dummies’ guide to the US presidential primaries and general election. It’s too early to say that Trump has won the Republican primary yet, even though (given his results and the media narrative) he is a strong favourite. To learn more than you will ever need to know about US presidential primaries, read on.
Primaries elect delegates
The presidential candidates are elected by the major parties at their party conventions, held during the Summer before the election. The primary elections are one way that the parties decide who gets to vote in the convention, and who they vote for.
Both parties have the concept of pledged and unpledged delegates – if you are pledged, then your vote in the 1st ballot of the nomination election has been decided in the primary. If you are unpledged, then you are free to change vote at any time. The Democrats have about 15% of their delegates unpledged, these are called superdelegates. The Republican party has about 170 unpledged delegates, representing about 7% of the total delegate count. Each state decides how to award pledged delegates, with a variety of processes which I will describe later.
If no candidate has a majority of delegated on the 1st ballot, then the fun starts – delegates are free to change their affiliation for 2nd and further ballots. This scenario, which used to happen often but now happens rarely, is called a contested or brokered convention. The last brokered convention was in 1952 for the Democrats, and 1948 for the Republicans. We have come close on a number of occasions, most recently 2008 for the Democrats, and 1976 for the Republicans.
