American Civics
Primaries and Caucuses How states choose their delegates for the national party conventions (video content under CC-BY-SA license)
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- Both of the major parties -- and we're talking about the United States here --
- hold a national convention during the summer before the actual general election.
- So the Republicans will hold their Republican national convention,
- and the Democrats will hold their Democratic national convention.
- And it's there that they will choose their official candidates
- that will run against each other in the general election.
- And a national convention for one of the parties
- will look something like this.
- This is the Democratic national convention in 2008.
- You have all the delegates over here,
- and everyone's all excited and they start to cheer lead for their party.
- and for their candidate the republican national convetion
- looks very similar
- And although there's a lot of energy here there actually isn't a lot of suspense
- Going into the convention we usually know already who
- the candidates for each of the parties are going to be
- And that's because each of the states have their own selection process
- for picking a candidate
- As we get the results from we know how many delegates
- they're going to send to the convetion
- and who(m) they're going to vote for
- But there's two ways they can select those candidates
- or those delegates at the national convention
- They could either run a caucus
- or they could run a primary
- And I'll start with primary because that's a little more intuitive
- It's kind of like just a election that is based on party
- for whom do you want to be your nominee
- at coming out of the convention
- So for any given state they will have both a
- Democratic primary and a Republican primary
- And on the democratic primary let's say candidate A gets
- 40% of the votes on that election
- Candidate B gets 30% of the votes
- and let's say candidate C gets another 30%
- What will happen is is that state's delegates on the democratic side
- So let's say that that state just for convenience
- Let's say they have ten delegates
- On the democratic side, that means that these delegates
- will go on to the national convention and represent
- the different candidates proportionally
- So out of these ten delegates 40% or four will represent candidate A
- Three will represent candidate B
- and three will represent candidate C when they go to the national convention
- On the republican side it's a little bit more nuance
- you could have similar results
- A gets 40%
- B gets 30% and C gets - now let me do different letters
- so these aren't the same candidates
- Let me do candidates D, E and F
- So you could have candidate D, candidate E, candidate F
- and let's say - let me do the percentages slightly different
- for fun
- So let's he has 45% over here
- let's say he has 25% over here
- and then let's say you have candidate F with 30% over here
- On the republican side it depends from state to state
- Some states will do it similar to the democrats
- where the delegates represent the candidates proportion to
- the votes they have
- While some other states have it 'winner take all'
- And so for example in a winner take all state, candidate D
- will get all 10 delegates
- And the reason why states do that is it's a stronger incentive for candidates
- to show up to that state if they feel like their in the running
- Because if they throw enough money and marketing in that state, that's a big deal to take all of the
- votes.
- On the other hand, if you're a smaller candidate and you don't think you
- can take it all, it may be a disincentive for you to even show up to that state
- and you might want to focus on the states where you can actually get
- some delegates
- So that's all the primary is.
- It's really a- you can kind of view it as an election
- That sell separately on the democratic side, separately on the republican side
- an those are used by the state's parties to decide which delegates go to the national party
- and whom those delegates are going to vote for
- A caucus, the point is the same thing
- To figure out who are your delegates that are going to go
- to the national convention and whom are they going to vote for
- but the process is a little bit different
- In a caucus, you essentially have- people get together
- in these events, these caucuses in different in these events,
- these caucuses in different precincts,
- and the most famous of these are the Iowa caucuses
- So in small precincts you'll have groups of fifty to a hundred
- people get together, and the different parties will have different
- ways of going about it
- but they have processes in place where people try to market for different candidates
- they campaign for different candidates
- and sometimes they'll have a cut-off that if one of the candidates
- at one of the precincts don't get at least 15% of the votes
- then those people who supported that candidate will have to give their
- support to another candidate they make sure that all of the delegates
- represent at least a certain threshold of voters but there's different
- processes in place
- But the bottom line is that at each of these pre-syncs they'll select delegates
- and then those delegates will then go on to the county conventions
- and then those delegates at the county conventions now these are
- representing more people
- will then pick delegates to the district conventions and then at the
- district conventions they will pick candidates to the state conventions
- and at the state conventions they will pick the final candidates
- that will go on to the national convention
- No the two most famous caucuses or primaries are the Iowa caucus
- which takes place in Iowa
- You have the New Hampshire primary which of course takes place in New Hampshire
- And they are important not because they pick so many delegates that those delegates
- will tip the balance necessarily
- These are small states they don't have that many delegates compared to
- California or Texas or Florida
- but what's important about both of them is that they happen
- very very very early on in the primary season
- and because they happen early on in the primary season
- the candidates that come off with the lead here it is easier for them to raise money
- they say 'Oh I want to give my money to a winner, you know I don't want to give
- it to a candidate who is just going to blow it and lose the money and lose the election
- regardless'
- So it gives you that. It also gives a big signal for who's a front runner because
- there tends to be dynamics for whoever wins or comes in in second place in the Iowa or
- New Hampshire primary that those are the people that everyone should pay attention to
- they get more fundraising it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy
- More people all of a sudden take a serious look at them
- Now the Iowa caucus just to be clear
- the primaries all happen in one day and you get the one, the polling results
- when people exit the polls and you also get the final result pretty quickly
- This caucus process actually takes place over many many months
- five months in the case of the Iowa caucus
- And the result, the thing that the press focuses on is not this final result,
- of who are the actual delegates that go to the national convention
- The thing that the press focuses on are the precinct convention where people get together
- Because coming out of those precinct conventions the state parties get the information
- on how many candidates each delegates won going into now the county convention
- And this, this is the indicator that the press and the media and everyone else likes to use
- to see who's a front runner in that specific party's primary
- And the reason why the Iowa caucus in particular gets so much importance is
- because it is the first caucus
- These results come out before anything else
- The New Hampshire primary this is the first time that you have direct voting for candidates
- so you're getting I guess getting a more direct number or your not having it
- distorted or maybe cleaned up depending on how you view it
- by all of the different processes that might take place within the precinct convention
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