Read also: how much does a delegate cost ? The candidates’ campaigns’ budgets.
How many delegates per state ?
I raised the question here earlier on how the number of delegates was calculated for each state. And I didn’t really find an answer, besides the fact that the method was obscure and complicated - and not really democratic. And I am not the only one to say that …
First, the numbers.
Let’s just talk Democratic primaries here: the New York times has an exhaustive list of primaries, caucuses and number of delegates per state. CNN also has a great (the best ?) coverage of the election and the results of the primaries.
There are 4049 democratic delegates (see exhaustive list here) in the Democratic Convention, including (to date) 3,253 pledged delegates and 796 un-pledged super-delegates.
What is the difference between pledged delegates and un-pledged super-delegates ?
Quite simple:
Delegates are elected by the people during primaries or caucuses. Each state has a given number of delegates (see this list I compiled from the New York Times). The results of a State’s primaries or caucuses determines the number of delegates each candidate will get to vote for him at the Democratic Convention.
Super-delegates are elected officeholders and party officials. They are considered “free agents”, and are not bound to vote for their State’s primaries or caucuses results.
Basically, you vote for delegates, and you don’t for super-delegates.
All delegates are equal, but some are more equal than others
Each State gets a certain number of delegates for their party’s national convention. This number is calculated by each national party: he appoints a specific number of delegate votes to the various states and territories given the state population and other complex variables (for instance, party strength and support in recent elections).
Now, when you compare the US States on the ratio Population of a specific State divided by Number of Democratic delegates for the same State, there are some huge incoherences.
See below the list of States with 100+ delegates and the ratio to the population (States’ populations from Wikipedia, # of delegates from NY Times):
How to read: in California, there is one Democratic pledged delegate for 82,890 inhabitants.
Conclusion: conflictual …
The current system, as I understand it, is more than conflictual. And thus for two main reasons: the difference between delegates and super-delegates, and the number of delegates per state.
First, as explained above, there are 4,049 delegates. 19% (796) of them are super-delegates, for which you don’t vote. So your vote, at the primaries or caucuses, only accounts to 81% of the final vote at the convention.
In other terms: imagine that there would be only 100 delegates and two candidates, John and Bob. 80 delegates would be voted for in primaries/caucuses, 20 would be super-delegates. If 50 of the 80 delegates are elected to vote for John, that represents 62% of the votes, and you would think John would win the primary (since Bob only got 38% of the votes, or 30 delegates). If all super-delegates, the 20 other ones you didn’t vote for, elect Bob during the convention, than there would be a tie: 20 super-delegates and 30 delegates Bob, 50 delegates for John.
Quite obvious in this example pie chart: 62% of the votes (delegates) for John, but only 50% of the total convention seats (delegates + super-delegates).
Second, the number of delegates per State doesn’t give the same power to two voters in two different States. For instance, there is one elected pledged democrat delegate for every 104,000 inhabitants in Texas, against only 53,000 in Massachusetts. The table above shows this ratios for the States that get more than 100 pledged delegates for the Convention.
What does it mean ? That, in this example, 1 Democrat voter in Massachusetts has the influence of 2 in Texas. If you extend this analysis to States with over 30 delegates, you could say that:
- 10 Rhode Island Democrat citizen’s votes are worth, for example, 30 votes from New Hampshire Democrat citizens, 35 votes from Massachusetts, 43 votes from Pennsylvania, 44 from North Carolina or New Jersey or New York or Illinois, 50 votes from Virginia, and 70 votes from Texas !
- if John wins by 10 votes in Rhode Island, Bob would need to win by 70 votes in Texas to balance out John’s victory,
- 1,000,000 inhabitants in New York are worth 776,000 in Massachusetts.
Of course there is a bias in this analysis, as there is now way to find out the number of Democrat citizens voting in caucuses, closed, semi-closed and open primaries across the US.
It is hard to conclude on this post. I would just say that in a nation of 300,000,000 millions people, a sole citizen’s vote doesn’t weigh much. When you add the layers of the primaries system, it seems that the vote counts even less. It’s really sad to create such a distance between a voter and the elected official - especially in the most powerful country in the world.
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