Chaos at the Convention

[jducoeur]

It occurs to me that the Democratic Convention this year is likely to feature fireworks -- and not good ones at that.

The numbers at the moment are interesting. If you look at the CNN Delegate Scorecard, as of right now Obama holds a slender lead in terms of the "pledged" delegates -- the ones who were chosen due to the primary process. But Clinton leads overall, because she has promises from more of the "superdelegates" -- the party honchos who get a vote because of their position in the party.

So let's look at a moderately likely scenario. The convention rolls around, and the race is still too close to call. Obama still holds a lead in the pledged delegates, Clinton in the superdelegates. Things begin to solidify towards Clinton *because* of the superdelegates. What happens?

Hard to say -- not riots, because people generally need better reasons to riot nowadays, but massive and vocal unhappiness among the party. The convention itself turns into a huge scandal, as the pundits talk up the anti-democratic nature of the superdelegates. The superdelegates come under *enormous* pressure to swing their votes to match the popular vote, and people start talking loudly about eliminating the superdelegates entirely. And the whole thing does a fair amount of damage to the Democrats, who look chaotic next to the coronation of McCain (with the hardcore conservatives quietly holding their noses) happening over at the Republican convention.

I do hope the party leadership is ready for this, and thinking about how to react, because it looks to me like it has a fair chance of playing out just this way. They will undoubtedly make lots of noise about how the system is so much better than back in the days of backroom deals, but I don't think that the modern electorate is going to have much sympathy for that. The superdelegate system has continued for many years precisely because it hasn't mattered much. If it *does* start to matter, I think it's going to turn into quite the national stink...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

CNN still hasn't awarded the California delgates to Clinton yet, which will change the picture of the scorecard.

And I can't find anything that tells me if CA is a winner take all state, or if their delgates will be divied up.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

According to the Globe, California delegates are divvied up proportionately, even the Republicans (who are usually winner-take-all).

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

California is a proportional delegate state (the correct google incantation to figure this out is "proportional delegate states" - I then followed the NYT links.) Furthermore, it is skewed towards splitting delegates evenly. Districts have 3-7 delegates possible, and districts with precisely four delegates are going to split 2-2 unless one candidate gets about 2/3 of the vote in that district. Apparently this caused candidates to concentrate on districts with an odd number of candidates (I presume the 6 candidate case has a weaker version of the split problem, though I didn't see that explicitly.)

So Clinton's 10 point victory in California is going to end up somewhat muted in delegate representation.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Thank you!

("Google incantation." How apt.)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

If I remember what I have read correctly, CA is neither winner take all NOR proportional. It goes county by county. Each county sends a delegate, who is bound for the first vote.

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

None of the Democratic primaries are "winner take all." That's currently only for Republican primaries.

[jducoeur]

The Democrats have a relatively consistent system. All states are allocated proportionally (on a congressional district-by-district basis, AFAIK). You have to get a minimum 15% to get anything, and the granularity is still kind of coarse (which causes some interesting effects WRT where the candidates choose to campaign), but it's largely proportional everywhere.

That's part of the issue. As a number of people have been pointing out lately, Obama and Clinton are close enough that it's really fairly unlikely that a winner will be selected before the convention: the proportional system means that the margin between them will probably be smaller than the number of superdelegates. (The question of who "won" a state is mostly irrelevant in the Democratic primary, despite all the media attention to it.) And if the superdelegates swing in the same direction overall that the pledged ones did, I think the whole thing will be a non-issue. But if they change the tally -- if the superdelegates throw the totals toward a different candidate than the popular vote did -- then I think you'll see a lot of thunder and lightning...

[laurion]

Agreed, winning 'states' is a convenient high level marker for the media outlets to throw around, but it breaks down when you start looking at the numbers that really matter.

[laurion]

From my readings, Democrats are entirely proportional across the board (as of their 2006 ruless), and only Republicans still use winner-take-all (as of 2004 rules).