Posted on 01/20/2008 7:25:42 AM PST by Edward Watson
Why was the South Carolina vote split to just McCain and Huckabee? According to CNN and RCP, the South Carolina delegates were awarded 19 for McCain and 5 for Huckabee while Thompson and Romney got nothing despite both received over 15% of the vote. McCain ended up with 79% of the delegates despite only receiving 33% of the vote. Nevada OTOH, awarded 18 delegates to Romney (53% of delegates) for receiving 51% of the vote; but also gave McCain 4 delegates despite he only received 13% of the vote.
What gives?
Common sense questions are not to be raised in this forum ;-)
The State Republican parties run their primaries differently, that is what gives.
Diversity, freedom and decentralization at work.
Only 5 for Huckabee. Come on! If you’re going to split the delegates two ways, then at least split them by the relative numbers of votes that each received compared to the other! McCain edged out Huckabee by a much narrower margin than 19 to 5! If they’re going to split them 2 ways then they should at least do it fairly.
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Look at CNN.com and you can read what the various states do in selecting our presidential candidate.
Facts and common sense always seem to get in the way ...... ;-)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall one delegate (female, I think) who absolutely refused to cast her vote for Bush, despite an overwhelming landslide in her district. Apparently this is legal ... think of the mischief someone could cause if he packed the delegate "court" with his own people!
"Change" has been made near impossible since the seventies
....Little known fact is Clinton/Romney actually have a secret advantage by being the pick of the elite party establishment.
You think the person who gets the most votes wins the nomination? Think again.
(R) Candidate “A” = 40% of vote or 1,301 delegates.
(R) Candidate “B” = 60% of vote or 1,952 delegates
B is close, but not quite to, the majority of delegates needed, even though he won by over 20% of the vote. In party primaries, majority of votes doesn’t mean winning; here’s where the party leadership slight-of-hand comes into play by giving the "elite pick" their portion of the delegates.
Look at the Dem superdelegates, which number 796 and are not chosen by primary voters. At the convention, they support candidate “A”, with the final results:
(D)Candidate “A” = 40% of vote but 2,097 delegates.
(D)Candidate “B” = 60% of vote but 1,952 delegates.
Candidate “A” wins the nomination with only 40% of the vote! If he (or she) knows they’re the party elites pick, all they have to do is stay close during the state primaries, and the private delegates swing the convention to their favor even though the majority of citizens want someone else.
Here’s a partial explanation: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/02/delegate.explainer/index.html .
But it doesn’t seem to explain how Hillary got more votes in Nevada, yet Obama was awarded more delegates.
Sorry Earthdweller. I responded to Edward before seeing your explanation. Thanks for that explanation - I didn’t realize how those “elites” came into play.
[speculation]
It's possible that the delegates are awarded based on how the candidates fared in the individual caucuses. Perhaps, similar to the electoral college, winning the popular vote nationwide doesn't guarantee a win in the election. An overwhelming win in one caucus may be effectively canceled out by the other candidate's narrow win in another one.
[/speculation]
I’ve seen it work different ways: winner-take-all,
winner-take-all by congressional district,
proportional representation with a threshold (usually 20%)...maybe there’s a website that explains each state’s allocation method.
All delegates are equal; some delegates are more equal than others.
South Carolina appears to distribute their delegates on some combination of 1) The statewide winner and 2) the winner in each of the 6 Congressional Districts. Since they were penalized 50% of their delegates for moving their primary before Feb 5, there is some confusion on what the actual formulas will be.
Notwithstanding that, McCain won statewide and won 3 of the 6 Congressional Districts. Huckabee won the other 3 Congressional Districts. As such, it doesn’t appear that any other candidate would be eligible to win delegates.
http://www.state.sc.us/cgi-bin/scsec/scsec-reppricd-011908.pl?
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/
“Only 5 for Huckabee. Come on! If you’re going to split the delegates two ways, then at least split them by the relative numbers of votes that each received compared to the other! McCain edged out Huckabee by a much narrower margin than 19 to 5! If they’re going to split them 2 ways then they should at least do it fairly.”
McCain won. Huckabee, I’m sure, is happy to get any delegates at all.
If I recall correctly, they go by districts/counties. So a person can win most of the areas by a small margin, but it ends up being a major coup for him.
Sort of like in the 1972 national election. Mcgovern got around 40% of the vote, but only 3% of the electoral vote. That’s also how Labour in the UK can get an absolute majority of MPs even when they have less than 40% of the popular vote.
From what I understand the voters in the Casino caucuses were worth more delegates than other Nevada caucuses. Slick Willie was complaining about that before the vote.
Here’s a website that explains delegate allocation:
http://www.rhodescook.com/analysis/presidential_primaries/national/delegateallocate.html
There are others as well...
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