Here’s an interesting tidbit about the delegate rules for the Democratic Party:
AF = ½ × ( ( SDV ÷ TDV ) + ( SEV ÷ 538 ) )
What that above equation says is that your “allocation factor” is the average of your state size in terms of the electoral college, and “how Democratic” your state voted in the last 3 elections.
Bottom line: The Democratic Party has a rich get richer rule so that Blue States get more delegates then Red States. The part that bothers me is that because its directly correlated with the states democratic voting record in the previous Presidential election its effectively cumulative, so that means that every election, the Democratic Party moves more and more to the left. It’s also scaled by the electoral college so if a left leaning candidate polls well in a populous state, the effect is super magnified. This explains a lot about the last few elections. If it seems like the Democratic Party is run by New York and California, its because they are!
For instance, the delegates from Blue-State New York will be 6.4% of the total compared to the 5.8% of the electoral college they represent a bump of about 10%. Red-State Arizona will be 1.5% of the total compared to the 1.9% of the electoral college Arizona represents a penalty of -21%.
The Republicans have a similar rule:
- 10 at-large delegates for each state
- 3 delegates for each congressional district in the state
- “Bonus” delegates are awarded to states which cast their electoral vote for the 2004 Republican presidential nominee (George W. Bush), such states receiving 4.5 delegates plus 60 percent of their 2004 electoral vote.
- States are also given one “bonus” delegate for each of the following:
- a Republican United States Senator;
- a delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives which is at least half Republican;
- a Republican Governor;
- a house of the state’s Legislature controlled by Republicans or in which the Republican membership has increased by at least 25 percent of the total number of seats;
- Republican control of both houses of the state’s Legislature.
The bonus effect seems more extreme on the Republican side for the two states I looked at previously:
Blue State New York is 4% compared to 5.8% a penalty of about 31%, Red-State Arizona is 2.1% compared to 1.9% a bonus of about 10%.
But its hard to say because the Republican rules start out closer to equal representation by state so the rules tend to push everyone more towards an equal footing. Without the bonuses New York would have had 4.6% and Arizona 1.6%, so then the penalty for New York is really 15%, and the bonus for Arizona is 31%. The percentages are misleading here though, because the bonuses are scaled by population.
But the key impression I’m getting is that for the Republicans its a “rich stay rich” rule. There are still bonuses but it doesn’t have the cumulative effect that the Democratic rules have because the bonus delegates are also allocated based on several other elections like the Senate, Governorships, the House, and the State Legislature. One Presidential candidate isn’t going to push the party one way or another.
So the Democrats seem to have designed their system so that every year, they’ll get more shrill, while the Republicans stay about the same. If a particular state party does well in their state, they end up with more influence in the Republican party. In the Democratic party, its all about whether you voted for Clinton/Gore/Kerry in the last go round or not.
Comments (2)
I think you are significantly wrong on HRC lock on the super/unpledged delegates. From the same source that you are pulling your info and doing a little bit of snipping
” * The aproximately 450 elected members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). * Democratic Governors of the 50 states * Democratic Senators and House members * Distinguished Party Leaders (current and former U.S. Presidents and Vice-Presidents who were elected as Democrats, former Democratic Leaders of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House….. * Unpledged “add-on”s (chosen based on the vote of the members of the Democratic National Committee).
Okay, you are arguing that the Clintons due to their fundraising and political support for the unpledged delegates that they will get those delegates. This assumes a fairly hard command and control operation that implies that the Clintons get whom they want, when they want throughout the national party.
Well, the biggest source of superdelegates are the DNC members.
If your theory of Clinton control is correct, then Howard Dean should never have even come close to becoming DNC chair. Harold Ickes, or Donny Fowler would have been the “Clinton choice” for DNC Chair in 2005. Gov. Vilsack was Kerry’s choice that the Clintons would have been okay with as that would put another DLCer in that chair.
Yet, Dean because of a combination of a non-Clinton power base of the netroots and activist classes of the Democratic Party and an active campaign promise to change the way that the DNC works —- bring money into DC and then send back out in a broad distribution for long term infrastructure building v. being a cash vaccuum for 3 weeks of wall to wall bad TV ads in October methodology that had been the DNC M.O. for the past half dozen election cycles.
Next as a point of fact, New York has a proportional allocation system for primary winners. I do not know what their formula looks like, but in 2004 John Edwards won delegates there with ~20% of the primary vote on Super Tuesday. There is a threshold for delegates, either by district or by a percentage based floor. Most primaries are not plurality winner take all, instead they are convoluted proportional allocation with a bonus of delegates for the plurality winner.
Posted by fester | March 22, 2007 11:13 AM
Posted on March 22, 2007 11:13
Most observers were amazed when Dean became DNC chair for just that reason, and pretty much figured that the Clintons had some deeper game (like making sure that Dean was out of the way in 2008). Realize that DNC chair has historically been a meaningless position.
To quote Nixon:
I actually got all this from Dick Morris’ book, and he was Bill’s political adviser.
As for proportional representation, all states send a mixture of allocated and “unallocated” delegates. You can bet that most of those unallocated delegates are going to go to Hillary.
Posted by The Bastard | March 22, 2007 11:38 AM
Posted on March 22, 2007 11:38