please explain super tueday
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- BaskerviIle
Yesterday I saw and read lots of coverage of 'Super Tuesday'. I understand the concept of primary elections what I don't understand is who gets to vote.
In the UK political parties nominate and then vote internally to choose electoral candidates. But given the huge coverage state by state I assume this isn't the case in the US. So does everyone get a vote in the primaries or do you have to be a member of the party? the US political system doesn't make much sense to me, please enlighten me
- madirish0
i am the guy who runs the light shows at the 'parties'......
- 7340
you have to be a registered member of the party. we have a few possibles, but only registered democrats and registered republicans can vote in the primary and they have to vote someone in their party..
when i comes to the main election we can vote however we choose, but primarys are more strict for some reason
- presumably because its an in-party election for the presidential nomination? be a bit daft if red could choose blue etc.kelpie
- yeah i as soon as i typed it i thought about it. its to keep everyone in line so they narrow the choices down734
- This is not always the case, the rules vary from state to state.flavorful
- we dont vote until next week. and ours is "open"mrdobolina
- oh wait not anymore.mrdobolina
- and its on the 19thmrdobolina
- BaskerviIle0
oh ok, I just couldn't believe that that many americans were paid up members of political parties, call me cynical
- jasontroj0
I'm completely apathetic to our political system.
The idea of primaries was to get away from Congress selecting who is going to be running for president for their party and give more responsibility to the people. But that idea is now hundreds of years old and irrelevant to our times.
- Definitely. We need an overhaul to the system. Good luck making that happen though..TheBlueOne
- It's not that bad. The delegates are apportioned from each congressional district. At least in the DNC.Mimio
- TheBlueOne0
734 is on target, however who votes in the primaries/caucuses varies from state to state. Some states allow independents to vote (generally when you register to vote you pick a party - Democratic, Republican, Green, etc or independent - i.e no party affiliation).
So all the party members vote in these primaries for who they want to be the nominee of their party in the General Election. On the Democrats side there are delegates chosen based on proportional voting by voting district in each state which you have to win by a certain margin (don't quote me but I think it's 15%) - and this is why even if one candidate "wins" the state the other opponent can walk out with an equal or greater delegate count even if they didn't win the total vote count.
E.G. Let's say there is a voting district that has 4 delegates. Clinton wins 52% of them and Obama gets 48%, then each get 2 delegates - they split it. No, the next voting district might have 5 delegates, and let's say Obama wins 68% and Hillary 32%, thus beating the 15% margin (not sure if it does, not doing the math, just giving you an example). Then Obama gets 3 delegates and Clinton 2. Wash and repeat for the entire State which has tens or hundred voting district and then repeat again for each State. And in close primaries like this one you get a pretty even delegate count - like what happened yesterday, and it's the delegates that count for intra-party nomination.
Not sure if that cleared things up at all...
- valiant attempt anyway! cheerskelpie
- Hey, just getting my morning coffee here...TheBlueOne
- there are winner-take-all states too - correct?bulletfactory
- TheBlueOne0
Or better yet:
- BaskerviIle0
thanks guys, that's cleared it up for me. I looked on wikipedia first but it didn't explain things very clearly.
I like moth's analogy of the housemates voting for who's up for eviction.
- 7340
just like the real world. its a train wreck but we cant look away... and at the end we all die a little more inside...
- moth0
It was meant to be a piss-take rather than a clever analogy.
I'll try harder next time...
- BaskerviIle0
I know it was a piss-take that's why I liked it.
- TheBlueOne0
Piss-take is pretty close to the real thing sadly enough...
- agreed... its all one big student election /popularity contest734
- Yeah cause it's going to come down to the Superdelegates, and they're bootlickers...TheBlueOne
- TheBlueOne0
Or you can go with a Russian Newspaper take on the whole thing, that reads like satire, but somehow isn't:
"The Democrats have now only two candidates who stand to chance against this powerful phalanx: Barack Obama, senator of City Chicago and nephew of Saddam Hussein; and Hillary Rodham Clinton, organizer of popular solidarity-building women's breakfasts for discussion of hair-hygiene and of place of woman in American politics, and only official wife of number-one enemy of Serbs and all Slavic peoples, Bill Clinton. "
It only gets better.
- Jaline0
Bit confusing.
You need to be able to own a small island to run for anything in the United States.