Nope, not about Bill Maher (bleagh). Since we’re having the first real primary today, I thought it might be interesting to review delegate thresholds in primaries and the (new) convention rules for Democrats. The site 270 to Win has a good overview of both.
[Edit: Thanks to Zzyzx in the comments for pointing out this 538 article about statewide vs district apportionment of delegates. I’ve re-written the following 3 paragraphs and added a bullet point below to reflect it.]For primaries, the key rule is that there’s a 15% viability threshold at both the statewide and district levels. District level is generally a Congressional district, but it varies in some state. Every candidate who earns 15% or more of the vote statewide will take part in a proportional allocation of 35% of the delegates. Anyone under 15% is out of luck. So if one candidate gets 15% and the rest are under that threshold, that candidate gets all the delegates. The same threshold rules hold true for the remaining 65% of the vote. So if a candidate is at 14.5% statewide, but 15% in a couple of districts, they still could get some delegates.
There’s another rule if no candidate gets 15% of the vote. Then, the threshold is 50% of the percentage received by the front runner. So if the front-runner gets 12%, the threshold is 6%.
The apportionment rule isn’t new, but since the party has only a few caucuses left, almost all in tiny states (Nevada is the exception), it is the rule that governs almost all the contests, including 1,338 of the huge Super Tuesday haul of 1,344 delegates.
To win the nomination, a candidate must earn a majority of the 3,979 pledged delegates (which, arithmetically, is 1,990 but some sources are saying 1,991) on the first vote. If there is a first vote where no candidate is picked, the 771 superdelegates are allowed to vote in the succeeding votes. This means that the victor will need 2,376 of the pledged and super delegate count of 4,750. This is the new rule that came out of the complaints about superdelegates being in the mix.
Every four years, there’s a lot of talk about a brokered convention (I think Chris Cillizza masturbates to that notion when he isn’t thinking about his favorite baseball player). Remember that a brokered convention doesn’t mean that the party elders step in and pick a winner that both Chuck Todd and Morning Joe would love. Instead, a brokered convention is one where marginal candidates make deals with one of the delegate leaders and pledge their delegates to them. The second round of voting superdelegate release complicates this – in hindsight it might have been smart to make that the third round, since the second round would give candidates a chance to do some horse trading without the complication of 771 new votes.
Since a lot of the political media (and some consultants) can’t count, and are too lazy to review the rules, it’s worth keeping these rules, and their consequences in mind. Specifically:
- When looking at polls, anyone who is far under 15% probably isn’t getting anything for their efforts. There’s a real incentive for marginal candidates to drop out.
- But if a candidate is in the low teens or at least double digits, it’s easy to imagine that they could win some districts and therefore get a good number of delegates.
- A candidate who is polling in the 30’s consistently can win the nomination with 1/3 of the vote in primaries, if the other candidates split most of the vote and a lot of them don’t hit 15%.
- But, if 2-4 candidates are in low 20’s and high teens, from a delegate perspective, the high teens candidates get a fair amount of benefit from their “loss”.
- Getting in late means you have to win big. Specifically, Super Tuesday, where more than 1/3 of the delegates are awarded, is key.
- If the convention looks like it’s going to be brokered, the superdelegate rule will put immense pressure on the candidates to come to some sort of deal prior to the first vote. (If that’s possible, some delegates will feel obligated to stick to the candidate they support.)
If you know more about any of this, please feel free to drop a comment I can update the post. I hope we can keep this around — maybe I can re-write it with corrections/amplifications as a page to refer back to as the primaries continue.
Zzyzx
The 15% rule is true but not quite like written. There are two delegate buckets: statewide and district. So it’s possible for someone to be at 14.5% but still get delegates because their votes were placed in the right districts, especially if the vote is so split that no one is doing that well.
Also if no one gets to 15%, there are different rules. There’s a 538 about that.
ETA: I was wrong about the article. It doesn’t say what happens if the leader gets 14%. It went into everything else though: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/15-percent-is-not-a-magic-number-for-primary-delegates/amp/
Zzyzx
Ok found the rule on https://www.270towin.com/content/thresholds-for-delegate-allocation-2020-democratic-primary-and-caucus
So if you’re a Warren fan and she’s at 13% and Bernie/Pete are polling around 16%, yes there is a huge reason to go to the polls and hope that that helps knock them under
Zzyzx
And yes, I’m a math person. These rules fascinate me. I learned them all in 2008 and then explained them to Bernie people in 2016 to tell them why it wasn’t a conspiracy.
Jeffro
all I know is that the various TCNJs in my life are pro-Wilmer and hoping for a brokered Dem convention…I hate to disappoint them, but I don’t see either one happening.
Chyron HR
Ah, this is the stage where consensus builder Bernie will turn his 25% support into a plurality of delegates.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: What is a TCNJ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Omnes Omnibus:
Trump something nut job. Cult maybe?
Princess
Hey Americans, Don’t be afraid of brokered conventions. They have them all the time in Canada, and they are fun and exciting. And it will kill Trump that no attention will be on him during that time.
What you need to be prepared for though is that whoever comes in first in the initial delegate count is very often not the person who wins. If they can’t win a majority outright, it usually means there is significant, though split opposition to their candidacy.
Crœsos
To expand on what Zzyzx said, if a candidate is close to 15% statewide that probably means that they’re over 15% in one or more districts, meaning that they’d get a proportional allocation of that district’s delegates. To take today’s example, New Hampshire will award 8 delegates proportionally among the 15%+ winners statewide, 8 delegates in the same way among the winners in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, and 8 divided among the winners (15%+) of the Second Congressional District.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Zzyzx: Thanks, I updated the post to add the details from that 538 article, and clarify what happens if nobody hits 15%. By the looks of the polls, the field isn’t big enough for that issue, but who knows?
zzyzx
@Princess: Yeah, there’s no reason at all to fear a process where Sanders would have a plurality but far from a majority of delegates but he doesn’t get the nomination. No way his supporters would have any problem with that. They’re all sane and rational and don’t already find conspiracies to show that the DNC is stealing the election if the font used on the ballot isn’t their favorite.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@zzyzx: This is why Sanders might want to consider playing nice with the Democratic Party. Who in the party is going to want to throw their delegates his way? The rest of the candidates are members in good standing of the same party… they’re far more likely to pool the delegates to someone who isn’t constantly bashing said party.
zzyzx
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
You’re welcome. Like I said, this fascinates me.
Once Bloomberg really enters, I could see on of the Super Tuesday states being won with someone right around 15%.
One more thing I might add is that the trick to winning the primary is to run up the score in your good states. Once Clinton won Florida by a 2 to 1 margin, there was literally no way for Sanders to recover barring a miracle. If one candidate can dominate the African American vote, that will let them run up a slew of impressive victories in the south and there’s no similar good set of delegates to make up for it.
I used to know all of the details, like odd districts vs even (ALWAYS focus on the odd ones because there can’t be an even split there so 50%+1 gets you a freebie) and the cut offs for 6 delegate v 8 delegate v 4 delegate districts…
Mind you these are not real delegates. There are tons more given out on election night than actually will go to the convention. There’s a pyramid like structure where the delegates won on election night are winnowed down to the ones that matter. But the trick is to try to win your good states by insanely high margins, limit the damage in your bad states, and your opponents can’t make up the difference.
Obama figured out how to game the system and Clinton used his old team to do the same.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@zzyzx: I think releasing the superdelegates on the second vote would feed years of conspiracy theories if Sanders loses. Third or fourth vote would be a lot better.
Chris Johnson
@zzyzx: If, as it appears, Bloomberg is entirely gutting and replacing the Democratic party with his own people, there is no point in Bernie people fussing about the DNC anymore: it’ll be dead, and Bloomberg is literally everything they complained about in the DNC, except that rather than conspiring to support one person it’s literally one person.
zzyzx
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
I don’t think it would matter. Sanders lost the entire south by insanely large margins and they believe the DNC stole the election because someone said that they thought that maybe Sanders could technically win California when the votes were all counted (hint: he didn’t), and they confused winning states with winning all of the delegates.
The most important thing to know is that winning a state is relatively unimportant. It’s winning delegates that matters. If you lose 10 states by 50.1-49.9% but win 6 by 80/20, you’re going to win the nomination. It’s the exact opposite of the electoral college, but the state by state nature confuses us into not noticing that.
There are a few magic thresholds that do make a big difference if this ever becomes a two person race. I think 62.5% is one, because that starts to make 2-2 splits become 3-1 splits and if that starts happening, the local delegate percentages start to make the state wide lead be huge.
The hardest thing for people who don’t live in this process to get is that a 150-200 delegate lead is nearly impossible to overcome. They see how many more delegates are left and they think they have a chance, but most states the leader nets 5-10. The problem in 2020 though is that there might not be any blowouts. If Biden and Bloomberg split the African American vote or something, this might go on for a while.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t even know what the initials stand for, but It appears to be the new “cool” way to refer to Right Wing Nut Jobs – I prefer RWNJ because people actually know what that stands for.
Omnes Omnibus
@zzyzx: Okay, so it is much closer to the way that alpine skiing and Formula 1 chooses a champion. There are points for placing and all that matters is the point total at the end.
Chyron HR
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Yeah, following the rules Sanders specifically demanded the DNC put into place to make the primary fair (to him) would feed years of conspiracy theories that the rules were rigged against Sanders. Delightfully devilish, Perez. Feckless like fox.
zzyzx
@Omnes Omnibus:
or to be a geek, the Hogwarts’ Quidditch Cup.
People can get “most votes overall wins,” they can get, “most states won wins,” but they have a problem with, “There will be over 50 (I forget off the top of my head how many territories get to vote) contests, but matters is not how many contests you win, nor total votes, but the total number of points you get in each contest, all of which are computed by slightly different calculations (again based on district delegate sizes).”
This post at Daily Kos has a chart halfway down where you can see how the percentages work to get X number of delegates in a Y delegate district. It’s why votes won statewide doesn’t mean most delegates. Unfortunately, they assumed a uniform vote across all districts which means their post is slightly less accurate in terms of the actual potential results if Warren or Biden overperforms in some and underperforms in others.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/7/1917599/-New-Hampshire-Delegate-Mathematics-The-Tragedy-That-Is-About-To-Occur-In-New-Hampshire
the Conster
@zzyzx:
This is a very good explanation, and weirdly comforting. Unfortunately it doesn’t penetrate cult thinking, but the rest of us don’t need to play along with the Bernie Math’ers.
Princess
If anyone other than Bernie wins for any reason, the hardcore Bernese are gone. Gone. They’re already gone. Most of them were never here in the first place. And yes, I was raised in the PC party divided between Clark and Mulroney in Canada. It’s real. Didnt drop Mulroney from winning huge majorities.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@zzyzx:
This is where I think it’s going (no blowouts). This post came from looking at the polls and wondering what happens if this large field continues through to the convention.
zzyzx
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
I think it depends on if the African American community coalesces around a candidate. If they do, then suddenly there are blowouts in AL/MS/GA/FL (to a lesser degree), and someone can build a huge lead. That’s basically how Obama and Clinton both won.
If that doesn’t happen…
waspuppet
The image is disturbing, but it’s also depressing when you think: Why? What exactly is Chris Cillizza going to actually do differently if it’s a brokered convention? Nothing.
I guarantee he’s not boning up on the rules so he can say something authoritative about the process (Steve Kornacki and Chris Hayes might be); he’s not gonna be on the floor having shouted conversations with state delegation chiefs, like real reporters would be. He’ll sit in a booth and say “I just talked with a Republican who says this is all disastrous for the Democrats.” Which is all he ever does.
LC
@Zzyzx:
You too, huh?
I’m going to add once again a plug for The Green Papers.
They have a running list of delegates, and you can even go to each state and see how the delegates are broken out by district and state wide. (There is a page that does the allocation, but it isn’t written as clearly as most would like.)