Democratic primaries

[jack]

Wait, what?

I know I shouldn't bother about American elections, there being politics I'm so much more relevant for elsewhere. But as I understand it: the Democrat (and republican) party has primaries (ie. like a general election within all x-ist voters to decide the X-ist candidate for the presidential election).

Four states primaries happen first, before Feb 5, then all the others. This year, a couple of states, notably Michigan, rebelled and held their primary earlier, the democratic convention chose to ignore them, and most candidates removed themselves from the ballot.

Remaining were Hilary Clinton, and a couple of others. Now Clinton[1] says the convention should count that election after all. [Edit: or some people do, not sure if she said that herself.]

* Why are the four states that are voted on first voted on first? Is there a good reason or is it just tradition?

* How did Michigan and the convention manage that snafu?

* How by any stretch of the imagination could you count that election?

Even if you accept that Clinton would have come ahead in it, you can have no idea by how much. That 60% of people voted for Clinton instead of not doesn't tell you anything. The exit poll has Clinton beating Obama 46% to 35% and that's only of people who actually turned up to vote, and she voted and he didn't. And you can't base a result on an exit poll. No result other than an implausible revote could reenfranchise Michigan, so the only argument is which flawed result to take. But since the purpose of the primary is to produce a popular presidential election candidate, surely the fact that Obama is more popular with any likely Michigan result is more important than how the primary was run?

[1] It's pleasantly surreal reading old wikipedia pages which refer to Bill Clinton as "Clinton". Style guides successfully made the switch to "Clinton" being by default Hilary. Though now I wonder, were there no examples of this confusion before? No couples (or other people with the same name) equally prominent? I don't remember ever any ambiguity.

Comments

[redbird]

I think the "we go first" is partly tradition (Iowa and New Hampshire) and partly weird internal-to-the-party arguing on the assumption (usually valid) that early states have more influence.

Michigan assumed that if they held primaries early, the national party would accept the results. Basically, they lost a game of bluff.

Wrt style guides, my local newspapers either refer to either or both Clintons by first name (they're big on this--the current mayor is sometimes "Mike" to them, his predecessor was always "Rudy," the incumbent president often "Dubya"--especially in headlines, or use full name or name and title (Senator Clinton or former President Clinton) on first reference. And then we go by context. I suspect that on many of the old Wikipedia pages, it's clear which Clinton is meant, just as most history articles don't have to tell me which Roosevelt (or, earlier, which President Adams, though both Roosevelts were more influential and get more attention than John Quincy Adams).

[http://users.livejournal.com/vitriol_/]

* Why are the four states that are voted on first voted on first? Is there a good reason or is it just tradition?

By tradition, Iowa holds the first caucus (an event where people spend an evening getting together and debating the quality of candidates before picking who to support) and New Hampshire holds the first primary (a normal tick-the-box style format).

Other states get pissed off that, as a result, Iowa and New Hampshire get far more leverage (and advertising money) when it comes to picking primary candidates. But the parties aren't willing to try to change the system, because at this point the two states see it as their right, and changing it would almost certainly lose big votes in the main elections.

* How did Michigan and the convention manage that snafu?

Some states decided to move their primaries to before Iowa/New Hampshire, who responded by moving theirs up too. The DNC and RNC then declared a cut-off point beyond which any state that moved their primary would be penalised, to stop the silliness and preserve Iowa and New Hampshire's primacy.

Michigan and Florida went ahead and moved their primaries anyway, at which point the Republicans announced that they would only get half as many votes at the convention, and the Democrats announced they would have no say at all.

* How by any stretch of the imagination could you count that election?

It's kind of tricky. In Florida, at least all the candidates were on the ballot, so you can claim it was kind-of fair. But because the Democratic primary wasn't going to have any effect, the independants (who at that point overwhemingly favoured Obama) mostly voted in the Repoublican primary, where their vote had some effect.

In Michigan, it's an even bigger problem, because Obama (and Edwards) actually removed their name from the ballot, leaving Hillary as the only major candidate (though she still only won 55% of the vote - 40% of voters voted for 'none of the above').

On the other hand, not counting their vote, if the primary is cole enough it matters, is likely to seriously piss over the voters of those two states, who are likely to feel they were screwed by a dispute between the state and local Democratic party. The obvious fix would be to rehold the election, but no-one seems to favour that - a primary would be extremely expensive and not practical without national funding, a causus would be a lot cheaper but would almost certainly give an unfair advantage to Obama (who has won virtually every causus in the primaries due to having younger, more motivated voters willing to devote an evening to the event).

Hillary's people are currently trying to sell the national committee on the idea that she should get half the extra delegates she would have got were it a straight vote, while Obama's people want the delegates split straight down the middle, not giving the advantage to either candidate.

Basically, the whole thing was a gigantic cock-up that would have been resolved had the DNC simply done what the RNC did and halve Florida and Michigan's voting power, which would have penalised them but still given them a voice.

[simont]

The thing I always find slightly odd about the US parties' primary system is that I'm never quite sure whether words like "disenfranchised" are really appropriate. Is the aim of the caucuses/primaries/nomination system to gauge a party's possible candidates for ultimate electability and hence pick the one with which they're most likely to beat the other party, or is it to give the electorate their say in the direction they want the party to take? Or some combination?

Because in some sense, I think, only the latter is really democracy in terms of granting the public a right to have their votes taken into account and make a difference to the running of the country; the former would be mere opinion-polling, a means for the party to collect information to use in determining their optimum strategy, and the only reason they pay attention to the results would be because it turns out to be in their strategic interest to do so.

So, "disenfranchising" a state? Might be an attack on that state's citizens' rights and hence a moral wrong (assuming you think the principles of democracy have moral force), or it might merely constitute introducing a potential source of inaccuracy into the intelligence on which they base their election campaign plan, and hence a strategic error and potentially against the party's best interests but not actually morally wrong. Or somewhere in between; and I'm never quite sure I understand which.

[ravingglory.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should have something to add here, but really I don't.