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Understanding the Primaries: Delegates, Democracy, and America's Nonstop Political Party

2016-03-22 · explainer · John · 5:16 · watch on YouTube

Topic: US politics & society · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook

John uses Missouri's 2016 primaries to argue that the parties' delegate rules (superdelegates, proportional and winner-take-all rules, equal delegates for lopsided districts) make presidential nominations far from straightforwardly democratic.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; John has strep throat; Hank's Brazil video prompts a look at the US nominating process, focused on Missouri

  • ★ John says he has strep throat, which he rates 0 out of 10, not recommended. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says Hank's video on Brazil's political situation made him think about the long, Kafka-esque process by which the two major US parties choose presidential nominees; he looks at one state, Missouri. — 00:00:04 · United States

00:00:21 — Missouri primary results; nominees are chosen by convention delegates, not voters; delegate totals

  • ★★ John says that in Missouri's primaries last week (week of 14 March 2016) Trump beat Cruz statewide by about .19 percent and Clinton beat Sanders by a similar margin. — 00:00:21 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ John explains that nominees are not chosen by voters but by delegates at the parties' national conventions in July: Republicans in Cleveland, Democrats in Philadelphia. — 00:00:34 · Republican Party
  • ★★ John says 2,473 Republican delegates and about 4,765 Democratic delegates will vote at the conventions. — 00:00:48 · Republican Party

00:00:59 — Democratic side: Clinton's delegate edge, Missouri's 13 superdelegates, proportional pledged delegates; Jay Nixon's 8,800-fold power

  • ★★★ John says that despite winning Missouri by only 0.2 percent, Clinton emerged with 47 delegates to Sanders' 35. — 00:00:59
  • ★★★ John says Clinton would have won more delegates even losing by 0.2 percent, because the Missouri Democratic Party's 13 superdelegates, free to back anyone, mostly endorsed her; they include Governor Jay Nixon and Senator Claire McCaskill. — 00:01:06
  • ★★ John says Missouri's 71 pledged Democratic delegates are split proportionally by state party rule, so Clinton's narrow win gave her 36 to Sanders' 35. — 00:01:25
  • ★★★ John calculates about 8,800 Democratic votes per Missouri pledged delegate, so superdelegate Jay Nixon will have around 8,800 times the power of an average Missouri Democratic voter. — 00:01:38
  • ★★★ John says such a power distribution is not one generally associated with the word democracy. — 00:01:56

00:02:00 — Republican side: Trump's 37 to 15, Kasich's zero in Missouri vs all 66 in winner-take-all Ohio; Missouri's district rules

  • ★★ John says Trump beat Cruz very narrowly in Missouri but got 37 delegates to 15, while Kasich, with 10 percent of the vote, won none. — 00:02:00 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ John says the same day in Ohio Kasich got 47 percent of the Republican vote but all 66 delegates, because Ohio's Republican rules give all delegates to whoever gets the most votes. — 00:02:13 · Republican Party
  • ★★ John says Missouri's Republican rules give the statewide winner 12 delegates if no one reaches 50 percent, plus five to the winner of each of eight congressional districts; Trump won the state and five districts, hence 37. — 00:02:27 · Republican Party, Donald Trump
  • ★★ John explains for non-Americans that there are 435 US congressional districts, each electing a congressperson every two years. — 00:02:39 · United States

00:02:42 — Congressional districts: apportionment after the 2010 census, Missouri's redistricting, lopsided districts, unequal weight of primary votes

  • ★ John quips that congresspeople go to Washington and fail to pass a budget, as if that were their main job. (joke) — 00:02:50
  • ★★ John says that after the 2010 census a smaller share of Americans lived in Missouri, so it lost a congressional district while fast-growing Arizona and Florida gained districts. — 00:02:57 · Florida
  • ★★★ John says that in 2010 Missouri had six Republican and three Democratic districts; Republicans, controlling the legislature and helped by a Democratic congressman whose district became safer, eliminated a majority-Democratic district. — 00:03:11 · Republican Party
  • ★★ John says Missouri's districts are now drawn to make elections lopsided: in 2014 the 1st district voted 73 to 21 percent for the Democrat, the 3rd 68 to 27 for the Republican. — 00:03:34 · Republican Party
  • ★★★ John says every district yields the same five Republican delegates, yet about 34,000 Republican votes were cast in the 1st district versus about 150,000 in the 7th, making a 1st-district vote five times more powerful. — 00:03:51 · Republican Party

00:04:07 — Conclusion: none of it is particularly democratic; parties as public-private institutions; history of the nominating process; sign-off

  • ★★★ John concludes that the process is extremely complicated and none of it is particularly democratic, at least not in the straightforward way democracy is usually imagined. — 00:04:07
  • ★★★ John calls US political parties weird institutions: at once public organizations and private clubs, making their own ever-changing rules that states often regulate. — 00:04:14 · United States
  • ★★ John says parties are powerful only insofar as supporters allow, and have no real card-carrying members though almost every national elected figure belongs to one. — 00:04:24
  • ★★ John says some of this is a legacy of a US once suspicious of voting rights: for most of its history most adults could not vote, and parties served partly as a check on revolution or radical change. — 00:04:36 · United States
  • ★★★ John says nominating has become much more democratic: as recently as 1968 only 34 percent of Republican and 38 percent of Democratic delegates were chosen by primaries. — 00:04:47 · Republican Party
  • ★★ John says that in both parties for the last 10 election cycles the candidate with the most overall primary and caucus support has become the nominee. — 00:04:59
  • ★★★ John says that may not be the case this year (2016), and it remains to be seen who will wield power when the party and the people disagree. (hedged) — 00:05:07

In the description and comments

  • ★ John points to further reading: how primaries and caucuses emerged in American politics, FiveThirtyEight's delegate math and primary forecasts, the superdelegates and whom they have pledged to support at the Democratic convention, Ballotpedia on Missouri's redistricting after the 2010 census, and how Missouri's Republican party allocates its convention delegates. — video description · United States, Republican Party
  • ★ John thanks Rosianna for the illustrations and Stan Muller for the video's title and for helping him understand US political parties. — video description · Rosianna Halse Rojas

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries · 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries · democracy · Democratic Party · gerrymandering · Missouri · political party · primary election · Republican Party · superdelegate

Also: People: Bernie Sanders · Claire McCaskill · Donald Trump · Hillary Clinton · Jay Nixon · John Kasich · Ted Cruz

Organizations: Missouri Democratic Party · United States House of Representatives

Concepts: Apportionment · suffrage

Places: Arizona · Brazil · Cleveland · Florida · Ohio · Philadelphia · United States

Events: United States census

Only in the description or credits: Ballotpedia · FiveThirtyEight · Rosianna Halse Rojas · Stan Muller

Also centred on democracy: Hong Kong Protests Explained · The Rigged Election

Also centred on gerrymandering: Why Does Congress Suck? · The Lowdown on the Shutdown

Also centred on primary election: 454 Days: Understanding America's Ridiculous Political Campaigns

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