primary fuel source...
I haven't blogged much about politics this year, but now that nearly every state has had a chance to vote, I thought I'd make some observations about how thing's have gone so far in this CRAZY election year. Well maybe it isn't so crazy, just intense and educational.
I don't pretend to know a lot about the inner workings but I was perusing MSNBC.com's coverage page that has been tallying the results party-by-party and state-by-state since the beginning. Now that we're down to just a few states, the information has a lot to inform us about the way the process works for each party and gives us the chance to speak up with our dissatisfaction or praise, whichever the case may be.
I'll start with Iowa since that is where it all started. It went like this for the Dems: Obama 25, Clinton 14, Edwards 6, and big goose-eggs the rest of the way down. The breakdown for the GOP were: Huckabee 30, Romney 7, and zero's for everyone else. I know it's been a long season and so much has happened since, but I call attention to this because it might surprise some of us to see the way all of this started knowing how it is about to end. How did we get from Obama and Huckabee being the early frontrunner's to having such a tight race on one side and a near landslide on the other, even though McCain didn't earn any delegates in Iowa at all?
A look at the numbers might indicate why. Iowa is strictly a caucus state. There is no popular vote that counts for anything in their primaries. It is also not a very big state for Democrats, but it still awards a lot of delegates. Go figure. So how many votes separated the top three blue candidates? 207 out of a total 2501, Obama had 940, Edwards was second in fact with 744 while Clinton was a respectable third with 737. Still, she won twice as many delegates because she won more caucuses than Edwards.
How few votes exactly is 2500? Well the reds had 118,691 votes cast in that same state on the same day. Clearly more people in this heartland state identify, for the most part, with the GOP platform and showed up at their caucuses instead. Huckabee didn't get that much more of the popular vote than Romney or the next three candidates (Thompson, McCain, Paul respectively), but he only needs to win by a small margin in each caucus to walk away with all the votes.
I don't want to go into each state but I wanted to mention Michigan because it is a peculiar story. Clinton turned on the gas and won a whopping 55% of that state, but someone named Uncommitted cleaned house with another 40% of the vote (possibly Obama supporters since he wasn't even on their ballot). There are always uncommitted votes but it generally represents a mere 1-3% of the overall--people who just want to express their dissatisfaction with the lack of options.
On the other side in the same state you see Romney and McCain identifying better with northern conservatives, telling us that folks in that state cared more about a candidates resume as someone who can bring our economy back on track. Huckabee is a great guy and I wish he would've made it further through campaign season, but he doesn't make you think about the economy as much as a certain social agenda and this time around I don't think enough conservatives care primarily about those issues to take a chance on someone whose economic policy is less certain.
The rest of the story more or less writes itself. McCain wins a few big states and starts taking an early lead. Romney drops out having Michigan as one of his only major prizes (though he made a respectable run at it as far as he went) and Huckabee holds on longer hoping to pick up the scraps left behind from all the early drop-outs, but largely fails to establish a clear voice for what his administration will represent that voters can identify with.
Back to the Democrats, the story is probably over-told! I mean, what could I say here that you haven't read somewhere already? What I would like to do instead is make an observation, that for better or worse, we've had the chance to look more carefully at more than just one candidate who may best represent our ideas about domestic, foreign, economic and social policy. Way back at the beginning I was actually hoping maybe three strong candidates would emerge and go deep into the primary season, allowing all states to have the same chance to choose between all of the candidates in a given party.
Say what you will about how it has gone, but as a liberal minded person, I'm glad we haven't made our minds up completely yet. I would almost feel cheated if I were a Republican in a state like Illinois. What choice do they have at this point with virtually all the candidates who had a reasonable shot at winning their parties favor going into the general election having already bowed out? At this point, like it or not, their guy is going to be McCain and there isn't anything they can really do about it, except vote undecided.
There are differences in the way the two parties award delegates. Much has been said for that so far. It isn't that conservatives just agreed more on who to vote for. Far from it. Still, Republican rules for the primaries and how they earn delegates are more flexible, giving more freedom to state delegations to choose how to award delegates. Some states opt for a winner-take-all approach for the whole state based either on the primaries, the caucuses, or a combination of both using whatever formula they agreed on the last time it was revised. Other states may award delegates only to the top two or three candidates while in theory some could break up their delegates as closely as possible with the popular vote, though this is an unpopular choice as it makes that states delegates less important to a candidate when choosing where to spend their dollars and time trying to appeal to voters.
I don't know if it is possible to get the two parties to agree to use the same system, but I am going to come right out and say that I don't like winner-take-all being on the table for either party as it disenfranchises elements of either party in those states. It also makes them a sort of bully depending on how early they hold their primaries or caucuses.
So what about a simple vote with delegates awarded based on census data and the actual voting results? Well, I think this would take a lot of the fun out of the process. First it would almost require us to have a national primary all on the same day because spreading them out the way we do now would discourage people from voting for some candidates who were trailing if they could support a second favorite candidate who was having a stronger run. Having a national primary would also force candidates to campaign nationwide which would discourage them from pounding the pavement and holding town-hall style meetings in individual communities across the whole country and would compress the season (which could be a good thing). They would spend more time and money on national advertising and only nationally televised debates would be favored by candidates from either party.
I think the best compromise from the system we have to a complete overhaul such as a national primary is to have the parties agree to use a top-two or top-three format in every state. Give the voters in the last state to have an election as many choices as possible. Award delegates by the percentage of the votes they won plus a small bonus to the top candidate which would not amount to more than 5% of the states total delegates. The bonus theory to me represents that candidates likely ability to garnish even wider appeal in the general election from that state. If every state has a similar (proportionately) sized bonus then a candidate can distinguish him or herself as the stronger candidate by winning more states as well as more votes, a balance between simple popularity and ability to close the deal in enough states to actually win in November.
I think that is more than enough for now... I'll chime in again closer to November and again after the dust settles and see if my thoughts change any along the way.
Peace,
b
I don't pretend to know a lot about the inner workings but I was perusing MSNBC.com's coverage page that has been tallying the results party-by-party and state-by-state since the beginning. Now that we're down to just a few states, the information has a lot to inform us about the way the process works for each party and gives us the chance to speak up with our dissatisfaction or praise, whichever the case may be.
I'll start with Iowa since that is where it all started. It went like this for the Dems: Obama 25, Clinton 14, Edwards 6, and big goose-eggs the rest of the way down. The breakdown for the GOP were: Huckabee 30, Romney 7, and zero's for everyone else. I know it's been a long season and so much has happened since, but I call attention to this because it might surprise some of us to see the way all of this started knowing how it is about to end. How did we get from Obama and Huckabee being the early frontrunner's to having such a tight race on one side and a near landslide on the other, even though McCain didn't earn any delegates in Iowa at all?
A look at the numbers might indicate why. Iowa is strictly a caucus state. There is no popular vote that counts for anything in their primaries. It is also not a very big state for Democrats, but it still awards a lot of delegates. Go figure. So how many votes separated the top three blue candidates? 207 out of a total 2501, Obama had 940, Edwards was second in fact with 744 while Clinton was a respectable third with 737. Still, she won twice as many delegates because she won more caucuses than Edwards.
How few votes exactly is 2500? Well the reds had 118,691 votes cast in that same state on the same day. Clearly more people in this heartland state identify, for the most part, with the GOP platform and showed up at their caucuses instead. Huckabee didn't get that much more of the popular vote than Romney or the next three candidates (Thompson, McCain, Paul respectively), but he only needs to win by a small margin in each caucus to walk away with all the votes.
I don't want to go into each state but I wanted to mention Michigan because it is a peculiar story. Clinton turned on the gas and won a whopping 55% of that state, but someone named Uncommitted cleaned house with another 40% of the vote (possibly Obama supporters since he wasn't even on their ballot). There are always uncommitted votes but it generally represents a mere 1-3% of the overall--people who just want to express their dissatisfaction with the lack of options.
On the other side in the same state you see Romney and McCain identifying better with northern conservatives, telling us that folks in that state cared more about a candidates resume as someone who can bring our economy back on track. Huckabee is a great guy and I wish he would've made it further through campaign season, but he doesn't make you think about the economy as much as a certain social agenda and this time around I don't think enough conservatives care primarily about those issues to take a chance on someone whose economic policy is less certain.
The rest of the story more or less writes itself. McCain wins a few big states and starts taking an early lead. Romney drops out having Michigan as one of his only major prizes (though he made a respectable run at it as far as he went) and Huckabee holds on longer hoping to pick up the scraps left behind from all the early drop-outs, but largely fails to establish a clear voice for what his administration will represent that voters can identify with.
Back to the Democrats, the story is probably over-told! I mean, what could I say here that you haven't read somewhere already? What I would like to do instead is make an observation, that for better or worse, we've had the chance to look more carefully at more than just one candidate who may best represent our ideas about domestic, foreign, economic and social policy. Way back at the beginning I was actually hoping maybe three strong candidates would emerge and go deep into the primary season, allowing all states to have the same chance to choose between all of the candidates in a given party.
Say what you will about how it has gone, but as a liberal minded person, I'm glad we haven't made our minds up completely yet. I would almost feel cheated if I were a Republican in a state like Illinois. What choice do they have at this point with virtually all the candidates who had a reasonable shot at winning their parties favor going into the general election having already bowed out? At this point, like it or not, their guy is going to be McCain and there isn't anything they can really do about it, except vote undecided.
There are differences in the way the two parties award delegates. Much has been said for that so far. It isn't that conservatives just agreed more on who to vote for. Far from it. Still, Republican rules for the primaries and how they earn delegates are more flexible, giving more freedom to state delegations to choose how to award delegates. Some states opt for a winner-take-all approach for the whole state based either on the primaries, the caucuses, or a combination of both using whatever formula they agreed on the last time it was revised. Other states may award delegates only to the top two or three candidates while in theory some could break up their delegates as closely as possible with the popular vote, though this is an unpopular choice as it makes that states delegates less important to a candidate when choosing where to spend their dollars and time trying to appeal to voters.
I don't know if it is possible to get the two parties to agree to use the same system, but I am going to come right out and say that I don't like winner-take-all being on the table for either party as it disenfranchises elements of either party in those states. It also makes them a sort of bully depending on how early they hold their primaries or caucuses.
So what about a simple vote with delegates awarded based on census data and the actual voting results? Well, I think this would take a lot of the fun out of the process. First it would almost require us to have a national primary all on the same day because spreading them out the way we do now would discourage people from voting for some candidates who were trailing if they could support a second favorite candidate who was having a stronger run. Having a national primary would also force candidates to campaign nationwide which would discourage them from pounding the pavement and holding town-hall style meetings in individual communities across the whole country and would compress the season (which could be a good thing). They would spend more time and money on national advertising and only nationally televised debates would be favored by candidates from either party.
I think the best compromise from the system we have to a complete overhaul such as a national primary is to have the parties agree to use a top-two or top-three format in every state. Give the voters in the last state to have an election as many choices as possible. Award delegates by the percentage of the votes they won plus a small bonus to the top candidate which would not amount to more than 5% of the states total delegates. The bonus theory to me represents that candidates likely ability to garnish even wider appeal in the general election from that state. If every state has a similar (proportionately) sized bonus then a candidate can distinguish him or herself as the stronger candidate by winning more states as well as more votes, a balance between simple popularity and ability to close the deal in enough states to actually win in November.
I think that is more than enough for now... I'll chime in again closer to November and again after the dust settles and see if my thoughts change any along the way.
Peace,
b
posted by b hill at 10:55 AM
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