The path to choosing the most powerful person in the free world, by all indications and a considerable consensus, is a mess. Not that the process itself is in shambles — though that seems to be a popular refrain every four years; I just don’t trust anyone who says they fully understand it. However, because this year will be the first time I and many other college students will be voting in a presidential election, I will publicly attempt to grapple with and make sense of the primary election for the education of the Alligator readership and, more importantly, myself.
The primary election, the first and most confusing step of the presidential election, is the process by which each party chooses its respective candidate for the general election — which is where, in turn, the president is elected. Political parties have been with the U.S. essentially since George Washington left office, but the modern system of how candidates are chosen for the general election is a relatively new — and unpredictable — child of American democracy, beginning in the 1970s. This process involves state-by-state elections in contests called primaries and caucuses held by the parties, and the rules are different on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, Republicans can have their race in a state on a separate date from the Democrats’ race, although this is the minority of cases.
In the time before rock ‘n’ roll and lava lamps, candidates were chosen in national conventions and, before that, for a short stint, by party members in Congress. Today, we still have national conventions — like the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, beginning on July 18 and 25, respectively — but those serve mainly as the symbolic end to the long primary race; by the time they roll around, the eventual nominee has emerged.
What’s at stake in the primary race is twofold: delegates and the identity of the party. Delegates are the literal dimension of the primary race. The key to winning a party’s nomination is winning delegates. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the races are different for each party state-by-state, and it thus follows that the process of awarding delegates varies as well.
Some states rely on a winner-take-all system, in which one candidate takes all the delegates of a state’s party. Others offer their delegates proportionally based on the percentage of the state party’s electorate won. And there are seemingly infinite nuances within this system — certain states have rules to determine if a candidate can acquire delegates based on the percentage of the vote they win, for example.
For the Republican Party, a candidate has to win 50 percent plus one of all delegates to win the nomination — that is 1,236 out of 2,470 delegates this year — and for the Democratic Party, 2,382 out of 4,763.
And there’s a rather large kink to the Democratic race: For the Republicans, delegates are awarded based entirely on winning primaries and caucus, in which ordinary voters turn out in support of their candidates. For Democrats, however, these races are components of the whole shebang, but there are also delegates called superdelegates. These superdelegates are members of the party that may endorse whichever candidate they choose and are not bound to vote in accordance with their home state. So while Sen. Bernie Sanders recently walloped Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary by popular vote, he is likely to leave the primary with the same number of delegates as Hillary due to superdelegates.
I should mention there are a few days to look out for: March 1 is Super Duper Tuesday. The Democrats, for example, have 1,017 delegates at stake on that day alone from 12 primaries and caucuses — in other words, more than a fifth of the delegates in the total race. Super Duper Tuesday is similarly important for Republicans as well. March 15 is Super Tuesday, not really as significant as Super Duper Tuesday but still fairly important. This is also when Florida votes, guys.
When these events have passed, what remains will most likely be the best glimpse into the state of each party. The GOP might be as fractured as they are now, and Hillary Clinton may end up clobbering Sanders. Either way, this will tell us a lot about how the country may see itself over the next four years.
Neel Bapatla is a UF English sophomore. His column appears on Fridays.
