When Bitch PhD says “jump,” The Edge of the American West says “how high?” And earlier today she told us to start hopping:
Dear Eric and/or Ari,
I have spent part of my morning explaining the caucus/primary/convention system to a Canadian. Could one or both of you please do a post running down “how Americans elect a president” for handy linkage?
Thank you,
B
So, I went and found Seth Masket to do the heavy lifting for us. He’s an honest-to-goodness political scientist — and a great friend. I’ve asked him to speak slowly, so that even a Canadian will be able to understand him. Eh?
Greetings, all. I’ve been asked to chime in about the presidential nomination system. I could go on and on about this, but I’ll try to be brief.
All these contests, starting with the Iowa Caucus, are a competition for delegates to the national party conventions. (In case you were wondering, this has nothing to do with the Electoral College, which determines the winner of the general election in November and is prescribed by the Constitution. The Constitution contains no mentions of caucuses or primaries or even parties.)
As with many aspects of our federal governing system, this one seems chaotic. State parties have broad discretion as to how — and when — to select delegates. Some states, like Iowa, use a caucus, in which people meet and occasionally even deliberate over their choice of candidates. Montana’s Republican Party is using a very selective caucus this year — only about 3,000 people will be allowed to participate. Most states use primary elections to pick their delegates, with some (like New Hampshire) allowing independent voters to participate and others limiting participation to registered party members.
State parties also choose when to hold their contests. Earlier seems better, but the national parties are protecting Iowa and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status, stripping delegates from state parties that try to go too early.
The delegates chosen in all of these contests (4,417 Democrats and 2,516 Republicans) will meet next summer at the conventions and vote on a presidential nominee. Since almost all these delegates are pledged to a candidate, whoever wins a majority of pledged delegates in these state contests is the nominee. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
A lot of what we consider venerable traditions in this process are actually quite young. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson didn’t run around New Hampshire and Iowa in 1800 trying to have coffee with as many likely voters as possible. (For one thing, they preferred tea. For another, Iowa didn’t exist yet, and even if it had, it was located in French territory. I could go on.) The New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucus have only received much attention since the 1970s.
Prior to that, we had what’s usually referred to as a “mixed system” of primaries and party conventions. That is, a few key party bosses — usually with a cigar in one hand and a stiff drink in the other — often determined who would be nominated, occasionally struggling with party convention delegates over it.
Party nominations were made at the convention, and political spectators often didn’t know who the nominee would be before the convention was held. The few primaries that existed played the role of candidate testing grounds. John Kennedy, for example, competed in the 1960 West Virginia primary to prove that a wealthy Catholic could be competitive in a working-class Protestant state. His victory there impressed party leaders and gave them some confidence that he could compete nationally, so they nominated him.
The last gasp of this old system was in 1968, when the Democratic Party famously nominated Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War and had not competed in a single primary, at its Chicago convention. This greatly angered supporters of anti-war candidates like Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, who had been campaigning all over the country. Add to that anger the image of one of the major party bosses, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, instructing police officers to club anti-war protesters outside the convention hall, and you’ve got a lot of anger directed toward party bosses. This anger prompted a reform of the nomination system, which inadvertently led to an explosion of the number of primaries.
One of the architects of these reforms was Sen. George McGovern. In 1972, as one of the few people in the country who now knew how presidents were nominated, he – you guessed it – decided to run for president. McGovern determined that the old strategy of impressing party bosses was now dead; the key was to impress the media, which one did by doing well in the early primaries and caucuses (Iowa and New Hampshire). McGovern followed this route to the nomination in ’72, as did Jimmy Carter in ’76.
But then something funny happened — the party reasserted itself. In an interesting forthcoming book called The Party Decides (draft manuscript available here), authors Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller point out that party insiders — a collection of key officeholders, interest group leaders, donors, and opinion-makers — usually pick a candidate long before any voting occurs. Indeed, endorsements by these party elites do a much better job predicting who will win a nomination than polls, funding, or anything else.
The insiders’ candidate prevailed in all the major party nominating contests between 1980 and 2000. 2004 was slightly weird for the Democrats; insiders didn’t necessarily converge on Kerry, but they did conspire to keep Howard Dean from getting nominated.
This year is weirder. To the extent that party insiders have picked favorites, they appear to have chosen Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney. But the party insiders aren’t as united as in past elections, particularly on the Republican side. The insider candidates may yet get the nod, but these contests are much more competitive than expected.
So where are we today? On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama had an unexpectedly good showing in the Iowa Caucus. But even if he beats Hillary Clinton next Tuesday in New Hampshire, that will hardly demolish her candidacy. For Obama to get nominated, he’ll have to defeat Clinton in a lot of upcoming races where she is favored to win and in which she has a lot of important allies. Let’s just remember that in 1992, Bill Clinton didn’t compete in Iowa, and he came in second in New Hampshire. These early contests are important, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for winning the nomination.
On the Republican side, it’s hard to be sure who the insiders prefer — but it’s easy to see who they do not like. That’s Mike Huckabee. You can get a taste of what’s in store for Huckabee here. The job for GOP insiders now is to find their anti-Huckabee (it’s probably Romney) and support him like crazy. Of course, if it was that easy, they’d have done it already.
Okay, I went on and on. Sorry about that.
When I asked Seth to do the above post, he was shy about his blog. But now he’s agreed to let me say that you can find it here.
28 comments
January 4, 2008 at 9:45 pm
urbino
In an interesting forthcoming book called The Party Decides (draft manuscript available here), authors Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller point out that party insiders — a collection of key officeholders, interest group leaders, donors, and opinion-makers — usually pick a candidate long before any voting occurs. Indeed, endorsements by these party elites do a much better job predicting who will win a nomination than polls, funding, or anything else.
I think Spock said it best, when he said, “Fascinating.”
Another book I need to read. I’m really going to have to pick up the pace on my current ones. At least I have a little time before this one becomes available.
January 5, 2008 at 1:19 am
Ben Alpers
Thanks for the great post…and for the link to what sounds like a very interesting book, which I’ve downloaded it, but obviously haven’t had a chance to read yet. Is the In Rainbows-ization of academic publishing?
You don’t mention the so-called “superdelegates” which have been part of the system for the last quarter century or so. These are party officials who are automatically unpledged delegates to the national convention, free to support any candidate of their choice regardless of the result of their state’s primary or caucus. Roughly one fifth of the delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention will be unbound, unelected superdelegates. At least according to Wikipedia (obligatory grain of salt), the Republicans aren’t using superdelegates this year, though a little under a fifth of their delegates are also unpledged.
A final thought: Although it was certainly not the intention of the turn-of-the-Seventies reforms that brought about our current presidential election process, the arcane nature of the modern primary process does a very good job of obscuring how much control party elites have over the system. The stage machinery would become more visible if we had a national primary.
January 5, 2008 at 5:18 am
Matt W
Let’s just remember that in 1992, Bill Clinton didn’t compete in Iowa, and he came in second in New Hampshire.
Well OK, but I looked up the history of this race, and there are a couple of asterisks here:
(1) Tom Harkin (D-IA) was running, so basically no one else competed in Iowa;
(2) Clinton came in second in New Hampshire to Paul Tsongas (D-MA), who was seen as having a big advantage because of regionality, and also seen as a much darker horse than Obama. So to speak.
For these reasons, I think “Bill won without Iowa and New Hampshire, so Hillary has a decent chance of doing so too” is too simple.
[So, the real reason I was looking this up was I wanted to find out who the pre-Iowa Democratic frontrunner in 1992 was. And I couldn’t. Clinton had been hurt early by Gennifer Flowers, to the extent that his second-place finish in New Hampshire let him call himself “The Comeback Kid”; Tsongas was a longshot; so who was the early favorite? I think Harkin and Brown were supposed to be the fringey liberals — does this leave Bob Kerrey as the early favorite by elimination? Glad we dodged that.]
January 5, 2008 at 6:59 am
jhm
Good intro to the topic. Albeit I admit to being a bit of a nutter on the subject, I would have thought that some mention of the 2/3 rule and its demise would have been appropriate.
Even as it fairly easy to find fault with the current system, I can’t help but react strongly against a national primary if by that you mean a single-day event. That said, no matter the ideas one has, the question remains what, exactly, can be done to effect reform in this area. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the DNC’s attempt to impose their will on the state parties vis-à-vis timing their contests (let alone the rules that govern delegate selection). Hence my advocacy of the 2/3 rule; requiring a supermajority seems the simplest (if not only) way to get all of the states into the game, as no one candidate is likely to get enough support before the convention (which would also encourage candidates to stay in the race longer, which would lessen the chances of one candidate running away with the thing…).
January 5, 2008 at 7:08 am
Ben Alpers
On Tsongas and regionality: Matt W. is entirely right….which brings up a dog that hasn’t barked in most of the analysis of Barack Obama’s Iowa win that I’ve read: Obama, like Tsongas in NH and Gephardt in Iowa was competing in a neighboring state.
In the case of both Tsongas and Gephardt, this fact dominated coverage of their campaigns, forcing Gephardt to win big in Iowa in ’04 (which he didn’t) and making Tsongas’s NH victory in ’92 less significant.
But very little emphasis has been placed on the fact that Obama, too, comes from a neighboring state. This silence is especially interesting since it appears that Obama did, in fact, do best in eastern Iowa.
January 5, 2008 at 9:06 am
Matt W
Ben, I wondered a little about that too. I think one reason it might have been downplayed a little is that “white people voted for a black man” swamped “Iowans voted for an Illinesian.” I also wonder if Clinton tried to play up her Illinois roots a little.
Also, I suspect that the Mass-NH connection is expected to be stronger than the Illinois-Iowa connection, because Massachusetts dominates the New Hampshire media markets in a way that Illinois (I’ll bet) doesn’t dominate Iowa. Even in Burlington, which is pretty far away from Boston by New England standards, most people root for the (ew) Patriots. Whereas I think Iowans root for the Hawkeyes.
And one more thing — do you think it was the eastern vote or the urban vote that gave Obama bigger margins?
January 5, 2008 at 11:51 am
urbino
Illinesian
Seriously?
January 5, 2008 at 11:53 am
SEK
I prefer the faux-Greek “Illinoi,” myself.
January 5, 2008 at 12:03 pm
urbino
Heh.
January 5, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Matt W
It’s the slightly less rude form of “FIB.”
(Ha, I lived in Wisconsin for one year, and I love my Chicago brethren, yes I do. But the “perceived driving abilities” is right on — I learned these terms after telling someone how on the way to Chicago someone had tried to merge from an on-ramp into the spot I was driving in. In the center lane.)
January 5, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Seth Masket
In addition to the Illinois connection, Obama’s maternal grandparents were Kansas farmers. I wonder if that gave him an additional advantage in Iowa.
January 5, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Rick B
Ben, While the above commenters point out reasonable reasons why Obama is seen to be doing well without the asterisk of being from a neighboring state, there ia also the fact that the national Press detests Hillary Clinton and feels threatened by Edward’s populism and aggressiveness.
Separate question for anyone:
Texas has a primary election, then precinct-level Caucus held at 7:15 PM of the primary day with entrance limited to voters who voted in the primary. The caucus selects delegates to county caucus, and there the caucus selects delegates to the state level convention, where delegates are selected to go to the National convention, the State Party officers are selected and the party platform is written.
Since the precinct level caucuses are sparsely attended, the religious right took over the Republican Party in Texas about two decades ago. I am in a precinct with about 300 registered voters, and we had a caucus in 2004 to fill four delegate seats and four alternates. Five of us showed up, and one guy slotted his wife who was not present. The Republicans walked in and had it all set up in advance and left without about 20 minutes. The religious right, in complete control of the Texas Republican party, then wrote a horrendous state Platform, including a provision that no Republican candidate could run without signing a pledge to support the party platform. The election of Bush as Governor was one result of this party takeover by the religious right.
Is there a book that sets out the party systems in the various states? In how many states have the religious right taken over the Republican Party? I suspect that this has happened in Oklahoma and maybe in Missouri, but I don’t know.
How would I find out? Any ideas?
January 6, 2008 at 12:02 am
Ben Alpers
Ben, While the above commenters point out reasonable reasons why Obama is seen to be doing well without the asterisk of being from a neighboring state, there ia also the fact that the national Press detests Hillary Clinton and feels threatened by Edward’s populism and aggressiveness.
Though I largely agree with you about press attitudes toward Clinton and Edwards, in many ways the media’s chief bias in campaign coverage is toward the narrative frame, which tends to drive coverage of particular events. And this year, that frame is that this is a two-way race between Clinton and Obama, which Clinton will eventually win. This doesn’t mean that the press likes Clinton. But they have always expected her to win the nomination. It also provides a convenient justification for ignoring Edwards.
January 6, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Hank
“Is there a book that sets out the party systems in the various states? In how many states have the religious right taken over the Republican Party? I suspect that this has happened in Oklahoma and maybe in Missouri, but I don’t know.”
I don’t know of a book that maps all that, but I have one from awhile back that sets out the strategy.
Where is that thing?
Oh yeah, here it is.
It’s called “Mein Kampf.”
January 6, 2008 at 7:31 pm
bitchphd
“It also provides a convenient justification for ignoring Edwards.” Agreed, not b/c I know anything but b/c I like Edwards.
Thank you!!! Ari and Seth (if I may) for the post. But now I am more confused than ever! So okay, in caucuses, “regular” (i.e., non-super) delegates basically commit to support a particular candidate: so Obama will get 16 delegates voting for him at the national convention? And Edwards, 15? And Clinton, 14? Or is it just that *as of this week*, that’s how many delegates want to vote for each of those guys, and come wheelin’ and dealin’ time, that may or may not turn out to be the case at the convention itself? Is none of this actually *binding*? And if not, what would happen if, in some crazy way at the convention, the powers that be decided to nominate, say, Dodd?
January 6, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Seth Masket
It depends what you mean by “binding.” As I understand it, there are no legal constraints forcing a Clinton delegate to actually vote for Clinton at the convention. But keep in mind that delegates are pretty well screened for their loyalty to particular candidates. How people actually become delegates varies a lot from state to state. Here in Colorado, people run to become delegates in a series of caucuses, declaring their candidate loyalty the whole way through. A few delegate slots are held aside and picked directly by the candidates.
All this is to say that it’s *possible* for a stealth Obama supporter to present herself as a Clinton supporter and become a delegate, reversing her vote on the convention floor. But that person would face a lot of social costs (immediate anger from fellow delegates, not being trusted in politics again, etc.), and requires an awful lot of deception for a pretty modest payoff.
What used to happen, back when decisions were made at conventions, was that delegates would take instructions from their candidate or someone close to him. So a candidate with insufficient delegates to win might pledge his delegates to a more promising candidate, possibly getting something in return (the VP slot, a promise for a prominent cabinet position, etc.). Convention bosses often brokered these deals.
It seems pretty unlikely that a majority of convention delegates would suddenly decide to nominate Chris Dodd. But, technically, yeah, they could do that. I lack the imagination to conjure up that scenario, though.
January 6, 2008 at 9:04 pm
ari
When I asked Seth to do the above post, he was shy about his blog. But now he’s agreed to let me say that you can find it here.
January 6, 2008 at 10:42 pm
LFB
Obama did well in eastern Iowa because it contains the university and more urban areas, not because those people feel allegiance to Illinois based on their proximity.
Adding to this is the strong sense in Illinois that Obama is of and for Chicago, and the rest of the state can go hang. And in Chicago, we tend to fancy our city a state unto itself. The rest of Illinois rather wishes we were at times, considering that the city over-rides the religious right occupying nearly the entire rest of the state. I highly doubt people in Iowa felt Obama, as a resident of Illinois, should be pledged to on that account.
Any interstate allegiance between the states is more likely to be based on one’s connection to farming.
January 7, 2008 at 12:28 am
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January 7, 2008 at 6:08 am
tina
All this is to say that it’s *possible* for a stealth Obama supporter to present herself as a Clinton supporter and become a delegat
Isn’t this what Pat Robertson claimed to do in the Republican primaries in 1988? He got supporters into state party leadership positions, and they stacked the delegate pool? As I understand it, Republicans are (somehow) bound to vote their stated allegiance on an initial vote, but if a candidate does not win a majority, they can realign for a second, run-off vote. He was hoping for a 2nd-round vote, but that did not happen. Is that about right?
January 7, 2008 at 8:59 am
bitchphd
Aha, Seth, gotcha. Okay, thanks. Makes sense now.
January 7, 2008 at 10:19 am
anukexpat
Excuse my ignorance, but I am an expat Brit living in the USA. Why not just have all the primaries/caucuses on the same day? This would do away with all the tedious months of campaigning, the ridiculous “me first or I’ll cry” attitude of Iowa and New Hampshire and make the whole thing a lot interesting.
January 7, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Seth Masket
Responding to Anukexpat, a single national primary has been proposed as an alternative to the current system. If enough people get annoyed with the status quo, it might be adopted some day. The main criticism of such a primary is that it would favor the candidate with the most money and name recognition — even more so than the current system. That is, the fact that the early contests are in less populated states means that retail politics is still possible. Candidates actually go out and meet voters. It’s possible for an under-financed candidate to do well in this environment, as Huckabee proved.
January 7, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Rick B
anukexpat,
I for one do not trust the results of a single day of primaries. This is not like a Parliamentary system in which the party bosses concur on who will run the country and then offer him to the masses on a take-it-or-leave-it basis like goods in a department store.
We don’t trust the parties, and we damned sure don’t trust the party leaders in their “smoke-filled rooms.” we want to make the decision who gets the job ourselves. So we are looking for a very public form of practical exercise in which all the candidates go through a series of hoops in competition with each other so that we, the public, can decide which is best.
Unfortunately, the current front-loaded system of primaries is too close to your proposed single big one time for all primary. Remember, this only happens once every four years, and as you can see with Bush, even a President who clearly deserves it cannot effectively be impeached.
Right now the front loaded primaries appears to have eliminated Romney and anointed Obama. Yet we know almost nothing about Obama beyond his ability to give a good speech and smile well. In spite of taht, unless he stumbles badly before February 5th, he is probably the Democratic nominee for President. Frankly, I think he is the weakest of the three major Democrats, and there just isn’t enough time to be sure.
But that’s the reason for no single day mass primary. The only guys who could do well are extremely well financed, and we have no way to get to know any of the candidates.
***********
Hank,
Mein Kampf was about goals. I’m looking for a state-by-state description of process. In Texas a small, well-organized and strongly motivated minority of theocrrats and Dominionists took over the Republican Party. Where else has it happened? And where CAN it happen?
January 8, 2008 at 1:05 am
kate
Thanks Seth. That clears up some of the questions we’ve been pondering around here (in Melbourne, Australia).
To clarify Rick B., in the parliamentary systems of the UK and Australia ‘party bosses’ deciding on a leader isn’t entirely accurate. The parliamentary party votes for their leader, the citizens vote for a party (not an individual) to form a government. In practice the leader of a party has an increasing ‘presidential’ campaign to get through.
Behind the scenes any potential leader makes deals to get the numbers, this may include making a representative from a rival faction their deputy or other senior cabinet member.
January 8, 2008 at 3:37 am
Ben Alpers
For those interested in the minutiae of the process, here are the delegate selection rules for this year’s Democratic National Convention. The site includes both the national rules of the party and links to the various states’ delegate selection processes. As you’ll see things get very complicated, very fast.
Somewhere upthread someone asked about whether the delegates are bound to the candidate they were elected for. As far as I can tell by reading the rules, the simple answer is “no,” but the more complicated answer is that the party’s delegate selection rules have a whole series of safeguards designed to ensure that any given candidate’s delegates are actually supporters of that candidate and not stalking horses for some other candidate. In this way, the process resembles the way most states deal with presidential electors, who are usually made to pledge their support for a candidate in order to run, but who are technically unbound. In practice, there have only been a handful of “faithless electors” over the years, and never in an election (like 2000) where it could have made a difference.
As for the Republican Party, their convention site promises that their delegate selection rules “will be coming soon”. A .pdf summary of 2004 delegate selection processes for the GOP can be found here. It seems to suggest that some states bind their delegates while others don’t.
January 8, 2008 at 3:43 am
Ben Alpers
I should add that I didn’t read the state delegate selection rules to which the DNC site links. It’s possible that the states do attempt to legally bind their delegates even if the national party does not.
January 8, 2008 at 8:27 am
ari
Thanks for visiting, Kate. I know it’s quite a trip from Melbourne.