The Democratic may have (unofficially) chosen their presidential nominee in a little over a week. South Carolina holds its primaries on February 29th but the mega party known as Super Tuesday happens 3 days. Overall, candidates will compete in 16 primaries including 14 state primaries.
The Democratic hopefuls are fighting over 1,617 delegates or 34% of the total pot. Sanders enjoys the pole position in several states including the delegate buffets in California and Texas.
This table lists all Super Tuesday states and the delegate count. Note that Sanders is currently favored in 9 states out of 14.
No polling data is available for the territories.
A Few Notes/Observations:
· These are Democratic Party numbers as the GOP has a different delegate count. For example, Republican primaries awards a total of 2,472 delegates but the Democratic hopefuls are chasing 4,765 delegates including 714 super delegates. More on upper delegates tomorrow.
· The proportional system means we track who wins a state but also by how much. More on this in a moment.
· Obviously several red states are holding Super Tuesday primaries so these results have no bearing on November.
· Ironically Super Tuesday was Bernie’s death knell in 2016 but state makeup different now.
· Bernie’s lead could be insurmountable but drama could just be starting, as he must cross the 50% threshold to win.
Critical note-each state has a proportional system, which means my “Allocation” field is kinda irrelevant. How does a proportional system work? We Americans are comfortable with the single member, winner-take-all election model.[1] Whether electing city council members or the Electoral College, the candidate with the most votes carries the day.
However, proportional systems have a different approach. The proportional states allocate delegates based on the candidates’ vote percentage provided they achieve 15% of the vote. So if Sanders wins with 40% of the vote in Alabama he receives 40% of the available 61 delegates or 24. Let’s say Biden comes in second with 20% of the vote. He would then receive 12 delegates. Based on this, we can calculate how many delegate each hopeful accrues.
Tomorrow we project how many delegates Bernie Sanders has post Super Tuesday. From there we can develop a good sense of
[1] Some would say that is the American creed.
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