Bookmark & share:

E-mail this page E-mail a letter to the editor Reader Comments (below)

L. Sandy Maisel 01/18/2008

The winnowing out process has begun. Democrats Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson are gone; John Edwards is hanging on by a fingernail but the rules might make him an important player nonetheless. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are clearly the frontrunners -- and one of them will be the Democratic nominee.

For the Republicans, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are still very much in the picture. Fred Thompson has a slight chance.

In setting strategies for the months ahead, the candidates are aware of esoteric rule differences between the Democratic process and the Republican one. These differences will be crucial in looking toward Feb. 5, Tsunami Tuesday, the single biggest day in the history of presidential nominating politics.

On that day, Democrats will choose 1, 681 delegates in 23 separate primaries and caucuses, more than half of the total number of pledged delegates selected by rank-and-file voters in the entire process.

The Democratic nominee will need 2,025 delegates to win at the convention; however, about 850 delegates come from so-called Superdelegates, party leaders and elected officials seated as a result of their office and, unless they choose to state their preference, unpledged to any candidate. More on them below.

On Feb. 5, the Republicans will choose 975 delegates in 21 contests, 42 percent of the 1,191 available. The Republicans have a smaller convention and have only 163 automatic delegates, members of the Republican National Committee but not elected officeholders.

Feb. 5 will be important, maybe determinative, in both parties, but differing rules and the viability of more candidates in the Republican party lead to divergent candidate strategies.

Let's start with the Republicans. Party rules allow states to award all of the delegates in a state to the winner of the primary, with second, third, and other candidates getting no delegates. As a result, candidates will concentrate their efforts only in states in which they have a real chance to finish first. Edging out another candidate for third place gives you nothing, so you do not try.

Giuliani's strategy calls for concentrating on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, winner-take-all states with a total of 174 delegates. McCain might contest some of those, but he also will concentrate on California with 170 delegates as the single largest prize and perhaps Missouri, with 55 more at stake. Huckabee and Romney will pick their own targets accordingly -- and each will ignore states in which they have no chance. The survivors of Tsunami Tuesday will be those who are close to each other in delegate count.

The Democrats allocate delegates in proportion to the vote a candidate receives in a primary or caucus. If Obama gets 60 percent of the votes in a state with 100 delegates, he would get 60 delegates, and the other candidates -- those who surpass a threshold of 15 percent -- will receive the rest, divided according to their vote totals. The strategic implication of this rule is that a candidate should not desert a state simply because he or she will not win it. That candidate still will pick up valuable delegates. Thus, Obama is campaigning in New York and New Jersey and Clinton in Illinois.

Edwards remains in the race because if he can surpass the 15 percent threshold, he too will win delegates and how those delegates vote may say a good deal about when the Democratic nominee is determined -- and even who it will be.

The Republican contest will end on Feb. 5 if one candidate wins enough of the winner-take-all states to distance himself from the others in terms of delegate count. If two or more are still close, it will go on.

The Democratic contest will end if either Clinton or Obama win five of the large state primaries and a spattering of the others, losing only their opponent's home state.

Then, though the elected delegate count differential will not be overwhelming, the Superdelegates, those elected and party officials who are convention delegates by virtue of their office, the vast majority of whom are still unpledged, will come together behind the candidate with the most momentum -- and the die will be cast. If Clinton and Obama split the large states, however, the Democratic contest could well go on -- and the Maine caucuses (Feb. 1-3 for the Republicans and Feb. 10 for the Democrats) will be fun to watch.

L. Sandy Maisel is director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College.

Bookmark and share this story: