Is the Democratic primary rigged?
Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by a hair in Iowa — a virtual tie. A week later in New Hampshire, Sanders won the vote 60% to 38%. Yet if you look at the delegate count so far (which is how you win the election), Clinton is crushing. What gives?
As you can see by the chart above, it’s all these superdelegates — party insiders and elected officials, who actually get to support whichever candidate they want, regardless of how people vote. Kinda messed up, right?
Let’s talk numbers
Here’s how it all goes down. To become the nominee of the Democratic party, you have to win the majority of what we call delegates. The magic number of delegates needed to win this year is 2,382.
There are two types of delegates. Regular delegates are people picked to go to the party’s nominating convention on a candidate’s behalf, depending on how people vote. Superdelegates are party insiders — like an elected governor, or legislators or members of the national Democratic party.
Most delegates (85%) are just the regular kind. In New Hampshire, there were 24 regular delegates. Since Bernie got 60% of the vote, he got 60% of those delegates, or 15. Hillary got the other nine.
But this is where the superdelegates come in. New Hampshire has eight of those, including people like Governor Maggie Hassan, Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Representative Annie Kuster. Six of those eight already pledged their support to Hillary. Add those six supers to the nine regulars, and Hillary came out with the same number of delegates as Bernie.
For now, the other two superdelegates are undecided, including the chair of the New Hampshire democratic party Ray Buckley, who couldn’t make a decision before the primary, according to state rules.
Superdelegates matter
Clinton has superdelegates racked up for her all over the country — 362 have pledged to her, and just eight have gone to Sanders. It makes sense. She’s a major Democratic Party insider. Her husband was formerly the President. She was a U.S. Senator and the Secretary of State.
That all being said, superdelegates can change their mind, and they do. In 2008, a lot were going for Clinton early on, then switched over when the will of the people was headed toward Barack Obama. But her superdelegate lead over Sanders is bigger than it was over Obama. Sanders is much more anti-establishment, governing for most of his career as an independent and only recently switching to the Dems.
Why do these superdelegates exist? The Democratic Party rewrote the rules in 1982, to potentially stop those candidates who are off the party message or out of step with its goals and platforms. Some probably see Bernie in that category. Though superdelegates haven’t swung any elections since the rule changed, this year could be the time — especially if Bernie keeps raking in the regular delegates, and the supers stick with Hillary.
Wondering about the Republicans? Their system is totally different, so we’ll save that for a later post.
Here’s a sweeter way to explain it:
