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Culture Focus: Elections – The Primary Process

For this week’s culture focus, I thought I’d give a very brief introduction to the American primary process. The United States is in the middle of its primary elections, a process whereby eligible American citizens choose whom they want to see on the ballot for the Presidential election held later in November. Each state holds either a primary or a caucus to determine which candidates will receive delegates to the national conventions that will be held later in the year. The Democratic Party and the Republic party each have separate primaries/caucuses, generally held on the same day. Democratic delegates will attend the Democratic National Convention from August 25 – 28 in Denver, Colorado. The Republican delegates will attend the Republican National Convention from September 1 – 4 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Each presidential candidate must receive a certain number of delegates to win his party’s nomination for the presidency: the Republican candidate needs 1191 delegates for the nomination. The Democratic situation is a bit more complicated, because of disputes over the delegates from Michigan and Florida – without the delegates from these two states, the Democratic candidate needs 2024.5 delegates for the nomination; with these two states, the number of delegates needed is 2206.5. As things stand right now (2/19), Clinton and Obama are rather close, so people are very interested in following the primary process. On the Republican side, McCain has a comfortable lead over Huckabee, so McCain will most likely be the Republican candidate.

In addition to choosing and nominating the party’s choice for Presidential candidate, it is at the conventions that each candidate will name his selection for Vice President, also known as his “running mate.” There is a great deal of speculation over who will be the running mate on both the Republican and Democratic tickets, but both sides will take into account what areas are weak politically, and nominate a running mate to compensate for his weaknesses. For example, if a candidate is concerned about his ability to woo Southern voters, he would probably strongly consider choosing a Southern politician as his running mate. (This was one of the main reasons why John Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate in 1960, even though Kennedy couldn’t stand the fellow. Johnson was from Texas, and Kennedy needed to win in the South in order to win the election.)

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Culture Focus: US Presidential Elections, Part 1 – The Primary Process: Caucuses

For this week’s culture focus, I thought I’d give a brief introduction to the U.S. political system. Eligible American citizens have started the process of determining whom they want to see as the Republican nominee for the Presidential election to be held on November 6, 2012.  Each state holds either a primary or a caucus to determine which candidates will receive delegates to the national conventions that will be held later in the year. The Democratic Party and the Republic party each have separate primaries/caucuses, generally held on the same day. Democratic delegates will attend the 2012 Democratic National Convention from September 3 – 6 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Republican delegates will attend the 2012 Republican National Convention from August 27 – 30 in Tampa, Florida.

Last week, Iowa officially started the 2012 Presidential election cycle by holding its caucuses.  Yesterday, New Hampshire held the nation’s first Presidential primary.  Caucuses and primaries are both used to select delegates for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, but caucuses are quite different from primaries.  Primaries are conducted much like a regular election.  How about caucuses?

In a caucus, people in a certain area (usually some local political district, such as a township or a precinct) get together and discuss as a group which candidate they think deserves their support.  Different people may speak to the group on behalf of a particular candidate, seeking to persuade others to support that candidate as well.  After discussion, the caucus participants cast their vote for the candidate of their choice.  Properly speaking, the people vote for delegates for that particular candidate, and these are the delegates that will go to a county convention and/or the national convention.  (Some caucuses are more complicated than what I’ve just described here, but this description gives you the general idea.)

Perhaps one reason why caucuses are more complicated than primaries is because they are an older method of selecting delegates for the political conventions.  One drawback of such a system is that caucuses are more open to influence to control from party leaders.  Consequently, many states switched over to a primary system, beginning with Florida in 1901.  Today, only a handful of states still hold caucuses rather than primaries:  Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana (Democrats, Republicans hold a Primary), Maine, Minnesota, Montana (Republicans, Democrats hold a Primary, Nebraska (Democrats, Republicans hold a Primary), Nevada, North Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.

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