The nets are projecting a “big” win for Obama in Virginia. The question, however, is what that means in terms of delegates.
The Green Papers notes that the Dems in VA have 101 delegates up for grabs:
54 district / 18 at large; 11 Pledged PLEOs; 16 Unpledged PLEOs; 2 Unpledged add-ons
As such, he has won at least 18 (correction: the at-large delegates are awarded proportionally). The real question will be how many of the districts he can win (and some districts are better to win than others):
* CD 1: 4
* CD 2: 4
* CD 3: 6
* CD 4: 5
* CD 5: 4
* CD 6: 4
* CD 7: 5
* CD 8: 7
* CD 9: 4
* CD 10: 5
* CD 11: 6
PLEOs=”Party Leaders and Elected Officials”–the unpledged ones are the Superdelegates.
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February 12th, 2024 at 7:30 pm
Are you sure about the 18 “at-large” delegates? I’m pretty sure those are proportionally allocated based on the statewide vote and not winner-takes-all.
That said Obama’s non-PLEO count should outperform his vote share because of delegates from majority-minority CD 3 (I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get as many as 5 of the 6 delegates there).
February 12th, 2024 at 7:36 pm
Actually, I am not sure. Looking at it again, you may well be correct. I will see what i can find in terms of clarification.
February 13th, 2024 at 5:42 am
It’s always proportional with the Democrats, subject to a 15% hurdle. I’ve been watching CNN, and the way they try to explain those basics (or perhaps, try to hide the fact that many of the journalists do not seem to understand how PR works at all), no wonder even intelligent people get confused and believe that it’s “complicated”.
It’s really quite easy, and simple math could be used to estimate the number of delegates much, much earlier than is being done now. Lacking that, and lacking vote-reporting by Congressional District, it is handy to just divide up the elected delegates as if they were all awarded proportionally at-large – this will be a good estimate, and will likely just be a few delegates away from the final, semi-districted distribution (since lucky and unlucky district distributions for the candidates will often offset eachother).
The Green Papers is a great site, by the way, if a little untidy by today’s standards (this I do not mind at all, the wealth of information the site contains is what is important). An old favorite.
February 13th, 2024 at 6:29 am
Trust me, I understand the basic mechanisms at play–and do find the reporting on the topic not very good.
In the post I was applying Republican rules to the Democratic primary, hence the mistake.
Are you certain, however, about the uniformity of the rule across all democratic primaries?
February 13th, 2024 at 8:47 am
Oh, I had no doubt that you understood that, I assure you!
The basic principle of PR (Hare/largest remainders) with a 15% hurdle is always present. This is mandated by national party rules which have been in place since the 1970s. Among the superdelegates, the pledged PLEO delegates are awarded as a separate group by the same method.
In a primary, the application of these rules is straight-forward: once, at both the CD and at-large level, all other votes being excluded from the calculation (though reported). In a caucus state, however, the 15% hurdle is applied at every stage, from precinct through county to district and state conventions, but of course, those who are unviable get to switch groups before the delegates are calculated (and filled, within each group, in an essentially majoritarian manner).
(Rant ahead:) This latter process, by the way, squeezes the lesser candidates in terms of their perceived support level and perhaps helps prompt early exits: Bill Richardson, who in Iowa probably had something like 7% support, got reported as getting only 2% of the state convention delegate equivalents (which are fractions of the actual county convention delegates elected from the precincts). Joe Biden, who maybe had about 4% support, was reported as getting only 1%. In Nevada, Edwards was reported as getting 4% when his support level was probably somewhere around 10%. Reporting the actual first-preference support level for each candidate would be too hard, after all, since this might take as much as ten seconds to write down in a wholly separate column.
All of the details, of which there are plenty more to be sure, are however unessential compared to the systematic, uniform and simple basic principle, which even humble TV pundits ought to be able to quickly explain.