I hope it won’t come as news to most readers that the New Hampshire primaries took place just over a week ago. New Hampshire is the second state to cast their ballots for next year’s presidential hopefuls, coming in just a week after the Iowa caucuses.
The results of the Republican primary were likely terrifying to most sane Americans, despite being in line with the most recent polls. Madman Donald Trump received 35.5 percent of the votes cast, which came to 100,406 individual votes, or just over a third of the 284,120 total votes cast in the Republican primary. RealClear Politics recorded their poll average just before the primary with Trump at 31.2 percent, Rubio at 14 percent, and Kasich at 13.5 percent. In reality, Kasich received 15.8 percent of the vote, with Rubio trailing after Cruz and Bush at 10.6 percent.
What all of this means in the grand scheme of the Republican nomination is that Trump will receive ten delegates pledged to support him at the Republican National Convention, Kasich will receive four, and Cruz, Bush, and Rubio will receive three each. While the Republican party allows individual states to decide how they will allocate their delegates—whether proportional or winner-take-all, with a minimum voter threshold or without—every Republican delegate is assigned to their candidate based on the votes cast by the people of the state. Is this surprising? In a democracy, it really shouldn’t be.
But if we take a look at how the so-called Democratic party runs their delegate allocation, the Republican process starts to look remarkably unique.
Bernie Sanders swept to victory last week in New Hampshire with 60.4 percent of the popular vote, to Hillary Clinton’s 38 percent. His 60.4 percent of the vote totaled to 151,578 votes, more votes than any candidate has ever won in the state of New Hampshire, Republican or Democrat. According to the New York Times, Sanders garnered more votes than Clinton in nearly every single demographic group. The only places she beat him were with voters over the age of 65, and those with salaries greater than $200,000 a year. So logically, Sanders should walk away with a much higher number of delegates than Clinton, right?
Well, Sanders did walk away with just about 60 percent of the pledged delegates, delegates committed to voting for a particular candidate at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), where the presidential nominee will be chosen in July. But the Democratic Party also has what are called unpledged delegates, or “superdelegates.” These superdelegates are usually unelected party elites and officials who decide, without any accountability to the voting public, who they will vote for at the convention. This means that of the 2,382 delegates who will be electing the Democratic nominee at the Democratic National Convention, a whopping 712 will make their decision based on personal preference, rather than the outcome of the popular vote.
The superdelegate system was first implemented in the 1984 election in response to fear within the Democratic party that party officials held too little influence in the selection of delegates. This fear arose after earlier changes to the delegate election process opened the delegates up to direct election in primaries following the highly controversial nomination of Hubert Humphrey by party insiders in 1968. It may seem ironic how the pendulum swings from fear of democracy to fear of the establishment, but in 1984, the establishment very much had the upper hand as it founded the system whereby 30 percent of the Democratic delegates would be reserved for party officials, like members of Congress and state governors, who would not be required to nominate their candidate according to popular opinion.
While this system may have calmed voters’ fears in 1984, it is causing huge amounts of controversy in 2016. Hillary Clinton, widely acknowledged to be the establishment choice for the Democratic nomination, claimed to have already secured the endorsements of over 500 of the 712 superdelegates by October 2015. When the Associated Press contacted all of the superdelegates in early November, nearly half replied that they would be voting for the former Secretary of State, already three months before the first voters cast their ballots.
This overwhelming establishment support for Clinton has played out visibly in the second primary of the election cycle. While Bernie Sanders rightfully won 15 of New Hampshires 24 pledged delegates, he only received the support of two of the state’s eight superdelegates, leaving six to Hillary Clinton. This means that while Sanders won 60 percent of the votes and the pledged delegates, he received only 25 percent of the superdelegates. And when both categories of delegates are added together, each candidate ends up receiving an equal number: 17. Somehow, Hillary Clinton walked out of New Hampshire with a full 50 percent of the state’s delegates, despite winning less than 40 percent of the popular vote.
But wait, you ask, doesn’t this mean a candidate could win the popular vote, and yet receive more delegates at the Democratic National Convention? Why yes, that is exactly how the system works. This fear surfaced in 2008, when the extremely tight race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton raised the possibility that the superdelegates would decide the final nomination rather than the popular vote. In the end, however, Obama won the majority of both pledged and unpledged delegates, making the question irrelevant, but the problem has resurfaced again due to the unusual nature of this year’s Democratic nomination. Because Sanders was a relatively unknown entity going into the election cycle, many superdelegates were ready to pledge their support to Clinton extremely early on.
This early support meant that before the voting even began, Clinton already possessed a 15-point lead over Sanders. In other words, she walked into the very first caucus with 15 percent of the delegates she needed for the nomination already under her belt. As the Washington Post points out, “Sanders could, in theory, earn a majority of the 1,670 delegates up for grabs in popular voting all over the country but still lose the nomination if most of the 712 superdelegates side with Clinton at the convention” (2016).
The likelihood of superdelegates continuing to support the establishment candidate is high; the DNC appears pretty committed to Clinton’s nomination. From scheduling the reduced number of debates at inconvenient times, to surreptitiously repealing a ban on campaign contributions by lobbyists, the DNC has been doing everything in its power to slow the momentum of Sanders’ campaign. The superdelegate question, however, is more than just a problem of bias within the party establishment; it is a systemic issue designed to quiet the voice of the American people.
Yet, all is not without hope. Superdelegates, even those who have already made public endorsements, retain the ability to change their minds leading up to and even at the convention. Although it is not required to match popular opinion, the superdelegate ratio will likely even out if Sanders continues to win more states as handily as he did New Hampshire. While it may seem as though the popular vote is rendered meaningless by the presence of superdelegates, Sanders still has a shot at the nomination if the superdelegates are shown, without question, the overwhelming popular support for the alternative candidate. Then maybe, just maybe, Sanders will have a shot at winning a delegate count to match the ballots cast in his favor.