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QUESTION: What is a superdelegate?
ANSWER: Party activists and elected officials who have a vote at the Democratic National Convention that is equal to a single delegate. A candidate for president needs 2,025 to win the nomination. S.C. awards 54 delegates. During the primary, 45 delegates were awarded based on the vote. The remaining nine will be awarded by the state's eight superdelegates and a delegate who will be named later.
QUESTION: Why were superdelegates created?
ANSWER: The Democratic National Committee created the superdelegates as a quality-control mechanism after George McGovern's failed bid for the presidency in 1972. These delegates are party activists whose job it is to prevent an unfavorable candidate from winning the nomination.
QUESTION: Will superdelegates ultimately decide the Democratic nomination?
ANSWER: The race is historically close, meaning each delegate counts. Superdelegates do not have to decide until the August convention. Those who have pledged can change their minds. The primary system could decide the nominee before then. The superdelegates could decide to back the candidate who has the most delegates awarded by voters once all the states have held their preference contests. Or the superdelegates could split, which would take the process into unknown territory.
QUESTION: What is a superdelegate?
ANSWER: Party activists and elected officials who have a vote at the Democratic National Convention that is equal to a single delegate. A candidate for president needs 2,025 to win the nomination. S.C. awards 54 delegates. During the primary, 45 delegates were awarded based on the vote. The remaining nine will be awarded by the state's eight superdelegates and a delegate who will be named later.
QUESTION: Why were superdelegates created?
ANSWER: The Democratic National Committee created the superdelegates as a quality-control mechanism after George McGovern's failed bid for the presidency in 1972. These delegates are party activists whose job it is to prevent an unfavorable candidate from winning the nomination.
QUESTION: Will superdelegates ultimately decide the Democratic nomination?
ANSWER: The race is historically close, meaning each delegate counts. Superdelegates do not have to decide until the August convention. Those who have pledged can change their minds. The primary system could decide the nominee before then. The superdelegates could decide to back the candidate who has the most delegates awarded by voters once all the states have held their preference contests. Or the superdelegates could split, which would take the process into unknown territory.
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Who are superdeligates?
In the Democratic party, superdelegates are voting delegates to the national presidential convention who are not elected by the people but who are prominent Democrats who already hold a public office (e.g. Democratic senators, mayors, governors, etc.).
When did democrats start using super delegates?
From The Nation: By 1980 the party establishment had seen enough. It struck back with a commission of its own, led by North Carolina Governor James Hunt. It returned power to elected officials and party regulars--the superdelegates, who will make up about 20 percent of the 4,049 delegates at the Democratic convention. They include all Democratic members of Congress and every governor, but roughly half of them are Democratic National Committee officials elected by state parties, who range from top party operatives to local city council members. Key interests in the party, like labor groups, can also name superdelegates. According to political scientist Rhodes Cook, superdelegates were created as a "firewall to blunt any party outsider that built up a head of steam in the primaries." That's what happened in 1984, when Senator Gary Hart launched an insurgent challenge to front-runner Walter Mondale. Hart won sixteen state primaries and caucuses to Mondale's ten, and barely lost the popular vote. Yet Mondale locked up virtually all the party's 700 or so superdelegates even before the primary began. Hart likely would have lost anyway, but the superdelegates sealed his defeat. "I got almost none of them, because [Mondale] was considered inevitable," Hart told me. What happened to Gary Hart was a true tragedy, the Democratic Party was as undemocratic as it could be. So now lets fast-forward to 2008 and here we have a close contest between the establishment candidate and the relative outsider. Now Howard Dean announced last night that he does not want to see a brokered convention, and that an agreement should be made after the voters are done deciding delegates in June. This would be a bad thing if the undemocratic super-delegates were considered part of the process, but then again, they'll have the same influence during the convention in August. And do you know what type of effect they'll make on the outcome?
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