America's Wang Votes: Florida Primary Results

[AustinHoya03]

With 99% of the vote in, the "final numbers" are:

R's
McCain: 36%
Romney: 31%
Rudy: 15%
Huckabee: 14%

D's
Clinton: 50%
Obama: 33%
Edwards: 14%

I was surprised by two things. One was Edwards taking a significant piece of the pie. The other was Romney keeping the race close -- who actually likes Mitt Romney? I just don't understand how he's doing moderately well in this race.

[The Stig]

For the Dems it was another lame duck contest, since there were no delegates. The result does show that Hillary is still the default candidate - when Dems don't know what else to do they vote for her.

Rudy looks like he's toast. Waiting until Florida for his push was a huge mistake, and one that future candidates will look to as an example of how not to do it. By this point in the campaign a candidate needs to have momentum, and you don't get momentum by sitting out early races.

[theexorcist]

I favored Rudy, and ... uh ... wow.

Agree with Stig - I still think that we need to rethink the current primary system. I still don't think that NH and IA adequately represent America, and the focus on those two is overwhelming.

Looks like SC remains the Republican firewall.

[strummer8526]

I also liked Rudy, probably just b/c I was a kid in NJ right around the time he made the City a place that I wasn't afraid to go visit. He's done now, though. Fortunately, I like McCain enough. A McCain/Obama race will make me very happy.

[Deleted]

Not a big follower of politics here... what do they mean by "there were no delegates" awarded? Who, then, is going to determine which candidate Florida supports at the convention?

Also, I caught about two seconds of a piece on one of the news channels last night about voters being disinfranchised by their state/the candidates... I assume that was in reference to primaries that aren't awarding delegates?

And furthermore, are delegates even bound to follow the outcome of a primary in a state? I believe the answer is "no," but I can't remember my high school government class that well...

[Jack]

Buff- The whole system is beyond messed up, and I could go an endless rant about how undemocratic the entire presidential electoral system is (try explaining our wonderful representative democracy to Kenyan schoolchildren, as I did a few months ago), but the short story is that Florida and Michigan decided to move their primaries earlier to make them more relevant. The parties, bound by tradition and pressure from the tourism industry and God knows what else, told Florida and Michigan not do it and threatened them with sanctions. They went ahead and did it anyway, and the Democratic National Committee stripped them of all their voting delegates while the RNC only took away half of their voting delegates.

The answer to who is going to determine which candidate Florida supports at the DNC is currently no one. Florida simply does not count, which seems like an awesome strategy for a state that has been a key battleground in the past two elections. The Clinton people have been trying to convince us that the DNC will change their mind and somehow the vote there will matter, meanwhile all candidates previously agreed not to campaign there, so validating that vote now seems pretty unfair too.

As for whether delegates are bound to vote for their candidate, that varies from state to state. As does how delegates are awarded- Florida is a winner take all state, so McCain gets all of the delegates even though 64% of Floridians voted for someone else. Other states award delegates proportionally on a statewide basis, while still others award delegates by county or congressional district. Don't even get me started on caucuses. All of which means one man, one vote almost never applies, money rules, and tiny unrepresentative pockets of the country wield inordinate influence on who is nominated.

[theexorcist]

This also came up in Michigan.

Really short version - There are no Democratic Florida delegates.

Short version - Florida and Michigan made NH, IA, SC, and NV mad.

Long version - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29_presidential_primaries%2C_2008

Scroll down to "February 5 controversy".

[Deleted]

So when we get to that all-important "THE STATE OF ____ VOTES FOR" moment at the DNC, Florida and Michigan won't be saying anything?

[theexorcist]

Well, maybe not. Clinton (who won in Michigan) has been talking about the "disenfranchisement" of Michigan voters, and has made claims about getting them reinstated. Obama's resisted - saying basically that it's changing the rules in the middle of the game.

If the battle comes down to the end, this issue will come up.

[Deleted]

Jack and exorcist... thanks. Makes it a bit clearer.

So what does all this talk about a "brokered convention" mean, then?

[rosslynhoya]

She/they really can't win that one though, it's not Michigan "voters" per se that are disenfranchised, though I'd love to see this go to court.

The national parties establish rules for how they nominate an individual to pursue the presidency. The states make up wacky/bizarre rules for how they will play within the framework established by the national organization. The Michigan Democrat Party "cheated" this year in a brazen attempt to exaggerate its importance in primary season. The national Democrat Party called its bluff and now the state party doesn't have the stones to deal with the consequences of its actions.

What's great about this is that in many states to this present day, all of the taxpayers are obligated to fund a private organization's internal politics but only a portion of those (i.e., registered Dems or registered Repubs) are allowed to participate in those internal deliberations. If Hillary (or the poor deluded individuals in Michigan) take this 'disenfranchisement' argument to its logical conclusion, it should spell an end to taxpayer-financed closed primaries at a minimum.

[rosslynhoya]

Jan 30, 2008 10:07:43 GMT -5 buffalohoya said:

So what does all this talk about a "brokered convention" mean, then?

If there's no clear media-designated winner of the primaries, real voting will take place this summer at the national conventions to determine who is the nominee. What the news doesn't tell you in most cases is that even though XX won this state or that state, half of the delegates from that state are chosen by local party bosses or by other established means and are not bound by how their fellow consituents voted in the state primary.

[lightbulbbandit]

Just to clarify a few misunderstandings people appear to have about the primary system. First, most rules are not state specific, they are state and party specific. The Democratic Party has a very strict set of rules that each state must follow, Republicans let their state parties do mostly whatever they want. All Democratic primaries and caucuses award delegates proportionally, not a single one is winner take all (some states award them by Congressional District, others on the state level proportionally).

Before this primary season the Democrats had a commission to talk about looking at the early primary process, to see if it could be made better. In past years there was a Party instituted date whereby no state could have their primary or caucus before it, with exemptions for Iowa and New Hampshire so they could be the first. The results of the commission was to allow two more states to vote in that early period along with Iowa and New Hampshire. The states got to submit applications to the party (which neither Florida or Michigan did) and the party eventually settled on Nevada and South Carolina.

Then the Florida legislature dominated by Republicans decided to move the Republican primary up and since there was also going to be key ballot initiatives on that primary ballot, the Democrats got themselves moved up as well. The Party told the state Democrats that they would lose their delegates and they did it anyways, in essence calling the National Party's bluff on invalidating the delegates (as punishment the Republicans took away half the delegates). At this point, Michigan, with a Democratic legislature and Governor decided that it too would join Florida, and it was hit with the same sanctions.

Both states will go forward with the delegate selection process and petition the National Party to be seated at the convention. If the DNC sticks with its guns it will refuse. If the DNC concedes be ready for a flood of states trying this in four years.

[The Stig]

Just adding to what rosslynhoya said, in the case of a brokered convention the outcome could possibly be decided by backroom deals and promises and such.

In days of old a party would show up at the convention not knowing who their candidate would be. They'd all vote, and often times nobody would get a majority on the first ballot. So they'd talk about it, then vote again, and if nobody got a majority on that ballot they'd vote again. Sometimes it would take dozens of ballots. In a couple of cases the deadlock was only resolved when a group of delegates stormed out of the building in protest, effectively splitting the party.

I doubt it would be that dramatic this time around, but neither party wants to go into the convention with any uncertainty about who their candidate will be. Conventions these days are basically infomercials for the party's candidate, and you can't have that infomercial when you don't know who you're supposed to be heaping your praise on to.

In other news, Edwards quits: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7217838.stm

[lightbulbbandit]

A separate to answer the questions and comments about the brokered convention...

Republicans need around 1,171 votes at the RNC convention to win the nomination (I don't know what Democrats need off the top of my head). Whoever said some states are pledged and some are not is correct, however, the delegate selection process is such that the delegates are chosen on the basis of their support for the candidate, so its rare when one would try to switch anyways. Since a convention has never been even close to brokered in the modern rules era it has never mattered. Some state Democratic parties do send at-large delegates that are unpledged, but there are not nearly as many as somebody tried to intimate above, very few. Democrats do have Super Delegates who go to the convention and get to vote for and change their mind whenever they want. These Super Delegates are important national party members such as former Presidents and VP, former candidates for President and VP, members of Congress, members of the DNC, governors, etc.

In the past one candidate eventually would start getting the money and support and the remaining contenders would drop out a la Edwards in 2004. Once candidates drop out they typically release their delegates so the convention can be united. A brokered convention (again this has never happened in the era of the modern rules) occurs when no candidate gets the majority of the delegates as a plurality of the delegates does not cut it. At this point nobody in either party is clear on the rules, everybody accepts that the delegates would be bound to follow their status on the first vote, but after that it could likely be a free for all.

Even with the contentious nature of this primary the chance of a brokered convention are slim. Even if the Democrats got their Edwards would be the king-maker and make a deal to release his delegates to one of the candidates. Republicans had the potential to by an insane brokered convention when it looked like there was going to be a 5-way fight for the nomination, in which case deals would have been less likely.

Hope these two posts clear things up for everyone. I should be able to answer most questions anybody would have.

[Boz]

Jan 30, 2008 0:14:29 GMT -5 AustinHoya03 said:

The other was Romney keeping the race close -- who actually likes Mitt Romney? I just don't understand how he's doing moderately well in this race.

I could ask the same questions about Hillary...and she's winning.

A McCain/Obama race might (and I emphasize might) be the most civil, issues-oriented, constructive presidential campaign we've had in a very long time.

Which, of course, means that it won't happen.

[bubbrubbhoya]

Giuliani's campaign will live in infamy as the worst run sham ever to appear in American politics. It was plain stupid simply to ignore the first several states. Even losing those states seems an acceptable price to pay to avoid completely falling out of the national media conversation. For the last month all the airwaves have been talking about on the R side is McCain, Romney, and Huckabee. Rudy had no chance to get his word out when people actually started paying attention, and he paid the price of a huge flame-out.

[Boz]

If Rudy had worked as hard in New Hampshire as he did in Florida, he could have won it, and it would be a different race today.

New Hampshire also would have led to more money, solving another of his problems. Hard to fathom the strategy, if there was one.

For now, he can look forward to being Attorney General if his buddy McCain wins. And he can look forward to the lecture circuit if Obama or Hillary win.

[AustinHoya03]

The AP says Edwards is dropping out of the race.

www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UGB4O82&show_article=1

Does this mean "the evil corporations" have won?

[EasyEd]

Jan 30, 2008 13:30:12 GMT -5 AustinHoya03 said:

The AP says Edwards is dropping out of the race.

www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UGB4O82&show_article=1

Does this mean "the evil corporations" have won?

Are we now only one America?