Party Rules and Equitable Representation in U.S. Presidential Nominating Contests

Abstract

Party rules for determining allocation of delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions once again drew criticism in 2016. Analyses of the effects of various rules indicate that the inclusion of party leader and elected official delegates (“superdelegates”) within the Democratic Party and use of winner-take-all primary elections by Republicans bias the representativeness of states’ delegations to national conventions; neither the choice of primary election or caucuses nor of open or closed events affect representativeness. The choice of primary election or caucuses did affect vote percentages of candidates, but the choice of open or closed events had no effect on candidates’ vote percentages in recent nominating contests. The basic conclusion is that the party rules that created biased, unrepresentative state delegations to national conventions and that benefited certain candidates in the 1980s continue to do so in the 21st century.

Lessons from the Use of Ranked Choice Voting in American Presidential Primaries

“…As a result, Trump did not need to break out of his proverbial ceiling to rack up delegates and instead could let his base carry him, winning eight of the last 11 winner-take-all primaries (King, 2018). Conversely, RCV may encourage candidates to appeal to voters other than their base by incentivizing candidates to compete for first and later choice votes to attain majority support.…”

A Rigged Game? How Candidate, Partisan, and Electoral Factors Shape Elite Support for the Party Nomination Process

“…We believe delegates given the opportunity to meaningfully participate in their state's contest should be more likely to support the nomination process and nominee. Turnout in primaries is much higher than in caucuses (Jewitt, 2019) and whether a state chooses to utilize a primary or caucus has the potential to affect how representative each state's delegation to the national convention is (King, 2018). Therefore, we would expect delegates from states that hold primaries, as opposed to caucuses, to feel more warmly toward the nomination system and the nominee that it produces.…”