Abstract
We describe the delegate selection process for the Democratic presidential caucuses, focusing on the 2020 Iowa and Nevada elections. These caucuses use procedures that are significantly different mathematically from the primary elections discussed in Chap. 2.
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Notes
- 1.
As described in Chap. 2, the WY Democratic Party (along with three other state parties) used ranked choice voting for its caucuses, which was an innovation in delegate apportionment. However, the election process itself in Wyoming functioned like a standard primary.
- 2.
Party documents from 2008 clearly describe the use of HAM\(^*\).
- 3.
Private conversation with county party leaders.
- 4.
Private conversation.
- 5.
Historically, most caucuses have not used secret ballots.
- 6.
Votes for viable candidates are locked in and cannot be eliminated or changed, even if the individuals leave the caucus at this point.
- 7.
The IA rules allow for voters to vote for the category uncommitted. Thus, strangely enough, “uncommitted” behaves like an actual candidate and can receive SDEs. In the 2020 caucus, uncommitted actually received more SDEs than known candidates such as Michael Bloomberg and Tulsi Gabbard. If we discounted the uncommitted votes, the apportionment in a primary would have been (2, 13, 1, 14, 11). The effect of keeping uncommitted votes is to transfer Klobuchar’s single delegate to Sanders.
References
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Jones, M.A., McCune, D., Wilson, J.M. (2023). The Iowa and Nevada Democratic Caucuses. In: Delegate Apportionment in the US Presidential Primaries. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24954-9_3
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