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Posted: February 1, 2008 6:50 PM
In Proportional Races, Democrats Set for Night of Fuzzy Math
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Did you ever think you would be pining for the easy-to-understand, good ole days of the Electoral College? No? Well, wait until Democrats vote on Tuesday.

Nearly 1600 delegates to this summer’s convention in Denver are set to be selected, but the way they are awarded — usually through a proportional system — is forcing the campaigns to employ creative strategies headed into Super Tuesday.

This topic first reared its head during the Nevada Caucuses. Although Sen. Hillary Clinton won the caucuses 51 percent to Sen. Barack Obama’s 45 percent, when the delegates were awarded, Obama came out on top with 13 delegates compared to 12 for Clinton.

At the time, Washingtonpost.com political columnist Chris Cillizza explained: “While the process of delegate apportionment is extremely complicated, it boils down to this: in the places that Clinton won, there were an even number of delegates that were split between she and Obama. In the places Obama won, there were an odd number of delegates, meaning that he often took two delegates to one for Clinton.”

The Democratic Party implemented the proportional rules following the 1988 campaign when Jesse Jackson complained of doing well in many congressional districts but not winning any delegates due to a system where all the delegates went to the winner statewide.

Most of the states voting in the Democratic contests will award a set number of delegates per Congressional District. Within each district, the delegate totals will be awarded proportionately — meaning if Clinton wins 30 percent of the vote, she gets approximately 30 percent of the delegates to the convention.

A few states will handle things a bit differently. New Jersey and Delaware also have the proportional system for awarding delegates, but the Garden State pairs up state legislature districts based on Democratic turnout in 2000 and 2004 to create their 20 districts and Delaware gives each of its three counties and the city of Wilmington a district each.

In the cases of Colorado and Alaska, state caucuses are the first step in the final naming of delegates set to come later this year. Residents will caucus for delegates that have clearly outlined their support for a candidate who will then go to a county convention, which decides delegates for the state convention, which decides the delegates that go to the national convention. The results we’ll see on Tuesday are actually projections of what will happen at those later conventions — which is essentially the same process as the Iowa caucuses.

All this means that should Obama or Clinton rack up a series of state victories Tuesday, those victories may have more public relations value than delegate firepower on the convention floor.

It also means that the campaigns have created nuanced and sophisticated strategies to target voters. The best example is California. Many of the state’s 370 delegates at stake Tuesday night will be parceled out in narrowly decided Congressional Districts.

This graphic in the Los Angeles Times shows how the California Democratic Party has assigned delegates to Congressional Districts, but some districts will have four delegates on Tuesday, others three. That is where the math comes in.

Based on the Democratic party rules, in a district with four delegates, a candidate who garners 62 percent of the vote would get two delegates (62 percent of 4 is 2.48 which you round down) In this scenario, a candidate who gets as little as 38 percent of the vote would also get two delegates.

But in a district with three delegates, a candidate who wins a bare majority of 50.1 percent of the vote would get two delegates, and a second-place finisher with 49.9 percent of the vote would get one.

“There’s some real kinky math in it,” Bill Carrick, a political consultant in California, told the LA Times. “The end result is that even if you lose in a two-candidate race, you can get an even split in delegates. And the winner can pick up the extra delegate in the odd-numbered districts.”

This has prompted the campaigns to calibrate their strategies to take advantage of and/or defend against this fact.

Former President Bill Clinton has been campaigning in Illinois in recent days, less hoping to help his wife defeat native son Obama and more trying to ensure enough of a turnout for Clinton to garner some of the 153 delegates at stake. Similarly Obama has been stumping in New York.

One basic premise underlies the candidates’ activities between now, Tuesday, and perhaps into the spring, as they try to reach the magic number: 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

“The reality is we really are in a delegate-by-delegate battle,” Guy Cecil, Clinton’s national political and field director, told The Boston Globe. “In the end, states do not nominate the candidate. Delegates do.”