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Module 7: Lecture 4
Presidential Nomination System
Table of Contents
Section 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2
Presidential Nomination System ................................................................................................................. 2
Nomination System Video ........................................................................................................................... 2
Section 2: How it Works .................................................................................................................................. 3
National Convention .................................................................................................................................... 3
Primaries ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
Caucuses ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
Superdelegates ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Section 3: Delegate Selection .......................................................................................................................... 6
State Order .................................................................................................................................................. 6
Campaign Strategies .................................................................................................................................... 6
Why Candidates Quit ................................................................................................................................... 8
Section 4: Consequences of Reform ................................................................................................................ 9
History ......................................................................................................................................................... 9
1964 Republican Conventions ..................................................................................................................... 9
1968 Democratic Convention ...................................................................................................................... 9
Reform Era ................................................................................................................................................. 10
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Section 1: Introduction
Presidential Nomination System
• It is the system for determining Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on
the November ballot
• It is a process that occurs from January to summer every four years. In fact, it usually
takes around two years to complete (if one includes the campaigning that occurs before
the voting starting), and generally costs billions of dollars.
Having a nomination system is not odd. In fact, all political parties (globally) have to have
some system for choosing candidates. They also use a wide variety of methods:
• Sometimes the candidates are determined the by party leaders.
• Sometimes the party holds a party congress, during which all candidates are selected.
• In other cases, there is an internal nomination system that works its way through the
party bureaucracy
However, the American presidential nomination system is extremely complex for two
reasons:
• Federalism: There are not actually one Democratic Party and one Republican Party, but
at least fifty parties for each. This is because they are technically state organizations that
happen to be linked together. Therefore, the selection of a (national) candidate has to
go through all of the state parties.
• Primaries: Starting in the 1970s, the parties stopped picking their presidential candidate
through political compromise and instead had the candidates compete against each
other for votes from state to state.
Nomination System Video
View the video below to obtain a brief understanding of Primary Elections that will be
beneficial to the remainder of the course materials.
Primary Elections Explained
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Section 2: How it Works
National Convention
The key to the American presidential nomination system is that the final decision is
technically done by a national convention that each party runs during the summer of
presidential election years.
• To hold these conventions, each major party rents out an indoor stadium (like Madison
Square Garden, where there are usually rock concerts as well as professional basketball
and hockey games). The city is usually picked for some strategic reason, like if it is a
swing state.
• Each state sends a predetermined number of delegates. Besides the delegates, the
convention also includes invited political operatives, activists, celebrities, and media
figures.
• The delegates vote on who will be nominated. In each case, the candidate must have a
majority vote – otherwise there are rounds of voting until a candidate is chosen. (For
the Democrats, it used to be a two-thirds vote, to create a mechanism for southern
Democrats to veto a candidate they did not like.)
Since 1972, most delegates have been chosen by voters through one of two processes:
primaries and caucuses.
Primaries
Primary elections: These are statewide elections. Technically, voters are not selecting the
candidate but delegates who have pledged to vote for the candidate. This, for example, is
the method used in Georgia – and actually most of the states
There are also two main types of primaries:
• Closed primary: In this case, which Florida uses, only registered members of the party
can vote in that party’s primary. This means that independents cannot participate, and it
also stops people from crossing over to vote in the other party’s primary. This tends to
lead to more conservative Republican candidates and more liberal Democratic
candidates, since moderate voters are more likely to be excluded. While the more
ideological party members prefer this, it also can lead to candidates who are less likely
to be able to win a close race.
• Open primary: This system, used in Georgia, allows people to vote in whatever primary
they want. It simplifies the registration process, since then people don’t need to report
their party, and is more likely to lead to moderate candidates. However, it does open
the door for Democrats to vote in Republican primaries and vice versa, presumably to
undermine the other party.
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Caucuses
Caucuses: These are meetings of voters who are registered members of the party. This is the
process in a small number of states, most famously Iowa.
How a caucus works:
• People have to show up at a certain time. When they arrive, the join the group of
people who support their first choice for nominee.
• After some initial debate, participants vote for a candidate by a show of
hands. If a candidate does not meet a minimum percent of votes, the
supporters of that candidate have to choose another candidate.
• There is often a great deal of arguing as people try to talk others to change candidates—
which happens a lot.
• In the end, there is a final vote, which determines how many delegates each candidate
gets.
In Iowa, it is even more complicated, because the caucuses are not actually selecting the
delegates to the national party convention. They are selecting candidates to the state party
convention, which in turn selects the candidates to the national convention. This is the reason
why Iowa traditionally begins so early – its process is so long. It was only in 1976 that its
cumbersome system led it (basically by accident) to become one of the two most important
states in the nomination process.
Superdelegates
Another category of delegates is the superdelegate:
• These are politicians who become delegates because of their positions in the party.
They are also unpledged, meaning that they can vote for whichever candidate they
want.
• Superdelegates are used especially by the Democratic Party, though the Republicans
also have them to a lesser extent. For the Democratic Party, around 15% of delegates
are superdelegates
During the 2016 Democratic nomination campaign, the Sanders campaign claimed that the
superdelegate system was rigged, and that Hillary Clinton won the nomination unfairly because
of ithem. (Mathematically, that was not true.) In response, the Democratic Party changed the
superdelegate system starting in 2020. Superdelegates can now vote for a nominee only if:
• It is a contested convention. If no candidate won the first round, then superdelegates
could vote in subsequent rounds, during which pledged delegates could also change
their votes.
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• If a candidate had already gotten enough votes by the pledged delegates to win the
election, then the superdelegates could also vote – if their vote did not matter.
The main reason why parties have superdelegates is that they are attempting to control the
nomination process. In 1972, 1976, and 1980, the Democratic leadership got nominees that
they didn’t like – and in 1972 and 1980 those candidates were beaten by landslides.
For the Democrats, having democratized the nomination process, they discovered that they
lost control over what candidate would be the nominee. They therefore began trying to regain
the ability to pick candidates who they believe would have the greatest chance of winning the
general election.
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Section 3: Delegate Selection
State Order
The delegate selection process does not occur in one step. Instead, it follows a process from
state to state
• First, Iowa (caucus)
• Second, New Hampshire (primary)
• Then, South Carolina (primary)
• Super Tuesday: Primaries and caucuses in around half the states across the country
Iowa and New Hampshire going first was a historic accident.
• As mentioned above, Iowa began going first because its process is so long. (Ironically, in
terms of impact on actual delegates, it is arguably the least important state, since they
aren’t even selecting delegates at the time.)
• New Hampshire was traditionally the first primary. However, before the 1970s,
primaries didn’t matter very much. The delegates selected by primary were unpledged,
so they could easily change their vote at the convention. New Hampshire had been the
first primary because most states didn’t even have primaries before 1972.
However, the political impact of these early states is huge. Both are small, rural, and very
white states. Both are also relatively conservative. This means that winning early delegates in
Iowa and New Hampshire is much easier for an outsider candidate without money or a strong
organization than, for example, California, New York, Texas, or Florida.
Campaign Strategies
This process led to three types of candidate strategies:
1. Frontrunner (Hillary Clinton in 2016 is a classic example):
a. Produce huge national organization prepare for long fight
b. Get all the superdelegates and money squeeze others out
c. Try to kill off competition early
2. Dark Horse (Sanders in 2016):
a. Put all resources in Iowa and New Hampshire
b. Try to get early wins
c. Use to early victories to build momentum. This includes raising lots of money
and quickly building an organization after the early victories.
3. Issue or protest candidate (Jesse Jackson in 1984):
a. Not actually trying to win.
b. Using nomination process to promote oneself or a particular cause.
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The dark horse strategy was invented by Jimmy Carter in 1976. Before Carter, most
candidates assumed that New Hampshire was the beginning of the process, since the Iowa
caucus actually mattered so little. So, Carter (who was basically unknown at the time) put all of
his resources into Iowa. He spent most of his time traveling the state and meeting all the local
politicians and Democratic voters. Carter won the Iowa caucus by a landslide. It was so
unexpected, he had to announce his victory in Washington, since nobody was paying attention
to Iowa. He then used this as momentum to win the nomination and presidency.
Since then, most candidates try to imitate Carter. For that reason, frontrunners take for
granted that Iowa and New Hampshire will be closely contested. So, their main strategy is to try
to kill off the dark horse candidates after New Hampshire.
• South Carolina comes soon after New Hampshire, and it has historically voted down
dark horse candidates of both parties. In 2000, George W. Bush stopped a challenge by
John McCain in South Carolina. In 2020, South Carolina was where the Democrats
began consolidating behind Joe Biden, ending Bernie Sanders’s serious challenge to win
the nomination.
• If the dark horse candidate survives South Carolina, then they then have to compete in
Super Tuesday
o Often half the states have primaries or caucuses on Super Tuesday. This includes
many southern states, but also states throughout the country
o It also includes large states with very expensive media markets
o Super Tuesday often overwhelms dark horse candidates, who have not had the
time to raise enough money and build a deep campaign organization
As mentioned above, there is a third type of nomination candidate, who is often called an
Issue or Protest Candidate. They are not actually trying to win the nomination. Instead, they are
often simply trying to call attention to issues or promote an ideological group within the party.
In some cases, the candidate is simply using the run to build a national reputation.
The classic issue candidate was Jesse Jackson (1984):
• He was a former Civil Rights Movement leader, one of the younger members of Martin
Luther King’s inner circle
• He had no chance of winning
• Instead, he ran an inexpensive campaign, and was a master at pulled in media attention
• His focus was to build what he called the “Rainbow Coalition”. (This was before the
LGBTQ+ movement gained traction. Jackson was attempting to pull together a range of
ethnic groups.)
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Why Candidates Quit
The deciding factor for candidates is not so much votes as it is money.
• Candidate who do poorly in a state gets fewer donations.
• With less money, they cannot compete well in next state.
• This produces a downward spiral. Eventually, they run out of money and then quit.
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Section 4: Consequences of Reform
History
It’s important to know that this presidential nomination system is a relatively recent
invention – and it has never worked very well.
• Before 1972, most of the work for selecting a presidential nominee was conducted at
the national conventions. There was rarely a predetermined nominee (unless the party
was led by a sitting president seeking reelection), and so the convention was a long,
drawn out negotiation with many votes on who should be nominated.
• During the Reform Era, starting in 1972, the nominee was determined by votes before
the convention. The convention then became nothing more than a television event.
In fact, the primary reason for reforming the nomination system was television. Once
television cameras were brought into the national party conventions and began covering them
live, the image presented to the public often became damaging to the parties.
1964 Republican Conventions
The first critical step in this direction was the 1964 Republican National Convention:
• The party establishment wanted moderate Nelson Rockefeller, but Barry Goldwater, a
new type of conservative from Arizona beat Rockefeller.
• Rockefeller spoke on national television calling Goldwater an extremist. The Goldwater
delegates got so angry that they booed Rockefeller until he stopped speaking.
1968 Democratic Convention
The critical convention was the Democratic Convention in 1968:
• In the primary elections, anti-Vietnam War candidates Bobby Kennedy and Gene
McCarthy got the most votes. (Kennedy won the California primary right before getting
murdered, making McCarthy the only major anti-war candidate.)
• But the main candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, refused to run in any
primaries. He then won the nomination at the convention.
Violence broke out both in the convention hall and in the streets of Chicago, as shown in
the following clip: A look back at the 1968 Democratic Convention
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Reform Era
While the reform system solved one problem, it caused others. Most dangerously for the
parties, they largely lost control over who would be nominated. For a while, this mostly hurt the
Democrats:
• In 1972, very liberal senator George McGovern won the Democratic nomination, and
then was beaten badly by Richard Nixon
• In 1976, Jimmy Carter (who many Democratic Party leaders hated) won the nomination
and presidency
• In 1988, an election many believed the Democrats could win, Michael Dukakis ran a
terrible campaign and was beaten by George H. W. Bush.
Probably the best example is Donald Trump in 2016. The Republican leadership did not take
Trump seriously, but he figured out how to work the nomination system in his favor. Against
severe opposition by the party leadership, Trump won the nomination and presidency,
undermining the old guard’s control over the party.