Both of the major parties -- and we're talking about the United States here --
hold a national convention during the summer before the actual general election.
So the Republicans will hold their Republican national convention,
and the Democrats will hold their Democratic national convention.
And it's there that they will choose their official candidates
that will run against each other in the general election.
And a national convention for one of the parties
will look something like this.
This is the Democratic national convention in 2008.
You have all the delegates over here,
and everyone's all excited and they start to cheer lead for their party.
and for their candidate the republican national convetion
looks very similar
And although there's a lot of energy here there actually isn't a lot of suspense
Going into the convention we usually know already who
the candidates for each of the parties are going to be
And that's because each of the states have their own selection process
for picking a candidate
As we get the results from we know how many delegates
they're going to send to the convention
and who(m) they're going to vote for
But there's two ways they can select those candidates
or those delegates at the national convention
They could either run a caucus
or they could run a primary
And I'll start with primary because that's a little more intuitive
It's kind of like just a election that is based on party
for whom do you want to be your nominee
at coming out of the convention
So for any given state they will have both a
Democratic primary and a Republican primary
And on the democratic primary let's say candidate A gets
40% of the votes on that election
Candidate B gets 30% of the votes
and let's say candidate C gets another 30%
What will happen is is that state's delegates on the democratic side
So let's say that that state just for convenience
Let's say they have ten delegates
On the democratic side, that means that these delegates
will go on to the national convention and represent
the different candidates proportionally
So out of these ten delegates 40% or four will represent candidate A
Three will represent candidate B
and three will represent candidate C when they go to the national convention
On the republican side it's a little bit more nuance
you could have similar results
A gets 40%
B gets 30% and C gets - now let me do different letters
so these aren't the same candidates
Let me do candidates D, E and F
So you could have candidate D, candidate E, candidate F
and let's say - let me do the percentages slightly different
for fun
So let's he has 45% over here
let's say he has 25% over here
and then let's say you have candidate F with 30% over here
On the republican side it depends from state to state
Some states will do it similar to the democrats
where the delegates represent the candidates proportion to
the votes they have
While some other states have it 'winner take all'
And so for example in a winner take all state, candidate D
will get all 10 delegates
And the reason why states do that is it's a stronger incentive for candidates
to show up to that state if they feel like their in the running
Because if they throw enough money and marketing in that state, that's a big deal to take all of the
votes.
On the other hand, if you're a smaller candidate and you don't think you
can take it all, it may be a disincentive for you to even show up to that state
and you might want to focus on the states where you can actually get
some delegates
So that's all the primary is.
It's really a- you can kind of view it as an election
That sell separately on the democratic side, separately on the republican side
an those are used by the state's parties to decide which delegates go to the national party
and whom those delegates are going to vote for
A caucus, the point is the same thing
To figure out who are your delegates that are going to go
to the national convention and whom are they going to vote for
but the process is a little bit different
In a caucus, you essentially have- people get together
in these events, these caucuses in different in these events,
these caucuses in different precincts,
and the most famous of these are the Iowa caucuses
So in small precincts you'll have groups of fifty to a hundred
people get together, and the different parties will have different
ways of going about it
but they have processes in place where people try to market for different candidates
they campaign for different candidates
and sometimes they'll have a cut-off that if one of the candidates
at one of the precincts don't get at least 15% of the votes
then those people who supported that candidate will have to give their
support to another candidate they make sure that all of the delegates
represent at least a certain threshold of voters but there's different
processes in place
But the bottom line is that at each of these pre-syncs they'll select delegates
and then those delegates will then go on to the county conventions
and then those delegates at the county conventions now these are
representing more people
will then pick delegates to the district conventions and then at the
district conventions they will pick candidates to the state conventions
and at the state conventions they will pick the final candidates
that will go on to the national convention
No the two most famous caucuses or primaries are the Iowa caucus
which takes place in Iowa
You have the New Hampshire primary which of course takes place in New Hampshire
And they are important not because they pick so many delegates that those delegates
will tip the balance necessarily
These are small states they don't have that many delegates compared to
California or Texas or Florida
but what's important about both of them is that they happen
very very very early on in the primary season
and because they happen early on in the primary season
the candidates that come off with the lead here it is easier for them to raise money
they say 'Oh I want to give my money to a winner, you know I don't want to give
it to a candidate who is just going to blow it and lose the money and lose the election
regardless'
So it gives you that. It also gives a big signal for who's a front runner because
there tends to be dynamics for whoever wins or comes in in second place in the Iowa or
New Hampshire primary that those are the people that everyone should pay attention to
they get more fundraising it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy
More people all of a sudden take a serious look at them
Now the Iowa caucus just to be clear
the primaries all happen in one day and you get the one, the polling results
when people exit the polls and you also get the final result pretty quickly
This caucus process actually takes place over many many months
five months in the case of the Iowa caucus
And the result, the thing that the press focuses on is not this final result,
of who are the actual delegates that go to the national convention
The thing that the press focuses on are the precinct convention where people get together
Because coming out of those precinct conventions the state parties get the information
on how many candidates each delegates won going into now the county convention
And this, this is the indicator that the press and the media and everyone else likes to use
to see who's a front runner in that specific party's primary
And the reason why the Iowa caucus in particular gets so much importance is
because it is the first caucus
These results come out before anything else
The New Hampshire primary this is the first time that you have direct voting for candidates
so you're getting I guess getting a more direct number or your not having it
distorted or maybe cleaned up depending on how you view it
by all of the different processes that might take place within the precinct convention