[Music]
even for hardened american voters the
process of selecting a candidate
to run for president can seem convoluted
confusing this is ridiculous this whole
process
has been screwed up and sometimes just
plain weird
everybody who is in favor of bernie
sanders please raise your hand
[Music]
here's what you need to know to make
sense of it
every four years presidential candidates
travel the length and breadth of the
country
in pursuit of their party's nomination
the support they get in each state or
territory translates to delegates
who attend the national convention in
the summer where the party's choice for
president
is announced those state contests take
one of two broad forms
primaries work like regular elections in
the sense that primary voters
cast their votes in ballot boxes and
then the totals added up to see who's
won
caucuses are essentially public votes
rather than private ones
what happens during a caucus is that
there are meetings statewide in places
like town halls and school gyms
and the caucus goers gather in different
groups to support the candidate
that they like caucuses can get
particularly confusing
at some voters can switch from one group
to another during the course of the
event
until the delegates are eventually
allocated in proportion to each
candidate's final tally
in 2016 the democratic party held 14
state caucuses
as part of its nominating procedure in
2020 just three
caucuses are falling out of fashion in
part because they're so time consuming
for caucus goers
but also because they're really
complicated for state parties to
administer
what happened in iowa the smartphone app
did not work as promised the chaos of
the iowa caucuses this year
may prove to be the death knell for this
way of picking candidates
that's the thing about this whole
process the rules can change from year
to year
from state to state and from party to
party
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even just the question of who's allowed
to vote draws a bewildering array of
answers
the important thing about who votes in
primaries is that they tend to be
more ideological and more politically
engaged than the electorate as a whole
that means that the candidates running
in primaries tend to have to play to
their base and then as soon as the
primary is over they have to try and
tack back
towards the center over the years
the primary calendar has regularly
shifted in part
because states that vote early can hold
more sway
this is the cbs evening news dan rather
reported
the democratic contest is still wide
open we're going to give it everything
we have as we have in every single state
and caucus in the country
but it may not be that simple
in the 1988 democratic primary a group
of southern states banded together
and agreed to hold their primaries on
the same day
super tuesday was their effort to
nominate the kind of moderate democrat
southerners tend to vote for the primary
voting day political
pundits have been talking about for
months finally arrived today
thanks paul the inventors of super
tuesday in the democratic party
wanted to steer the nomination to a
southern moderate or at least a moderate
from somewhere and keep down democratic
voter defections to the republicans in
november
in 2020 california became the latest and
most delegate rich state
to vote early
more than a third of the delegates up
for grabs in the democratic primary
are now allocated on super tuesday
after super tuesday the field almost
always narrows
we are suspending our campaign estate
polls continue into the spring or summer
the primary process culminates at the
party convention
where delegates pledged to each
candidate formally cast their vote
i proudly cast 163 votes
for the first woman president
of the united states of america
hillary clinton
usually this is political theater the
front-runner already guaranteed the
support of a majority of delegates
but very occasionally in a close race
the convention can become a real contest
if candidates stay in the race right up
until the bitter end in july
that makes it likelier that one
candidate can lead in the primary
without ever having won a majority of
votes
[Music]
and if that candidate fails to win a
majority voting continues
until they or someone else can at this
point all bets are off
because after the first ballot delegates
no longer have to vote
for the candidate they were pledged to
support
the horse trading that follows might
even oust the front runner
in 2020 this is how a contested
convention
could in theory prevent bernie sanders
or joe
biden from winning the democratic
party's nomination
there's a scenario where bernie sanders
is in front but doesn't quite manage to
win a majority of delegates
in that case i think he would be the
nominee anyway it would simply be too
difficult
for the convention in milwaukee to take
the nomination away from a front-runner
i humbly accept your nomination
i accept your nomination once the
nominee is formally revealed
there's just one small matter remaining
reporting for duty
winning the general election
[Applause]
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