Archives
Questions & Answers
James A. Gardner, vice dean for academic affairs, and Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad Professor of Civil Justice in the UB Law School, is an authority on election law and constitutional law. He is completing a book, “What Are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Law and Politics,” scheduled to be published by the University of Chicago Press later this year.
We keep hearing about superdelegates playing a big role in the Democratic presidential race. For those newborn political junkies out there, how are superdelegates different from regular delegates and why do they matter so much this year?
For much of our history, presidential candidates were selected by party insiders at a caucus or convention. Rank-and-file party members had no real involvement. During the 20th century, a movement arose to give rank-and-file voters more of a say in how nominees are selected. This led to the present-day system of direct primaries, in which all members of a political party are invited to vote for the candidate they prefer as the party’s nominee. The outcome of a primary election in any given state determines which candidate will be supported by that state’s delegates to the national party convention. These delegates are “pledged” in the sense that they agree to support the candidate who wins their state’s primary election. The Democrats, however, also have created a class of “superdelegates.” These delegates are a throwback to the old system. They are party insiders who go to the national convention to help decide the party’s nominee. But unlike pledged delegates, superdelegates are free to make up their own minds about whom to support. There are about 4,000 total delegates to the Democratic convention, and about 800 of them are superdelegates. The superdelegates may make a difference this year because the race between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton is so close. After all the voting is done, if neither candidate has a commanding lead in pledged delegates, votes of the superdelegates could decide which of the two becomes the Democratic candidate.
Who are they and who tells them which candidate to vote for?
The superdelegates are a collection of Democratic Party insiders and elected officials. For example, Gov. Eliot Spitzer is a superdelegate. So is Bill Clinton. So are dozens of Democratic senators and congressmen. Technically, no one tells a superdelegate how to vote. However, many of the superdelegates may have political commitments or owe political debts that cause them to favor one candidate or another.
If Obama beats Clinton in the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4, will the superdelegates return to mere mortal status and become everyday delegates again?
If one candidate runs up an unbeatable lead among pledged delegates (as has already happened with John McCain on the Republican side), the superdelegates are free to vote however they like. But their votes at that point would not be able to swing the nomination.
When was the last time superdelegates have decided the fate of a convention?
In 1984, during a close race for the Democratic nomination between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale, superdelegates played a role in swinging the nomination to Mondale. Mondale had been Jimmy Carter’s vice president.
Can their votes be swayed, either by people in power or voters who want to lobby for a particular candidate? Should I be contacting my local superdelegate?
The answer is almost surely “yes.” The interesting question is, who exactly has that kind of influence? Because many of the superdelegates are sitting officials who need party support for their re-election campaigns, superdelegates may be inclined to favor candidates who can help them in return. Mostly that means people who control money, and party officials generally control a good chunk of it. On the other hand, officials also need votes to get elected, so it’s possible that a state’s voters have some influence over the decisions of superdelegates from their state.
Do political experts see the superdelegates as an inherently democratic feature of the election system or something that encourages the old behind-the-scenes smoke-filled-room concept of who gets the nomination?
If by “democratic” one means solely the formal process of direct voting, then the superdelegates are an undemocratic innovation. Their susceptibility to backroom deal-making certainly harkens back to the old system that the direct primary was meant to replace. On the other hand, superdelegates are mostly officials elected either by the voters or by the party rank and file of their states, and it is consequently no less democratic for superdelegates to choose a nominee than it is for elected representatives to make a law.
What should we watch for as the primaries wind down? And if the convention is deadlocked, what kind of superdelegate drama and adventure will unfold as the vote gets closer?
I suppose the thing to be avoided—the real public relations disaster for the Democrats—would be an unseemly bidding war at the convention for uncommitted superdelegates. Superdelegates presumably are given a role in the nomination process because of their refined political judgment and long experience in politics, not their ability to cut political deals for their own benefit.
Does the delegate process differ between Democrats and Republicans, and does that say anything about each party's approach to ruling the country?
The Republicans have created a different system designed to produce a decisive front-runner early in the process. This system reputedly was designed to prevent a repeat of the bruising 1976 convention fight between Ford and Reagan. The Democrats, on the other hand, designed their system to prevent early dominance by a weak candidate, as happened in 1988 with Michael Dukakis.