{"id":852,"date":"2008-03-03T06:45:51","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T05:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=852"},"modified":"2008-03-03T06:45:51","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T05:45:51","slug":"the-american-presidential-election-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"The American presidential election (22)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the race to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency, tomorrow is what some call Super Tuesday 2. It&#8217;s not as big as the real Super Tuesday &#8211; which was 5 February when some 22 states voted in Democratic primaries or caucuses &#8211; but four states, two of them huge, do go to the polls tomorrow and, given the closeness of the Obama\/Clinton contest, the results could be decisive. Indeed I suspect that we could see real tears from Hillary.<br \/>\nThe two big states are Texas with 228 delegates and Ohio with 161, while the two smaller ones are Rhode Island with 32 delegates and Vermont with 23.<br \/>\nNow the system for choosing presidential candidates is complicated and I&#8217;ve attempted an overview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Americanpoliticalsystem.html#Primaries\">here<\/a>. Texas is even more complicated than the typical state.<br \/>\nWhile most states allocate delegates to the Democratic convention in August proportionally based on the popular vote, and some hold caucuses where supporters must openly declare their support for a candidate, Texas does both. The Lone Star state selects its 228 Democratic delegates using a two-thirds, one-third combination of voting and caucus.<br \/>\nThose who have voted &#8211; and voting started weeks ago &#8211; using a ballot can return when the polls close tomorrow to caucus, traditionally one of the Obama campaign&#8217;s strengths. For this reason, the Clinton campaign has been handing out flyers at its Texas rallies telling supporters: &#8220;Don&#8217;t forget to vote twice.&#8221;<br \/>\nAdditionally, delegates are apportioned according to turnout in the two previous elections, votes in which African-American and urban turnout was significantly higher than that in Latino areas. So, a congressional district in a Latino border area which had a low turnout in 2004 and 2006 might offer just three delegates, while an urban, heavily African-American district such as Houston could offer as many as eight delegates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the race to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency, tomorrow is what some call Super Tuesday 2. It&#8217;s not as big as the real Super Tuesday &#8211; which was 5 February when some 22 states voted in Democratic primaries or caucuses &#8211; but four states, two of them huge, do go to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}