and we're back with more campaign context ahead of super Tuesday when Texas voters will hit the polls along with voters in more than a dozen other states and American Samoa when it comes to the presidential race voters are really deciding how many party delegates the candidates will each receive those delegates then select the party nominees during a vote at the party conventions later in the summer on the Democratic side the winner needs at least 1,969 delegates out of nearly 4,000 Texas by the
way has 244 delegates up for grabs then on the Republican side whoever gets at least 1,215 delegates out of about 2400 gets the nomination and Texas has 161 GOP delegates available now here's where it gets a little bit more complex how those delegates are awarded differs between the two parties the Republican National Committee the RNC has three different systems depending on the state proportional meaning if a candidate gets 6 % of the vote they get 60% of the delegates there's also win or tak
e all that's pretty self-explanatory and also a hybrid the Democratic National Committee the DNC takes a more uniform approach when it comes to delegate allocation they just go with proportional but a candidate does need to get at least 15% of the vote to score any delegates and by now you're probably wondering who gets to be a delegate right well these people are selected by the parties they're typically party activists VIPs they can also be elect officials and what about super delegates you've
probably heard that term before right well these are delegates that automatically get seats at the convention they're not there because of the results of a primary or a caucus before 2018 Democratic superdelegates got to vote for whoever they wanted and you might remember this created an inp party Clash ahead of the 2016 Democratic Convention between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders the DNC made a change after that and now Democratic super Ates only get to vote if there's no win
ner after the first round of voting at the convention and over on the GOP side superdelegates well they haven't really been a thing since an RNC rule change in 2012
Comments