- The race for president is time consuming and costly. Candidates generally plan for years prior to the actual election date, which comes on a regular 4 year cycle.
- A full 2 years prior to the election, exploratory committees are formed to test the candidate's popularity, assemble a campaign team, and raise the money to build the campaign war chest.
- The parties choose their candidates by holding elections called primaries and caucuses across the country. The first ones are the Iowa Causus and the New Hampshire primary, which take place in January of the election year, long before the November election.
- A primary is a secret ballot election. A caucus is a meeting where people publicly declare their support of a candidate by appearing at a meeting location and standing in a particular part of the room which denotes support of the candidate of their choice.
- In early February, Super Tuesday takes place. This is the most important date in the primary calendar, as multiple states hold their primary on this day. In 2008, 24 states were included on Super Tuesday representing 52% of Democratic party delegates and 41% of Republican delegates.
- As the primaries continue towards the national conventions usually held in late August or early September, the delegate counts add up for each candidate with the hope that one candidate has enough delegates to win the nomination outright. This is then confirmed at the convention where the ticket is completed by formally nominating both the presidential candidate and the vice-presidential candidate. Speeches are made in front of a national audience with the hope that they will be viewed favorably in the country and get a "bump" in the polls, energizing their base of loyal supporters to hit the campaign trail from September up to the election in November.
- The Democratic and Republican parties use different methods for determining how many delegates are awarded to, or "pledged" to vote for the various candidates at their national conventions.
- Democrats use a proportional method. Each candidate is awarded a number of delegates in proportion to their support in the state caucuses or the number of primary votes they won. For example, consider a state with 20 delegates at a democratic convention with three candidates. If candidate "A" received 70% of all caucus and primary votes, candidate "B" 20% and candidate "C" 10%, candidate "A" would get 14 delegates, candidate "B" would get 4 delegates and candidate "C" would get 2 delegates.
- In the Republican Party, each state chooses either the proportional method or a "winner-take-all" method of awarding delegates. Under the winner-take-all method, the candidate getting the most votes from a state's caucus or primary, gets all of that state's delegates at the national convention.
- The primaries are good "practice" for the party "teams" where they get to test their ability to organize, get out their voters, put out their campaign message, and react to the attacks of other candidates. Strong primary races can help a candidate who wins prepare themselves for the rough and tumble of a national campaign in the fall. However, overly bitter contests between two competitive candidates can fracture the party and lead to disunity and a failed election run.
We briefly looked at John McCain as a candidate and will continue with the other candidates next class.
As well, we looked at the electoral college system and how it works.
Read the following link for a review of the electoral college system.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepoliticalsystem/a/electcollege.htm
