I’m watching the American presidential election this year with great interest… as, I suspect, are a lot of other people. Since I didn’t grow up in this country, I’m still trying to puzzle through how the whole primaries/caucuses system works.
One thing that’s been mentioned over and over again is how the Democrats have switched to a limited proportional representation system: a candidate who gets at least 15% of the vote in their state gets a proportional (roughly) number of delegates. Which is fine, as far as it goes; I’m not familiar enough with the political system on the ground to say what the impact will be, but I’m generally in favour of PR-type systems.
This thing I don’t get is why people keep talking about who’s going to “win” Iowa or New Hampshire. Because it’s not winner-takes-all anymore.
I mean look, check out the numbers in the latest Zogby poll for Iowa. We’ve got four different candidates who are above the magic 15% mark, and still something like an eighth of the voters are undecided. It seems unlikely that there’s going to be a “winner” at all; rather, we should expect that the Iowa delegates are going to be split at least three ways. Or is there something about the caucus proceedings that I’m missing?