The Modern History of the Democratic Presidential Primary, 1972-2008

[brooklynite]

Larry Sabato:

Most political observers consider 1972 the beginning of the “modern era” of presidential politics. After the controversial 1968 presidential cycle, the Democrats began to reform their nomination process to make it more inclusive and transparent, and to make its results more representative of the will of the party as a whole, not just the party bosses and insiders. In this new age of mass politics, Democrats have had nine competitive presidential nomination battles (i.e. cycles without incumbents running or serious challenges to sitting incumbents), whereas Republicans have had seven. Two weeks ago, we laid out the Republican presidential nomination contests going back to the Gerald Ford-Ronald Reagan battle in 1976, with the primary or caucus or convention results for the states and territories in each cycle. This week, we review the Democrats’ history.

In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without having entered a single primary. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was the scene of mass protests and police beatings, while sharp disagreements and anger filled the air inside the convention hall. In the aftermath of that experience and the loss in November to Republican Richard Nixon, Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) chaired a commission whose purpose was to review the nomination process and to offer proposals to improve it. The commission’s report set out a number of guidelines and proposals that state parties were required or encouraged to adopt to bring more small-d democracy into the process. Among these were the implementation of anti-discrimination policies to increase the representation of women and minorities in state delegations and regulations that sought to ensure voters’ choices were better reflected in the eventual selection of national delegates. Amid the latter was a set of guidelines intended to create a more consistent system of proportionality in how a candidate’s support translated into delegate support, i.e. a firmer system of proportional representation. Proportionality was accompanied by the removal of the “unit rule,” which had enabled a majority of a state’s delegates, usually under the thumb of party leaders, to control the entire vote of a state delegation even if a large minority within that delegation had a different set of preferences.

While the Republican Party has a varied system of delegate allocation and has been more inclined to let states choose their own adventures, so to speak, today the Democratic Party universally uses proportional representation in determining how election results translate to “pledged” delegates, i.e. the number of delegates assigned to a candidate based on vote performance. Starting in 1992, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and six territorial delegations have used 15% as the proportional threshold. (An aside: It appears the Northern Marianas Islands will be making their first appearance at a Democratic national convention this July.) The McGovern-Fraser Commission had recommended proportionality prior to 1972, but it took some time for the 15% rule to spread to all states and other delegations. Some states were laggards in adopting proportionality, such as Illinois, which continued to use what was known as a “loophole primary,” where a state directly elected named delegates on the ballot separately from the “advisory” presidential preference vote statewide. But in the lead up to 1992, the 15% rule became standard: win at least 15% of the primary vote in a congressional district (or a smaller unit — New Jersey, for instance, uses its state legislative districts) and a candidate is guaranteed some share of the national convention delegates assigned to that district (at least 75% of a state’s base delegation has to be assigned to districts); allocation of at-large national delegates is determined by the statewide vote.

Now, this proportionality works differently in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Primary systems are straight-forward, with the result broken down by district and statewide to determine allocation. For caucus systems, there are differences depending on the state. Some, like Hawaii, use a presidential preference vote at the precinct caucus level to directly allocate pledged national delegates based on the result. Others, like Iowa, use proportionality to determine the number of delegates elected to the next phase of the national delegate selection process. In Iowa’s case, precinct caucuses elect delegates to county conventions, which elect delegates to congressional district conventions (where the first actual set of national delegates are determined), and then the state convention picks at-large delegates. Still, at every step of the caucus pyramid candidates must win at least 15% support to remain eligible to win delegates, lower-level or national. In the maps below, we use an asterisk to point out contest results in caucuses (and a few primaries) where national delegates were not directly allocated by the result, though winning delegates to the next round of a caucus-convention system is obviously vital for having support further along in the process.