Could tight election races in both parties lead to brokered conventions?

[babylonsister]

Could tight election races in both parties lead to brokered conventions?
By Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008


WASHINGTON — What happens if the primaries don't produce presidential nominees for one party — or the other — or both?

For Democrats, the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama race could continue through the primaries. If John Edwards stays in, he could win enough delegates to prevent either Clinton or Obama from securing enough convention delegates to win the nomination.

On the Republican side, the once implausible seems possible. Three candidates — Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Mitt Romney — each have won important early contests. All show strength among disparate party constituencies. A fourth candidate, Rudy Giuliani, hasn't seriously competed in any primaries yet. It's possible that the four could split primary wins — and delegates — all the way through the primary season, leaving none with a majority of delegates.

Suddenly those summer conventions — ridiculed in recent years as four-day parties with scripted outcomes — could matter: Delegates might have to stay awake and sober long enough to choose a nominee.

"It's not so amazing," said R. Craig Sautter, who's written three books on presidential nominating conventions. "Any time you have more than two candidates who are strong, you have the possibility of nobody going into the convention with enough delegates."

It hasn't been that way for a long while.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/25221.html

[robbedvoter]

1. GOP - possible. Dems - not so much

If Mitt wins Florida, it will be 3,2,1 races/candidates.

[Demeter]

2. OH, I DO Hope So!

It would serve the slick corporate political operators right to have their neat little Potempkin conventions blown sky-high, and all the disenfranchised carrying torches and pitchforks....

[MiniMe]

3. "strong Candidates" and GOP don't belong in that sentence