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February 06, 2008
Superdelegates
Although I knew about the concept before, Superdelegates (much more used in the Democratic party primary system than the Republican) seem a pretty awful thing. These are 'party leader' delegates like Bill Clinton who are not chosen by the people at all and there are a TON of them, like 25% as many as elected delegates. Currently, depending on which CNN page you go by, Hillary, if you ignored the superdelegates either has a TINY lead (like 7 delegates) or is behind by a similar amount, either one given that Edwards has 26 delegates, would lead to a brokered convention. However, Hillary has a like 200-100 lead in superdelegates so is ahead by around 90 overall. Showing Hillary with a 90 delegate lead is really misleading, as it turns out the voting by the people is as close to 50-50 as it could possibly be but most people won't realize that and will think she has a small but not insignificant lead.
I strongly prefer Obama to Hillary but, even if I didn't, this system seems really bad. A person could win more than 60% of the elected delegates and still lose the primary if all the superdelegates were against him. The "Democratic" party should be ashamed of this system imho.
Posted by aarondf at February 6, 2008 01:18 PM
Comments
Yes, this is a big problem. The media should be more honest and not report superdelegates who have publicly endorsed Hillary (or Barack) in the same totals as the pledged delegates from the elections. Some outlets are better about this than others, but frankly, none of them are very good.
Here is the best site I've found for tracking superdelegates:
http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegate-list.html
Posted by: David desJardins ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/hearth/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 6, 2008 05:40 PM
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