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February 29, 2008
Texan tales
Kevin Connolly, in his BBC News Online article previewing the Texas Primary, states:
"The gap between them is small, and the Democrats' system of proportional representation in primaries produces tight outcomes, not clear ones."
The point about the proportional system used is
that if there is a close race between the candidates this will be reflected in the tight outcome (in terms of delegate numbers). The same system would produce a clear outcome if one candidate was sufficiently ahead of the other. It merely reflects the views of the voters.
It might be helpful for him and other journalists to make this point, rather than always seemingly denigrate the system for not producing decisive victories. For unless the journalists know that Democrats are clamouring for a return to 'winner takes all' primaries (and I have seen no evidence of that so far, having studied media coverage and blogs intensely), might it be that actually Democrat voters prefer to see their votes count rather than 35%-49% regularly being wasted in each primary?
Posted by malcolmclark on February 29, 2008
Comments
Because it is proportional at the level of the (State Senate) district, the proportionality of the result isn't always as good as one might like. If, as many of the smaller districts do, a district has 4 delegates to award in the primary, when there are 2 candidates it requires the 'winner' to win by a 25% margin in order to get more delegates than the loser. On the other hand, where a district has 5 (or indeed any odd number of) delegates, as some do, the 'winner' need only win by a single vote to get more delegates than the loser
Posted by: Jono at February 29, 2008 02:10 PM
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