Transcript Nominations
Nominations
AP Government
Nomination
A nomination is a party's official endorsement of a candidate for office
Success is generally based upon having money, media attention, and
momentum
The manipulation of these elements is known as campaign strategy
The goal of the nomination process is to win the support of a majority of the
delegates at the national party convention
Convention
The convention does not provide the same type of drama it once did
Convention drama revolved around the open voting of delegates as they tried
to select presidential and vice presidential candidates
In today’s primary races, by the time we get to the convention it is extremely
apparent who the candidate for president and vice president will be
The national convention does help to setup the party platform
This is the party's statement of its goals and policies for the next four years
Caucuses
From January through June on an election year caucuses and primaries
take place in each state in order to begin the process of determining who
the nominees for office will be
In a caucus system, voters must show up at a fixed time and attend an open
meeting where citizens openly discuss their candidate preferences
The meetings generally last between one or two hours
Because of such a time commitment, caucuses have lower turnout then primaries
Iowa has the first caucus of an election season and helps set a standard for
those who get media attention
Primaries
There are two main types of primaries:
Open primaries allow anyone, regardless of party, to take part in the vote for a
candidate
A closed primary restricts voting to the party that you are registered for
Other types of primaries include:
Direct primaries are preliminary election in which a party's candidates for public
office are nominated by direct vote of the people.
Invisible primaries are the first phase of the presidential nomination process,
where candidates attempt to gain front-runner status and raise money
Delegates
Delegates can be awarded through a winner take all system (a system in
which if you win the election, you get all delegates) or through proportional
representation (meaning that if you got half of the votes, you get half of
the delegates.
How delegates are awarded varies based upon party and the state in which the
election took place.
Elimination
Most of the delegates for the Democratic and Republican national
conventions are selected in primaries and caucuses
In today's system 2/3rds of all delegates are chosen within 6 weeks of the Iowa
caucus.
One major event, in which many states hold primaries and caucuses at the same time,
is called Super Tuesday
This is a result of frontloading, or the process of moving up a primary in the
calendar so as to be more influential
The amount of delegates and the proportion in which they are appropriated differs
based upon party and state.
The primaries work as an elimination system in order to pare down the nominees
down to one candidate for the republican and democratic party
Issues
Criticisms of the primary system:
Iowa and New Hampshire get a disproportionate advantage in setting the
momentum for candidates
Prominent politicians find it difficult to take time out from their duties to run
Money plays too big a role in the caucuses and primaries
Participation in primaries and caucuses ins low unrepresentative
The system gives too much power to the media
Fixing the weaknesses?
Proposals to deal with the issues with the primary system include:
Holding a national primary
This would enlist all voters to vote in a primary election at the same
This could theoretically cut down on the large amount of candidate travel and would stop early
voting states from controlling the agenda of the candidates
Holding regional primaries
This would allow for each time zone or region of the country to vote at the same time