ELECTION 2020: Parties Play Favorites to Allot States' Delegates
August 17, 2020
With the Democratic Convention kicking off Monday and the GOP to follow,
John A. Tures finds some staggering disparities between state populations
and their delegate portions.
Politics is a push-and-pull between the parties and the states.
Samuil_Levich/iStock/Getty Images
By John A. Tures
LaGrange College
As the Democratic and Republican parties pick their nominees for the
presidency, they'll do so under a delegate system that rewards states for
their partisan loyalty - and ignores the common principle of everyone having
an equal say.
Consider these examples: Texas, home to 28.9 million people, will have 228
pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention. New York, with
two-thirds the number of people, at 19.5 million, will have more pledged
delegates - 274. This inequality extends to less-populous states as well:
Arizona's 7.3 million residents will be represented by 67 pledged delegates,
while Maryland's 6 million people will have 96 pledged delegates.
It's similar with the Republican National Convention. Ohio, with a
population of 11.7 million, will have 82 delegates, while Pennsylvania -
home to 12.8 million people - has just 34. Oregon's 4.2 million people have
28 Republican delegates, one fewer than either of the Dakotas, which each
has well under a million residents.
Only delegates can vote on party decisions at the conventions. This
situation makes it harder for either party to attract independents, who make
up about one-third of U.S. voters. If leaders in especially blue states get
a disproportionately higher number of delegates than those in purple or red
states, they will have more power to control which Democratic Party member
is nominated, what the platform will be and what the rules will be for
awarding states delegates the next time. It's a similar story in the GOP for
particularly red states, whose leaders will get more power over Republican
decisions than people from swing states or states that tend to vote for the
Democratic Party.
Big Differences in Voting Power
I divided the pledged delegates assigned to each state by the Democratic
National Committee and the Republican National Committee by the states'
populations, and found some staggering disparities.
For the Democratic Party, the District of Columbia received 28.34 delegates
for each million residents, while Texas had 7.86 delegates per million
people. A D.C. Democrat's voice has 3.6 times the power of a Texas Democrat,
which is the widest disparity in that party.
But that's nothing compared to the situation in the Republican Party.
Wyoming received 50.1 delegates per million residents, compared to 2.66
delegates per million residents for Pennsylvania. The GOP's widest disparity
gives a Wyoming Republican a voice that is a whopping 18.9 times as powerful
as a Pennsylvania Republican.
That's far more even than the Electoral College disparity, in which Wyoming
gets four times more electoral votes per person than Florida.
Why Such a Difference?
The parties' rule books for delegate selection are quite extensive. The RNC
book is 40 pages long, while the DNC rules go on for 165 pages.
It comes down to more than just population. Democrats have a formula for
delegates that includes how the state voted in the last three presidential
elections, the state's number of Electoral College votes and when the state
holds its primary.
The Republican system gives each state three delegates per congressional
district, 10 at-large delegates, and three more delegate spots - to be taken
by party leaders from that state. The GOP also gives states "bonus"
delegates if they voted for the Republican nominee in the previous
presidential election, and if they have Republican governors and U.S.
senators, and if there are Republican majorities in state legislatures and
U.S. House of Representatives delegations.
Both of these systems, in different ways, reward states where the party is
strong, at the expense of party members in states that are more evenly
divided or could be stronger.
If your state votes solidly blue or bright red, you'll have more power over
that national party. Perhaps that's why parties are becoming more extreme;
the delegate allocations mean the Democratic Party is dominated by the most
liberal states, while conservative states own the Republican Party. That
leaves even less of a voice for states that are ideologically moderate,
hurting party outreach efforts.
Effects on the Public
Of course, the political parties can argue that they are private groups who
can determine their own governance however they wish. But that power is not
absolute.
In the early 20th century, the Texas Democratic Party sought to exclude
blacks from voting in its primaries. A series of Supreme Court decisions
over two decades culminated in a 1944 ruling declaring that state laws
establishing party primaries made the Texas primary more than just a
function of a private organization. Instead, those laws made the party's
primary a key component of the electoral process, and therefore the party
could not exclude blacks from participating.
Beyond being unequal, these systems hurt parties' ability to reach
moderates. When New Jersey Democrats get more delegates than Georgians,
despite having a smaller population, the party is less likely to select
candidates who appeal beyond the die-hard faithful, who are more likely to
be found among New Jersey's delegates. It's the same for Republicans, where
the Alaska GOP has more than 10 times the delegates, proportionally
speaking, as California's GOP.
A Fairer Future?
There may be improvement on the horizon: Democrats are debating their
delegate system for the 2024 primary. They are considering whether to
continue limiting the power of superdelegates, determining what should
happen to the delegates of candidates who drop out and encouraging diversity
among party leaders.
And GOP state conventions like the one this year in Texas are having a
conflict over who will represent the party at the national convention and in
the Electoral College. The question specifically is about whether
rank-and-file party members will dominate, or whether the process will be
opened up more to independents, libertarians and other nonmembers.
So long as their most loyally partisan states have such disproportionate
influence over candidate choices, party platforms and even the rules for
delegate allocation, neither party will be at its best for reaching swing
states or independent voters.The Conversation
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons
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