Delegate Count vs. Popular Vote: What is a “Win” on Super Tuesday?
On Super Tuesday, March 3rd, the 14 states that are holding primaries constitute 40% of the US population. They’ll elect a third of the pledged delegates to the Milwaukee convention. Given the geographic and demographic range of the states — from states as different as Massachusetts and Texas — this counts as the first time in US history that we’ll have we’ll have a de facto national presidential primary.
This national primary will measure not just delegates, but the preference and will of the entire US Democratic electorate. March 3rd will measure party popular support for president in every region, and will include California and Texas, the two largest Democratic delegations. In addition to the usual state-by-state delegate count, the media should focus on how the 14 states reflect the broad, national views of the Democratic electorate by reporting the aggregate preferences across all 14 states, and continue that reporting in the subsequent 20 primaries.
Super Tuesday state results will be released as the nation’s time zones move east
to west. (All of the following times are EST.) At 7 pm we’ll start getting the results from Alabama, Vermont and Virginia; at 7:30 from Arkansas and North Carolina; at 8 Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Texas; at 9 Minnesota and Tennessee; at 10 Utah reports and the results of Colorado’s all mail-in primary will be released. And at 11 pm we’ll get the biggest prize of the national primary — the vote of the 40 million people of California.
March 3 will thus give us a clear rolling national report on the party’s preferences.
The delegate count that emerges will also tell us a great deal about the direction of the contest, i.e. whether it is realistically possible for one of the Democratic presidential candidates to get the 1991 delegate votes for a first-ballot win. If several candidates emerge from March 3 with significant delegate totals it will increase the likelihood of a second ballot.
And if there is a second ballot, Democrats who want to win in November will argue that a critical factor in assessing candidate strength should not only be delegate tallies but candidate strength across America, i.e. the number of actual votes that were cast by tens of millions of people for Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren. March 3 gives us the opportunity to compute a national popular vote as an assessment of the mood and preferences of the 2020 electorate. That is the ultimate democratic measure for the Democratic Party. And as we progress through the next 20 primaries through June, the emerging aggregate popular vote is the best guide to the path forward.
