The Math of the California Democratic Primary of 2020
California has a progressive proportional Democratic primary on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. However, mail ballots can be submitted starting Feb. 3, which is the same date as the first February Iowa caucus. This is extra encouragement for candidates to visit California from the start of primary season.
California also has an Open Primary, where all candidates run against each other for State and Congressional Offices. If anyone gets over 50% in the primary, they win the office. Otherwise, there is a runoff in November of only the top two. So it is very important for California voters to turn out for the Primary.
The Democratic primary is open to registered Democrats, and to those without a party registration. The Republican primary is only open to registered Republicans.
California has the largest state population, about 12% of the US population, and 53 House districts and two Democratic Senators. It also has a very Democratic House delegation with 46 Democrats and 7 Republicans.
California gets 495 delegates to the Democratic convention. Of these, 416 are pledged delegates which vote on the first ballot. The remaining 79 are superdelegates, which can vote on subsequent ballots. My source for this is www.thegreenpapers.com/G20/CA
Of the 416 pledged delegates, 272 are awarded proportionately at the district level. 90 are statewide or called at-large, and are awarded proportionately to the state vote. These make up 362 of the pledged delegates. There are another 54 pledged PLEO party leaders and elected officials, making up the 416 pledged delegates.
The 79 unpledged PLEO superdelegates are composed of 30 DNC members, our 46 Democratic Representatives, our two Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein and Kamala D. Harris, and our Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom. So 49 of the superdelegates have been popularly elected against Republicans, not just Democrats.
At the district level, districts get 4 or 5 delegates, and rarely, 3 or 6 delegates, depending on how Democratic they are. There is a 5 step sequence to apportion delegates from a district’s outcome.
- Exclude candidates with less than 15% of the district vote.
- Recalculate the remaining candidates’ percentages adding up to 100%.
- Multiply by 3, 4, 5, or 6 delegates.
- First, keep only the whole number part of the result in allocating delegates.
- The remainder of the delegates go to the highest fractional remainders.
As an example, lets take the latest Hill-HarrisX poll and apply it to a district of 5 delegates. Here, Joe Biden gets 35%, and Sanders gets 16%. Nobody else gets over 15%, and their votes get tossed out of the district. To simplify the math, we make Sanders 15% for a while. The 35% + 15% = 50% now is scaled up to 100%, by giving Biden 35/50 = 0.70, and Sanders gets 15/50 = 0.30. Multiplying these by the 5 delegates in my CA 45th district gives 3.5 for Biden and 1.5 for Sanders. Just keeping the whole number gives 3 for Biden and 1 for Sanders. They are tied at 0.5 for the fraction, but remember Sanders was actually 16% at the start, so he gets the higher fraction, and the remaining delegate. This gives Biden 3, and Sanders 2. This is not a great outcome since the real ratio was 35/16 = 2.19, not 3/2 = 1.50. The other way to say it is that Biden gets 60% of the district’s delegates, and Sanders gets 40%, instead of the roughly 70%-30% split. Try splitting a pizza into 5 pieces, and it is always a multiple of 20%. The local coastal 48th district also gets 5 delegates.
The rules are in essence a round off procedure to the nearest slices of the pizza cut into 5 sections. When there is 0.70+, it rounds up to 0.80, rather than further down to 0.60. When there is 0.70-, it rounds down to 0.60, which is closer than 0.80. Similarly for the 0.30- which rounds down to 0.20, and 0.30+, which rounds up to 0.40.
The true disenfranchised in the example above are the 49% of voters who voted for candidates with less than 15%, or about 1/6 of the vote.
The same proportional math occurs at the State level, splitting many more at-large delegates, but again after dropping those with less than 15% statewide.
If nobody gets above 15%, well, you are not going to win the general election. But then you subtract 10% from the highest, and split between all of those. Like, a maximum 14% means you include all greater than 4%.
For comparison, the Republican primary has 3 delegates for each district, and it is winner-take-all. That is also true for statewide delegates at-large. Trump will soon accrue 100% of the Republican delegates.
