As of Sunday evening, with Maine having 80 percent of their primaries reporting in, Bernie Sanders has won the primaries in Maine and has gained 14 delegates. That would put the total number of delegates that Sanders has at 498 and Hillary Clinton with 1,129. However, why is there such a large difference between these numbers? For anyone living within the vicinity of a college campus or with anyone say 35 years or younger, they have most certainly have heard "Feel the Bern" along with several expounding lines about Sander's revolutionary politics. Why is it that such a large, grassroots movement is having such a decidedly clear lack of representation in the polls? The answer: superdelegates.
I myself was puzzled by this term; Google will separate out the pledged delegates and the superdelegates for me, but I didn't know what this term meant, and for many like me who are going to be first-time voters this election, they might not know what this term is either. So I am going to break it down for you.
Superdelegates refers to a group of primary delegates that do not have to vote as indicated by the polls, but rather get to cast their vote for the candidate of their own choosing. That means that we, the people, can overwhelmingly vote for Sanders, but these superdelegates can choose to still vote for Clinton, and their vote will count. This is solely a Democratic Party thing, arguably the Republicans have might have something like this in their party, but that is a topic for another article. The superdelegate phenomenon came about in 1982, after a series of increasingly disappointing elections for the Democratic Party. Many of the more affluent members of the party and members of the board started to feel that the party leaders and elected officials of the party were not being gifted with a strong enough voice in primaries, and wanted more representation. Thus, the superdelegate system was born. Obviously there was a lot more that went into it and it took time and effort and technicalities for it to be created, but if you would like to learn more about it, which I encourage you to do so, you can find more information in the Further Reading section below. Now back to our article.
The next question should be, who are these superdelegates? As mentioned above, the superdelegates are supposed to demonstrate the voice of the party leaders and elected officials of the Democratic Party, and so those are the people who are voting. In more detail, superdelegates are split into basically two groups. The first group is the party leaders and elected officials: they are all of the party's governors, presidents, vice presidents, and all of its members of Congress. In case you were wondering, yes, this does include Bill Clinton, and yes, he has already pledged to vote for his wife. The second group consists of members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC): people like mayors, county executives, and presidents of Democratic organizations. In total there are 712 superdelegates that are voting in this year's primaries, which is 15 percent of the total votes. Personally, I find it concerning that such a large percentage of the Democratic votes are in the hands of people who do not socially or economically represent the majority of the Democratic party.
Now, if we look at the number of votes that Sanders and Clinton had as of Sunday morning, Clinton had 662 primary delegates and Sanders had 461, with these result notably not including the superdelegates. As of Sunday evening with the Maine polls decided with 80 percent of the votes in, Clinton has 1,129 delegates and Sanders has 498, this time including the superdelegates. Can you see what such a large difference the superdelegates have made on the elections so far?
Some have hypothesized that the superdelegates will not play too big of a role in this year's primaries, because even if Clinton were to gain all 712 superdelegates, she would still need to gain 1,671 primary delegates to reach the 2,383 goal. Even now, Sanders has gained about 20 of the 712 superdelegates, and O'Malley, surprisingly, has had 2 pledge to vote for him. Roughly 230 superdelegates have remained uncommitted so far, and are either waiting to vote as the polls show the majority is voting, or simply do not want people to know of their stance too far in advance. This is especially important to superdelegates in Congress, who will be having an election soon; they do not want to lose support from their voters by going against the popular support. In 2008, Clinton had a early lead with superdelegate nominations, but as time went on and Obama was winning in the polls, more and more superdelegates voted for him as to reflect he national opinion. These facts would suggest that superdelegates will actually not play a large deciding role in the primaries.
However, we do need to keep in mind that this might be a very close election. Polls have been putting Sanders only 5 to 15 points behind Clinton in the past couple of months, and that number is sure to fluctuate the further we get into the primaries, especially when we start reaching some of the more liberal states. With the way the voting is shaping out right now, we might have a very close race between the two Democratic candidates, that may be settled by the decisions of the superdelegates.
In the coming months, votes are going to become more and more critical. Many Sanders supports have come under the gun recently for showing their support online, but not actually going out to vote. It is not surprising, Sanders is very popular amongst first-time voters who might not know how to vote or how to register. Some states have closed primaries, meaning that you have to register as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic Primaries. Some states do all their voting by mail, some require in-person voting. It is important to anyone who wants to have a voice in this coming election to look up the voting requirements for their state and make sure to get out and vote. Sanders has a website page dedicated to telling you how to vote in each state, although I could not find one for Clinton. The Democratic Primaries might have a lot riding on the votes of superdelegates, but it is also the vote of the people that will have a large amount of influence on those delegates, and might change the course of this election.
Further Reading
"A Brief History of Superdelegates" - Daily Kos
"Presidential primaries delegate tracker" - Vox
"Election 2016: Total Delegate Count for Democrats, Republicans" - IBT
"What are Democratic superdelegates? A cartoon explainer" -Vox
"List of Democratic Party superdelegates, 2016" -Wikipedia
"Here Comes Another Superdelegate Crisis" - Huffington Post
"What are "superdelegates", and what do they mean for the Democratic nomination?" - Vox
Presidential Primaries Google Search
"Clinton's Superdelegate Tipping Point" - Bloomberg View
"2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination" - RealClearPolitics
"Vote For Bernie 2016" - even if you do not want to vote for Sanders, this site will tell you how you can vote in the Democrat Primaries for each state. Take a look.
