Another Look At the Role of "the Rules" in the 1972 Democratic Presidential Primaries

Bibliographic Data

ID3210869
AuthorsThomas H Hammond (0000-0002-4151-7845, Purdue University, corresponding author)
Year1980
Volume33
Issue1
Pages50
Publication date1980-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Western Political Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-4078 • E-ISSN: 2325-8675
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/447619
OpenAlexW4240324792, W1977231596
LanguageEN
Citations received7

IN their article Primary Rules, Political Power and Social Change Lengle and Shafer1 have raised the problem of how primary rules affect the outcomes of the presidential nomination process of the Democratic party. That different rules enhance the fortunes of different candidates is probably something that practicing politicians have always known, but political scientists have not paid much attention to the problem. For their insights into the problem the authors are to be applauded. Nonetheless, there are problems with their analysis that should lead us to treat their conclusions with skepticism. Their observations and arguments may be summarized as follows: 1. The Democratic party has three basic types of primary rules: WinnerTake-All; Districted; and Proportional. Under a Winner-Take-All rule, whichever candidate wins the most votes in a given state gets all the delegates allotted to that state. Under a Districted rule, whichever candidate wins the most votes in a congressional district within a state gets all the delegates allotted to that district. Under a Proportional rule, whatever proportion of the statewide vote a given candidate receives, he receives that same proportion of the state's delegates. Under this latter plan, a 15 percent cutoff point is used: those candidates receiving less than 15 percent of the statewide vote get no delegates at all, and the delegates are apportioned among only those candidates surpassing the 15 percent point. 2. There are three major ideological wings to the Democratic party: the social welfare centrists whose strength lies primarily in the North; the social engineering liberals whose strength lies primarily in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and West Coast; and the social conservatives whose strength lies primarily in the South. 3. The campaigns of centrist presidential candidates in 1972 would have been helped most by the nationwide adoption of Winner-Take-All rules and hurt by the adoption of either the Districted or Proportional rules. The liberal candidates in 1972 would have been helped substantially by the use of Proportional rules and even more by the use of Districted rules. Conservative candidates would have been treated about the same under all three rules

Democracy · Ideology · Law and economics · Nomination · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Presidential system · Skepticism · Sociology · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Law, Rights, and Freedoms · Public Administration · Race, History, and American Society

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