Predicting the 2020 Democratic Primary is Stupid | Pt 1. The Basics

This is not a political article. This is an article about civics. They sometimes sound like the same thing, but they aren’t. The focus here is on two central elements of civics …

1. How Democratic and Republican Primaries Work
2. Making A Bad Prediction About the Future Nominee

How Democratic and Republican Primaries Work

I sometimes wonder if U.S. citizens could pass the civics tests naturalized citizens take, given that I don’t know if most U.S. citizens know what naturalized means. | https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/testupdates

The person who gets the most votes in Republican or Democratic Presidential Primaries does not necessarily become the nominee. Presidential primaries for both parties are built on the same idea; the person with the most delegates at the nominating convention becomes the nominee. In theory, someone could end up with a plurality (i.e. the most votes but not a majority) of votes in the country, but end up with fewer delegates based on where those votes originated. It’s all confusing, and having watched these since I was 5, all I’ve seen is our political media do a worse and worse job of explaining what’s going on to everyone else.

What does that mean? In each contest, whether it’s a primary or a caucus, a certain number of delegates to the national party convention are distributed based on total votes received (in the case of primaries) or total caucus headcount for a candidate after 1-n…