gorkay
Jr. Member
Posts: 995
|
 |
« on: December 17, 2007, 05:42:53 PM » |
|
These vote totals are interesting in that, especially in more recent years, they give you a good indication of how close the race was, and a better indication than the actual delegate totals, which are often skewed because of non-proportional-representation rules and candidates dropping out early. (They don't work as well in earlier years because candidates usually only ran in selected primaries, sometimes didn't run in primaries at all, and often entered the race much later than would be possible today).
It's unfortunate that in more recent years the selection process has so favored a clear winner coming out of the primaries that in instances where the sentiment of the party was clearly divided, we got a first-ballot winner anyway. In 1972, 1976, 1984, and 1988, for example, the Democrats might have been better off had the delegate counts going in to the conventions better reflected the fact that no candidate had gotten over 50% of the primary vote.
|
