And we thought a presidential system is so much simpler. February 5 was supposed to be a big day in the White House race, a Super Tsunami Tuesday, with American voters standing up to proclaim presidential nominations for the Democratic and Republican parties. Instead, we got mumbles and grumbles about delegate counts and super delegate tallies, and of primaries and caucuses, and of proportional versus winner-takes-all systems. The bottomline? John McCain is more or less sure to be the Republican candidate, but Hillary Clinton stands no better chance than Barack Obama in clinching the Democrat ticket.
This is the stuff of inner party democracy in the US, and there are more states yet to voice who their favourite is for the actual White House election. To represent these voices, each state sends delegates to a big party convention where the formal candidacy is declared. The whole point of primaries and caucuses is to allocate delegates to the national convention. Right now, McCain needs 1,191 delegates to secure his party?s nomination. In the rival camp, the epic Clinton-Obama duel will lurch onward to the many big states coming down the pike, until one of them eventually corrals 2,025 delegates for the national convention in August. Republicans award all the delegates of a state to the winner of the popular vote in that state. In contrast, Democrats apportion delegates from each state in accordance with the proportional vote. So one candidate may get more votes than the other in, say, delegate-weighty California, but will still have split the delegates more evenly.
The US presidential election process is a witch?s brew of permutations and combinations, and electoral plots and subplots ? as it is about heaps of campaign money, drama and spin. Adding to the intrigue, the country is thought to be evenly balanced between the two party?s supporters. So, once the party candidates are selected, the Republican and Democrat campaigns tend to veer from the right and left, respectively, towards the political spectrum?s centre ? since independent voters often determine who will win the White House eventually. Also, the final election also goes by an electoral college system, with the college composed of winner-takes-all representatives from each state. One needs 270 electoral college votes to become the President of the US. There are many big states that are solidly Republican and solidly Democratic, and so the action shifts to taking the swing states, the ones deemed more open to candidates? influence and which can go either way. In closely fought elections, they make the difference. Much of the above is admirable, and many would like to see something similar in India. But Indian diversity is such, and the need to transcend traditional divides so acute, that it would probably be impractical here. The US has far fewer divides, and even there, candidates who transcend divisions, resist groupthink and have appeal beyond the party establishment and loyalty base often see their campaign gain force only once they?ve got the nomination. Yet, for all its complications, American democracy is a fascinating work in progress. It?s been many years since the Florida recount bewildered the world in 2000, with its mangled punch cards and other tabulation problems, and observers expect this year to be one of electoral contrast. And clarity.