So far, the race has remained undecided. But now we’ve come to Super Tuesday. And with 14 states around the country (and one U.S. territory) holding primaries all at once, today is likely to serve as a strong indicator of who the Democratic Party electorate is ready to support as the chosen candidate for the presidency.
Super Tuesday states cut a wide swath geographically, from Maine across four time zones to California, northernmost Minnesota to the southern tip of Texas. And they include a diverse mix of citizens (53% white, 25% Hispanic, 11% Black, 7% Asian, and 4% Other). All in all, a total of nearly 30 million people live in the places where primaries are happening today. And if early voting numbers are taken as a predictive sign, the polling places should be seeing sizeable crowds.
But it’s the delegate total, not the sheer number of popular votes, that matters most in determining who finally wins our Democratic presidential nomination. Each state has a certain number of delegates based on a formula of population and weight in the Democratic Party. The states’ parties award their delegates to the candidates based on the number of votes they received in the state primaries. Eventually, the first candidate to get a majority of nearly 4,000 total delegates becomes the nominee. When you take into account that slightly more than one-third of that possible total – 1,357 delegates – is determined on Super Tuesday, it’s clear why today is so important.
Important, but not definitive: It might narrow the field, but Super Tuesday can’t be counted on to supply a single, unifying answer regarding who will go up against Donald Trump. There are many more important primaries and caucuses to come between now and June – including our own New Mexico primary on June 2. The party has no official nominee until all of the delegates vote at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, July 13 to 16.
Super Tuesday polls will close at different times in different states. Vermont, for example, will close at 7:00 pm, Eastern – while California won’t finish until four hours later, at 11:00 pm, Eastern. Tabulations may continue late into the night and absentee ballots will need to be counted, so there may be a delay in arriving at exact and final tallies. Though not involved in the voting, we New Mexican Democrats will certainly watch and wait with concentrated interest as the numbers come in!