For more than a month now presidential campaigns have been receiving extended media coverage, and, by now, almost everyone in the country has been exposed to the Democratic and Republican coverage of the primaries. Delegate counts are all over the media; however, it was hard to find the recent information on the Superdelegates except for one article that appeared in NY Times today. According to the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/us/politics/28superdelegates.html?ref=politics), if Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates will not be counted, there will be 796 superdelegates, which constitutes one fifth of all the delegates. To my understanding, the support of the majority of these politicians has been acquired long before the primaries have started through earlier political favors and deals that have been made. Presently, as NY times along with CBS state, approximately 25% of the superdelegates support Clinton while only 10% are in favor of Obama.
Based on that statistics, it would be not enough for Obama to win as many delegates on the Super Tuesday as Hillary Clinton does, since the NY senator has secured a sufficient number of superdelegate’s vote. However, isn’t it the flow in the democratic system? In this case majority of people’s vote would not determine the candidate.
So are the primaries and caucuses a democratic illusion and the candidates are still chosen by the elite of the party? Or is the Superdelegate system simply a tool used to swing the votes when the frontrunner did not emerge after the primaries. What do you think?
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