Super Tuesday – a 'how to' guide

Over the last few months, members of the same US political party — the Democrats — have debated, ridiculed and even humiliated each other on live television, all in the hopes of becoming their party's 2020 presidential candidate.

They've also spent tens of millions of dollars on TV smear campaigns and have even used their social media accounts (to take one recent example) to create damaging, fictitious quotes about one another.

It's an odd, ugly, intraparty slugfest — like watching a "circular firing squad," as one US political strategist put it — and it reaches its first climax on a day called "Super Tuesday." By the end of March 3, the world will have a much clearer idea of which person will challenge US President Donald Trump in November's presidential election.

So if you're a candidate, how do you "win" Super Tuesday, or the primary game in general?

How to win the primary game

1,991 "points." If you're a Democrat, and you can manage to get 1,991 points (actually called "delegates," but same idea), you become that party's nominee for US president. This is "winning the game."

How does Super Tuesday fit in?

Roughly 1,350 "points" are on the board on Super Tuesday, making it the biggest collective basket of fruit to be won in a single day; it's the 24-hour period where the greatest number of US states, territories and jurisdictions hold primary elections. But, as simple math would suggest, 1,350 points is not enough points to win the whole game.

Still, a winner

At the time this was published, projection polls showed that the first of the "Three B's" (Bernie, Biden, Bloomberg), US Senator Bernie Sanders, is set to take most delegates on Super Tuesday — over 500. Former US Vice President Joe Biden is expected to take roughly 300, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg 200 and US Senator Elizabeth Warren more than 100. Other candidates will receive even fewer delegates.

How does the point system work?

You might think some states are more important than others, since they're objectively worth more points, or delegates — like California with 415, or Texas with 228 ... all the way down to Maine (29), Vermont (16) or the US territory of American Samoa (6.) But during the primaries, all states really are kind of equal. And that's because ...

The winner does not take all

In a primary, points are awarded based on the percentage of votes a candidate got in a given place. So if you get 20% of the vote in California, you'll walk away with more than 80 delegates from that state. That's a win — and a good step toward that goal of 1,991. This creates an incentive for the candidates to be broadly appealing to many people in many places. Another way of saying this is: Please burn from your memory those maps of US presidential elections where states are either blue or red. That's not how this works.

After Super Tuesday?

The show goes on. For some.

For the candidates who perform badly on Super Tuesday, the math may already be written on the wall: It'll be statistically improbable for them to win the nomination, so it's game over. They're out. What's kind of weird about that is it means the Americans who vote later in this process have a much smaller field to choose from — two candidates, for example, instead of the original 20.

However many remain, they'll focus on snagging as many of the remaining points, or delegates (with about 2,500 still out there), as they can. That'll happen over the course of months, and on random days — nothing like "Super Tuesday." The process will then end in a small puff of smoke on June 6, which is when the US Virgin Islands holds a caucus and awards its final 11 points. (Note: A "caucus" is like a mix between a town hall meeting and a vote, and it's this author's favorite part of the US political process. But that's another story.)

The Democratic National Convention

This is where things get weird — and where, depending on your political leanings or your opinions on game theory, you might end up flipping the board off the table and vowing to never play it again.

If, by the end of the Democratic primaries, no single candidate has managed to reach the threshold of 1,991 — with, say, candidate A getting 1,700, candidate B getting 1,350, and so on — then there's a second round.

Makes sense, right? So the people vote again?

No, they don't.

This is where "super delegates" come in.

Like angels of glory ... or death, depending on how you look at them ... they will descend on the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July.

And from their cloaks, they will reveal their 750 "bonus points."

This is the "wildcard" element of the game. Because these super delegates can give their vote to whichever candidate they choose, ultimately tipping the scale.

Really.

With fresh points now added to the "game," the threshold for winning it does go up — from 1,991 to 2,376. But with an extra 750+ points to spread around, the super delegates are the kingmakers (or queenmakers).

No one knows how that part will play out. But one thing is certain: By July 16, there will be one Democratic candidate left standing — just one — and he or she will be riddled with even more wounds than during the Super Tuesday primary elections.

At that point, it will be time to leave the "circular firing squad" behind to begin a monthslong, one-on-one boxing match — to challenge the US president, Donald Trump, in the 2020 US presidential election.

 Eds: This is an updated version of a previous article.

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