American Politics?!?

[Lana85]

Can someone please explain to me how the american 'election' works?

[lynbrown]

The two big parties, Democrats and Republicans have to choose a candidate each. McCain has just won Rep spot and eventually Clinton or Obama will get the Dem spot. Then the two go head to head in November election.The eventual voting system, using state representatives is very complicated. You should try googling perhaps.

[vehelpfulguy]

Simple really.

The one who has the most money wins.

[Booldawg]

They re-count the votes until the person they want to win, does (like in Florida 4 years ago)

[Kromovaracun]

First comes the primary stage. In the primary stage, each party's candidates for the presidential election are chosen.

This works by a system of delegates. Each state party has a primary within that state, and candidates (depending on the party) get either all the delegates (as with the Republicans) for that state or numbers of them depending on how much of the vote they receive.

The delegates then vote for the Party's presidential candidate at the National Party Convention later in the year (it's usually pretty obvious by then as nowadays they just go with whoever they're meant to).

The candidates are thus chosen.

Cont...

[Kromovaracun]

Then the presidential race begins. This is done by another system known as the 'Electoral College' system, where each state again has an E.C., delegates of which are essentially kind of elected according to whichever candidate they say they'll vote for.

Whichever candiate receives a majority of all the Electoral College delegates in each state, then 'wins' the state. Whoever wins the most states wins the presidency.

The confusion in 2000 was over the fact that both sides had an equal number of states, and the Florida result was extremely close and so they had some trouble calling it (as there are usually spoilt ballots and other negligible things which in any other circumstance aren't a problem, so it was a bit of a grey area).

The Supreme Court declared a recount unconstitutional for some reason and it came out that Bush won in Florida (Gore won more popular votes nationwide)

[Kromovaracun]

Edit: Sorry, I'm not sure I made this quite clear on the primaries.

The delegates are elected by the people. They pretty much always vote for whoever they said they were going to (ergo, whoever got the most votes in their state). They occasionally vote for someone else but this is rare and usually not of any significance.

The parties also vary in terms of how the delegates are distributed: in the Republicans, whoever wins the majority of the vote in each Republican primary, then gets all the delegates from that individual state. For the Democrats, they give delegates proportionally to how many votes each candidate receives.

Hence why it's so tight between Hilary and Obama but McCain is set for the Republican nomination.

[Quinlad]

Whoever fits the most balloons into a room wins. I thought that was obvious?

[bazwillrun]

Its the same as over here in the UK, the contestants lie, then they lie some more, and then they lie even more.
And the one who spins the best lies and cons enough people to vote for them wins ! simple really