How are the number of delegates per state determined?

[napi21]

I'm listening to the DNC meeting on cspan now, and they're talking about where and when to have causes and primaries in 2008.

Someone mentioned Delaware, and a response was that Del. only has 15 delegates, so people might just not care. Someone else said something about increasing the # of delegates in Del.

I always thought the # was based on population. Is that wrong?

[mcscajun]

1. How they do it...

It's complicated...

The rules of the Democratic National Convention call for the following formula to be used in determining the allocation of delegate votes to each jurisdiction sending a delegation to the Convention.

Each jurisdiction with electoral votes is assigned a number of Base (delegate) votes based on an "Allocation Factor" multiplied by 3,000 arrived at through a calculation involving the following factors:

1. State's Democratic Vote (SDV): The jurisdiction's popular vote for the Democratic candidate for President in the last three Presidential Elections (in this case: 1992, 1996, and 2000).
2. Total Democratic Vote (TDV): The total popular vote for the Democratic candidate for President in the last three Presidential Elections (1992, 1996, and 2000).
3. The state's Electoral Vote (SEV).
4. The total Electoral Vote of all jurisdictions (538).

(snip)

To summarize, half of a jurisdiction's base vote is determined by the number of Electors assigned to that state and half are computed by the number of people who voted for the Democratic candidate in the last three elections.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P04/D-Alloc.phtml

Note: what got snipped here is the actual calculation.

[napi21]

2. Thanks. Boy, you're right, it's complicated! Why the hell is it

always that way in anything gov't related? Nothing is ever straight forward!