01 February 2008

Presidential Candidates Gear Up for Toughest Challenge Yet

Twenty-four states will hold primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, February 5

 

Republican John McCain campaigns in Missouri, whose voters go the polls on February 5. (© AP Images)

By Michelle Austein
Staff Writer

Washington -- Nearly 80 million registered voters will have the opportunity to cast their vote for a presidential nominee on February 5 -- the most ever on a single day in the history of primaries and caucuses.

With only a few days left to make their case to a diverse set of voters, candidates are crisscrossing the country hoping to pick up enough support to propel them to the nomination.

Traditionally "Super Tuesday" is a title used to describe the day on which the most states hold primaries or caucuses. But the 2008 Super Tuesday is different -- 24 states will hold nominating contests. This is significantly more states holding races on the same day than ever before. So many states are voting that some political pundits have nicknamed the day "Super-Duper Tuesday."

Each state party selects its own primary or caucus date. In the 2008 presidential-election season, states kept moving their dates earlier in an attempt to have more influence on the outcome of the nomination race.

As a result, about 42 percent of each party's delegates will be awarded on February 5. To date, 10 percent of the Republican delegates and 3 percent of the Democratic delegates have been pledged to candidates. A candidate needs a majority of delegates to become the party's nominee.

The candidates are competing to win voters in a diverse set of states. They include populous states like California and New York and sparsely populated states like Idaho and Alaska. Some states, like Illinois and New York, have sizable African-American populations; others, such as Colorado and New Mexico, are more Hispanic. Some states are heavily Republican; others tend to vote Democratic; still others are swing states.

CANDIDATES CRISSCROSS THE UNITED STATES

In events that compose the closest thing to a national primary the United States has experienced, candidates have had to make choices about how they best can connect with the most voters in a short period of time.

 

Democrat Barack Obama speaks with voters in California. California votes on Super Tuesday. (© AP Images)

"How do you campaign everywhere? How do you allocate media money?" are the types of issues the candidates have to consider, said Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Much like in the days before a general election, the candidates are traveling throughout the country. Democrat Barack Obama will visit New Mexico, Idaho and Minnesota while his opponent Hillary Clinton talks with voters in California and New York. Republican Mitt Romney plans to visit Montana, Colorado and Missouri while John McCain heads to Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

For states they cannot visit, candidates are sending their most important supporters to campaign for them. The candidates also are spending heavily to run television advertisements in many of the Super Tuesday states.

Although it is possible that no candidate will have a majority of delegates after February 5, each candidate is aiming for enough state victories to be viewed as the front-runner and gain sufficient momentum to pick up enough delegates quickly in the next set of primaries and caucuses.

"There is a very good chance … that when the dust settles on February 6 … we will not know the identities of the nominees," Ornstein said at an AEI forum January 24.

Part of the reason for this, Ornstein said, is that many states award their delegates proportionally. Democrats award all of their states' delegates proportionally, while some Republican states voting on February 5 use a winner-take-all system. In states using proportional representation, a second-place finisher can still earn a sizable number of delegates.

Proportional representation "makes it much less likely that somebody can run the table and come away with enough of a lead after this point that you'll be able to say [the race] is effectively over," Ornstein said.

The Democratic Party's use of proportional representation paired with the fact that the race has been a close one between Obama and Clinton for weeks leads many political experts to believe that the Democrats have a better likelihood than the Republicans of their race continuing after February 5.

WITNESS DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

America.gov is partnering with the Washington Foreign Press Center to bring live coverage of Super Tuesday events February 5, 2008. You are invited to witness U.S. democracy in action, hear from opinion leaders and political experts and watch the election returns from the primaries around the country. Join Us On Super Tuesday.