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8 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 12 FEBRUARY 2020 NEWS ANALYSIS EVERY four years America's two main political parties go through a lengthy process to pick who will be their candidate for the US presidential election. The Democratic Party's process involves a series of votes in each state spread across five months, culminating with the party con- vention in July. The candidate is decided by the number of delegates they receive and each state has a different number of delegates. The winner then goes on to take on Donald Trump at the election on November 3. What are delegates and how does it work? Just like in the presidential elec- tion, the person that wins the nomination is not the candidate who wins the popular vote but the one who gets the most delegates. There are 3,979 pledged dele- gates in total. Each state gets a number of delegates proportion- ate to their population. The magic number a candidate needs is 1,990 delegates - that means you've got more than half the delegates available and you're past the line to be the party's nom- inee. What is the difference between primaries and caucuses? Some states only hold primary elections, some only hold cau- cuses, and others use a combi- nation of both. Caucuses require voters to at- tend a meeting for several hours and vote in the open by rais- ing their hand or standing in a group to support a candidate. To be declared viable, a can- didate must get at least 15 per cent of the voters present to support them. Voters for unvi- able candidate can switch their support to a different candi- date or declare themselves un- decided for the second round of votes. Voters can only move group once. New caucus rules introduced this year mean that once a vot- er is in a group which is viable, they cannot move to another group later in the evening, in- cluding the undecideds. The caucus process has been criticised as undemocratic be- cause its public voting system is open to bullying and intim- idation tactics. It also favours candidates with a strong and active base. For instance Bernie Sanders significantly outper- formed Hillary Clinton, in cau- cuses when the two candidates competed for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Where caucuses used to be far more common, in 2020 caucus- es will only be held in four states - Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming. The remaining states will hold primaries during this campaign. Primaries are much more like general elections, with voters showing up to their polling place and checking the box for their preferred candidate in se- cret. A candidate must get at least 15 per cent of the vote statewide or in an individual congression- al district to be awarded dele- gates. Why do Iowa and the early states matter? Iowa and the early states are significant not because of the number of delegates available, but because they give the win- ning candidate more momen- tum throughout the rest of the campaign. With that being said, the win- ner in Iowa does not necessarily go on to be the party's nominee - Donald Trump lost Iowa to Ted Cruz in 2016. John Zogby, known as one of the most accurate political pollsters in the world, still be- lieves Iowa is "a gatekeeper" to success. "Even though critics will suggest that Iowa as over- whelmingly white and rural is not representative of the nation as a whole, the fact is that it has carved out a position for itself, so much so that the voters in Iowa take this process seriously and the candidates traditionally have taken the process very se- riously," he told reporters at a recent briefing. "So, what are we seeing this year? We've seen a bunching of the top four candidates: for- mer vice president Joe Biden, senator Bernie Sanders, senator Elizabeth Warren, former may- or Pete Buttigieg. Normally in fifth place, someone that I'm watching very closely as well, is Amy Klobuchar." Why is the convention so important? The convention in July repre- sents the crowning moment for the party's nominee and offers the winning candidate a chance to frame their pitch to voters ahead of the November presidential election. To win the nomination, a can- didate must have more delegates than all their opponents. To win on the first ballot, the front-runner must secure the majority of the party's 3,979 pledged delegates available during the state votes leading up to the Democratic convention, in other words 1,990. If the front-runner has fewer than 1,885 delegates, it becomes what is known as a "contested" convention and a second vote is held. On subsequent ballots, all the delegates become unpledged and the party's "superdelegates" can also vote. These superdelegates are senior party members, for ex- ample former president Bill Clin- ton, and they can vote for whom- ever they like. There are estimated to be around 774 superdelegates this year, but the final figure will be announced in March. In the second round vote, a candidate must win more than 50 per cent of all delegates to secure the nom- ination. The convention will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July 13 to 16. What happens next? The rest of the party will be ex- pected to rally around the candi- date as they campaign to defeat Republican president Donald Trump in November. There then follows six months of one to one campaigning between the Democratic candidate and Trump, with three key TV debates between the two presidential can- didates taking place between Sep- tember 29 and October 22. Finally, after more than a year of campaigning, the US presidential election will be held on Tuesday, November 3. The US Democratic race on the road to the 2020 Presidential election