The Mysterious Mississippi Delegate
For those who aren’t aware, every pledged delegate in the Democratic primary is awarded proportionally. In other words, winning X% of the vote gets you approximately X% of the pledged delegates. Now, this is slightly complicated by the distribution of delegates - each state is given a number of delegates in proportion with its contribution to the national Democratic vote share in the last three elections along with its electoral vote share; i.e. large states get more delegates, and more Democrat-friendly states get more delegates. Furthermore, 25% of those are set aside for apportioning based on the statewide vote, while 75% are divided up among the Congressional districts to be handed out based on vote shares in that CD. Furthermore, there is an additional 15% added to the total number of delegates given to the state. These are “pledged PLEOs (party leaders and elected officials)”, who are also given out depending on the statewide vote. There’s one last rule as well: if any candidate fails to get 15% of the vote in the state/Congressional district, they receive no delegates from the statewide/Congressional district pools. So this brings me to the mysterious Mississippi delegate. Bernie did not do well in Mississippi. He garnered only 16% of the vote statewide, which just barely allows him to take delegates. He was completely locked out of two Congressional districts - CD2 (he won 11%) and CD3 (14%). Or so I thought. Apparently, somehow, despite receiving only 14% of the vote (below the 15% threshold!), Bernie received one delegate from CD3. I, for one, would like an explanation. Or, at the very least, for there to be the same sort of questioning of the rules as there is whenever Clinton wins. But there won’t be. Because IOKIYBS.