Delegates are prizes

Although attention in the presidential campaign is focused on who is winning which states, the real battle is to see which candidate can win a majority of the delegates who are to attend the party conventions.

The rules vary by party and can even differ from state to state. Here is a look at the delegate allocation in Wisconsin, which votes Feb. 19.

Republicans: The state has 40 delegates. Of those, three are members of the Republican National Committee and not allocated as a result of the primary election.

Of the rest, 13 are given to the winner of the overall vote in the state and 24 are distributed by the state’s eight congressional districts, with the winner in each getting three delegates.

Democrats: The state has 92 delegates, though the allocation is much more complex.

The majority, 48, are allocated based on the proportion of the vote each candidate gets in the state’s eight congressional districts, provided the candidate has at least 15 percent of the total. The number awarded per district ranges from five to eight, depending on how heavily Democratic the district was in the 2006 governor’s race.

Another 16 delegates are designated as at-large, allocated based on the statewide vote. Additionally, there are 10 party leader/elected official delegates, also distributed based on overall vote, plus two unpledged delegates — not committed to a particular candidate — picked by the state party.

Finally, there are 16 “super delegates,” people who are delegates by virtue of being a governor, a member of Congress or a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those delegates are free to choose their candidates and have faced considerable wooing from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

— Copyright © 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Distributed by

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Tags: presidential, campaign, election, wisconsin