Bloodless Coup

Campaigning for Delegates at the Congressional District Level

So what's been the most maddening thing about the election this year? Quite possibly it's been the media's obsession with who wins a state. Now for the Republican contests in Florida and New York that is indeed hugely important because they are winner take all contests, and if you win the state you win a huge number of convention delegates. But no Democratic contest works that way, and few Republican ones do. Among Democrats, delegate allocations depend on how you do statewide and how you do in individual congressional districts. That explains why Obama and Clinton won the same number of delegates in New Hampshire though she narrowly "won" the state, and why Obama won more delegates in Nevada (well, 1 more) though she "won" the state. So if much of the fight that matters on the Democratic side comes down to battles in congressional districts, not states, how do the candidates decide which ones to concentrate on? Marc Ambinder helps us understand.