Saturday, June 27, 2009

DemRulz Liveblog of Democratic Change Commission Meeting

Virginia DNC member Frank Leone is liveblogging the action from the Democratic Change Commission meeting today in Washington. You can follow along at DemRulz and also have a look at the group's agenda (There are some nice graphs in there that I'll pull out and post in a little while.) there as well.

Also, Dan Balz has a story up on Washington Post's page dealing with the 2012 nomination process tinkering that will likely appear in tomorrow's Post (Note the use of the word yesterday in reference to the meeting taking place today.). It is an interesting read. You can check it out here. Importantly, he notes that Elaine Kamarck, in her presentation on superdelegates, indicated that the time was right for their (the superdelegates) elimination.

Now, some graphics on delegate allocation from the meeting's agenda notes (These are from pdfs and that explains the graininess. However, they come to us courtesy of the Democratic National Committee, so let's grant credit where credit is due.)...

1976 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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1980 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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1984 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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1988 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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1992 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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1996 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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2000 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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2004 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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2008 Democratic Delegate Allocation
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So, what do we see here? It isn't that unlike the maps I have in the left sidebar. But instead of being couched in terms of how early the contests are (and those changes over time), these graphs show how a process that had a relatively even distribution of delegates throughout the window period in 1976 shifted to what we witnessed in 2008. Mainly, we see that 60% of the delegates were allocated in the first week of February with no other week breaking the 15% barrier. Of course, those numbers would have been even more lopsided in 2008 if Florida and Michigan had been included in the data. Those states would have pushed the delegates having been allocated by February 6 (the day after Super Tuesday) to over two-thirds and close three-quarters. That, folks, is the impact of frontloading in a nutshell.

For other posts related to the Democratic Change Commission, click here. And here's the progress thus far on the GOP side.


Hat tip to Matt at DemConWatch for the tip on Leone's coverage.


Recent Posts:
Is Next in Line a Myth?

On the Agenda at the Democratic Change Commission Meeting

GOP Governors in the White House?

2 comments:

Robert said...

Interesting. It will be interesting to see what the 2012 diagram will look like.

Josh Putnam said...

Both parties seem committed to shifting things back a month, so my best guess is that 2012 will resemble that 2000 graphic (with a higher March peak and slightly lower April/May/June spikes).