Understanding the Presidential Primary Process and Tuesday’s Contests: Delegates, Voting, and Key Union Meetings
The presidential primary process is a crucial step towards selecting candidates for the general election in November. The latest delegate estimates and key contests on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, are worth exploring in detail.
Former President Donald Trump’s team aims to secure enough delegates during the multistate primaries on Tuesday to clinch the Republican nomination, although he won’t officially become the nominee until the national convention vote. The GOP requires 1,215 of the total 2,429 delegates for this achievement.
Today’s contests include Georgia, Hawaii (Republican presidential caucuses), Mississippi, Northern Mariana Islands (Democratic primary), Washington, and the Democrats abroad presidential primary.
What is a Presidential Primary?: A primary is an election to select candidates for a particular political party to appear on the general election ballot. Primaries award delegates, and candidates must reach a magic number of delegates to secure their party’s nomination.
Who Can Vote in a Presidential Primary??: Eligibility varies by state. Primaries can be conducted at polling places like any other election, but some states have open primaries (any registered voter can vote in either party’s primary), closed primaries (only registered voters of a particular political party can vote), or voting day registration (essentially opens the primaries to most registered voters).
Delegates and Determining the Presidential Candidate: Delegates can be apportioned through a winner-take-all system (top candidate in a state’s primary gets all delegates) or proportionally to the primary election results. Some states have thresholds where every candidate who gets over a certain percentage of votes (e.g., 20%) may be entitled to delegates. Democrats apportion all delegates proportionally, while Republican rules generally require states with primaries and caucuses before March 15 to do the same.
Key Union Meetings: President Joe Biden is meeting with the Teamsters union in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday as part of his strategy to secure support from unions, especially in key battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The Teamsters Union traditionally endorses a candidate after the conventions. They have twice endorsed against Trump (backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020).
The Teamsters Union, with 1.3 million members, gave $45,000 to the Republican National Committee in January 2022, around the same time Trump met with their leadership. Trump has also met with Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien at Mar-a-Lago late last year and earlier this year.
Northern Mariana Islands Primary: President Joe Biden is expected to win the Democratic primary in the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a projection from the News Finder Decision Desk. He will also receive all six of the territory’s national convention delegates.
Remaining Delegates: Biden currently needs an additional 100 delegates to win the Democratic nomination, with a total of 1,968 pledged delegates required. Eight delegates from March 5 contests are still to be allocated. Stay tuned for further updates on the 2022 presidential primary race!
