What happens to the winners of the primaries and caucuses?
Candidates accrue delegates – or people who will represent them at the national party conferences – as they win state primaries and caucuses. The idea is to emerge with the most delegates by the time the national conference comes around in mid or late summer. The job of the delegates is to choose the official party candidate at the Democratic or Republican national conventions. In practice, delegates simply ratify the person chosen by voters in the primaries and caucuses. Any candidate who looks unlikely to last the course will drop out well before the national convention, sometimes before some of the biggest states have voted. Most simply cannot afford to keep running after early losses. Drop-outs can continue to influence the process by throwing their support behind one of the remaining candidates. What happens at the national conventions? These enormous, expensive, back-slapping meetings are organised by the national committees from the respective parties, and invariably involve a l
