i was under the impression that the USA primaries would choose who would run for president at the end…
this is correct, right?
if so…I don’t follow how some states (like michigan) can not have all candidates on the ballads.
what is achieved by winning a primary in a state, and why doesn’t every candidate run in every state?
Does anyone actually understand US politics? Perhaps only the politcians themselves? Or students studying US politics.
Michigan didn’t matter to the Dems.
But I think these early primaries help determine who drops out before Super Tuesday, which is the big, real primary.
I think.
I understand these things only as well as the next guy who watches Survivor religiously and goes to see movies like Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, but my understanding is that a number of states have moved their primaries to be earlier in the year because they wanted to have more influence over who the two candidates were who won for each party.
This was the case for Michigan, but something got screwy regarding registering to be on the ballot. As a result of the foul up, the Democratic National party decided to skip this primary but a couple of candidates were either too late to take their names off the ballot or decided not to. It is my understanding that the Michigan primary will not count for the democrats; that is the delegates are uncommitted and will probably vote with whoever turns out to be the nominee rather than who won the Michigan primary.
Primaries are when the voters vote about, what those who vote about, who the voters later get a vote on, what those who vote for the president, should vote, should be able to vote for, should vote.
Or something like that.
Maybe.
My understanding:
Correct. The primaries narrow down all the candidates to 1 nominee from each party (mainly Republican and Democrat, nobody really votes for Independents) who will then go on to run against each other in the general election, which will be held held sometime in November of this year.
During the primaries, if you are registered to vote as a republican/democrat, you must vote according to the same party you are registered as, however during the general election anybody can vote for either one.
What I’ve heard about the incident in Michigan, somehow Michigan moved their primary up earlier then they were supposed to, and the DNC penalized them for it, and they went on with it anyway. I don’t understand how that works, and I may have not heard all the facts, but it seems kind of silly to me.
They ended up with what, 100,000 people voting “undecided” against Hillary on the Democrat side?
The primaries are just a game to make the citizens feel like they’re important, in the end it’s just who has the most money wins.
How do you explain Ross Perot’s failure, then?
Kinda like the political form of foreplay.
Hmm, good question, I’m going to plead ignorance with a smiley, as I was only eight years old during the '96 election 
But isn’t foreplay supposted to be pleasurable? Politics certainly isn’t. Then again there’s the same result either way, somone gets …
…an election??
they’re more like the big set-up, as they take in the people to think its participatory democracy, and we go through all this pretending it matters, and then, finally, on election, someone will steal the election, or the Supreme Court will decide who the president is.
Well it probably is for the candidates…if they win!
Michigan has crazy big economic problems, so the state decided to move our primary to an earlier date, to make it more important. There is apparently a rule that says Iowa, New Hampshire and one other state have to be first, so our democratic delegates were taken away.
I guess what got me wondering was CNN kept saying Guiliani is ‘saving himself’ for florida, so I don’t get how skipping other states could help him.
Is it because if he was to lose in one state, he would gain absolutely nothing from the state, even if a portion of people still voted for him there?
He was still on the ballot in Michigan. He’s just not campaigning there personally, he’s supposedly saving the heavy campaigning for Florida…
aahhhhh, thanks
Each state has so many delegates (who then vote later for the party’s nominee), so when a candidate has limited funds, they may choose to not campaign in some states and instead focus on others. The case in Michigan was that they violated the rules of the democrat party so they get no delegates from that primary.
Cool, that means Dr. Paul will likely win! Other than Romney’s personal fortune, he has the most campaign funds on hand. Hip Hip hooray for freedom!