24 US states will vote today in the US elections, among them big states like New York and California.Each of these state-by-state contests decide delegates for a national convention, for each party. The Democrats will have their convention in Denver (25th to 28th August). The Republicans will have theirs in Minnesota (four days later).
In some states (Florida for the Republicans), you win the state, you get all the state's delegates. In others, usually Democratic races, it's proportionally split (9 each for Obama and Clinton, 4 for Edwards, in New Hampshire, despite Clinton winning the popular vote). It can get pretty arcane. Somehow, in Nevada, Obama won 13 delegates to Clinton's 12, despite losing the popular vote.
Gathering enough delegates to be 50% plus one can go right down to the nominating convention (e.g. the Republicans in 1976, with Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan even putting forward a vice-presidential nominee each, and then the convention voting on their party's candidate for President).
The Nation has an interesting series of blog postings, including this one on how an Obama victory might look like on Wednesday morning. They also have articles on barriers to youth registering on the primary day to vote, on the environmental positions of Obama and Clinton, and Obama's remarkable online networking.
Democracy Now! has an interview on Hispanic voters and the Democrats.
It's not just Republicans and Democrats who are having primaries tomorrow. The Green Party in the US has a number of potential nominees -- Jesse Johnson, Kat Swift, Kent Mesplay, Ralph Nader is "exploring" a run -- but there have been a few articles on Cynthia McKinney's campaign for the Green nomination lately.
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