Party Rules and Equitable Representation

Abstract

This article assesses the degree of representativeness within the state delegations with a measure based on primary election and caucus results, and delegate counts at the 1984 Democratic national convention. The analysis indicates that most state delegations were quite representative of the candidates' relative support within the public. States with the most representative delegations had few uncommitted votes cast in the primary or caucus and used proportional representation systems. The proportion of superdelegates, either pledged or unpledged, did not detract greatly from the representativeness of the state delegations,