One of the more interesting, if esoteric, issues coming to the fore in the continuing Democratic Primary is just what ‘Winning’ the primary means.  Since the start of May, most, if not all, of the primaries for the Democrats have been Non-Open and proportional in one manner or another.

Since I know the California Primary the best, I live in California, I’ll use it.  To be able to vote in the in the Democratic Party State Primary you need to be registered to vote by 23 May 2016 and you have to register as a Democrat or state ‘No Party Preferance’.  You can’t as some people seem to think register in the American Independant Party.

The next thing is that California is a Congresional Proportional allocation of delegates.  This means that the delegates are allotted by Congresional Congresional district.  With the added fun that who ever win’s the over all state vote gets delegates allotted for the two Senators, (I be leave the number of delegates allowed is the same as for Congresaional district time two).

This means that it is possible for Canidate ‘B’ to win the over all state vote, say 50% + 1, but Canidate ‘H’ to win the lions share of state delegates by wining more Congresional districts.  Most of the Non closed primaries in the last few months have been one for or another non-winner take all primaries.  This is how Berinie has ‘Won’ so many state primaries recently but often as not, not by very much or the way the delegates are allotted are more locally focused so that Hillary either did not loose much ground or the states were small.

California has 548 of the 1052 delegates to allot.  Hillary has 1716 non supper delegates so fare and Bernie has 1433.  To get the nomination either needs 2383 delegates.  This means Hillary need 667 and Bernie needs 950 of the non supper debates to win.  So just winning a state is not enough to win the nomination, Bernie need to Win in overwhelming numbers, on the order of 3 to 2 to take the lead.