ABSTRACT
No nation in the world has as many elections as the United States. In a Presidential election year, American voters across the country select a total of over half a million officials in addition to the President, the members of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. The objective for any candidate in the nomination process is to obtain the support of a simple majority of the delegates to the party’s national nominating convention that is held in the summer of election year. Until the 1970s the caucus-convention method of selecting delegates was the dominant form. It provided for the election of delegates by rank and file party activists from one level of the party to the next— from precinct caucuses to county conventions to the state convention and from there to the national convention. State caucuses tend to reflect the more clearly defined doctrinal views of interested grass-roots supporters and local politicians.
