andrel's Journal: Primary dates

One of the Taiwanese students in lab has been asking me to explain to her the US presidential elections. I think I understand it reasonably well, but the process is screwed up enough that there are a lot of weird things I'm not on top of. In Washington State the Democrats caucus and hold a primary. In Washington DC the Republicans hold a primary, but the Democrats caucus. Then there are the conventions, which gets us into Richard Daley. And the whole bizaro electoral college. And what happens in case of a tie.

While (unsuccessfully) searching for a website that laid the whole story out I stumbled onto a nice map, prepared by the Taxachusetts secretary of commonwealth, showing the 2004 primary dates. Super Tuesday is a nice bright shade of red. The map shows how much stuff now happens before Super Tuesday. The only drawback: no indication of how many electoral votes each state has.