SecretMethod70

Wow, between will saying that if "a candidate wins a state they get all the delegates" (100% untrue for Democrats) and the lack of thorough explanations here, I'd come away from this thread more confused if I were not from the US.

I'm going to go backwards, for the sake of clarity. Also, for the sake of space and time, I'll mostly avoid the explanations for why things are done this way: that debate has been going on ever since the beginning of the country.

In November, we have our presidential election, which is technically decided by the Electoral College. To understand the electoral college, you must understand that we have two legislative bodies - the House and the Senate. Each state gets 2 senators, while the number of representatives in the House is based on population. The number of electors who represent any given state in the Electoral College is the same as that state's number of House representatives and senators combined. For example, my home state of Illinois has 19 representatives in the House, so we have a total of 21 electoral college votes. In the November general election, the person who wins a state gets all that state's electors, regardless of how much they won by. There are a few states which have changed their rules so that electors are given proportional to the vote in that state.

So now, what about the primaries? The primaries are for the parties to decide who their candidate will be. We have two major parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. In November, one Republican will face off against one Democrat, but for now the primaries are trying to decide who those people will be. The way the candidates are chosen for each party is by delegates. They each have a convention in the late summer/fall of the election year, and the delegates gather there and vote on who should be the candidate. The number of delegates a state has is based on population and determined by the national parties, which is why the Democrats and Republicans have a different number of total delegates for their respective conventions. Those delegates are mostly chosen based on how primary voting goes.

Primaries are run by the state parties, so different states do have different rules. In some states, in order to vote in a party's primary, you must be registered with that party. In others, primaries are open to independent voters. One thing that remains true is that you cannot vote in more than one primary (i.e. you can't vote in both the Republican and Democratic primary). Delegates are allocated differently between different parties and states. In the Republican party, many states award delegates in a winner-take-all fashion, much like the electoral college electors are awarded in the general election. So, for example, in West Virginia Huckabee won 52% of the vote while Romney won 47%. Huckabee therefore gets all 18 of West Virginia's delegates. The Democrats, on the other hand, generally award delegates proportionally based on either county or voting district (I'm not exactly sure which). This is why, for example, even though Obama won Alabama 56% to Clinton's 42%, Obama only got 20 delegates while Clinton got 21. Based on the degree to which Clinton won, and the areas in which she won, she managed to get 1 more delegate than Obama, despite losing by 14% statewide. Some states, such as California, have a mixture of methods. Most of California's delegates are awarded proportionally based on the district or county (again, I forget which), but there are also a handful of California delegate positions which are awarded proprtionally based on the statewide vote.

It's important to note, before I continue, that the delegates are different people for different campaigns. So, if Obama wins in an area, one set of people go to the convention, whereas if Clinton wins in that same area, a different set of people go to that convention. At the convention, those people are required to vote for their candidate in the first vote to elect a nominee. So, the pledged delegates for Edwards still have to vote for him at the convention even though he has dropped out. A candidate requires a majority of delegates to win the nomination though, so if no winner is declared after the first vote, delegates can change who they vote for. So, for example, if neither Clinton nor Obama gets a majority of the delegates going into the convention, the Edwards delegates would get a chance to vote for the person they believe to be the better candidate. This is why it's important to remember that the Edwards delegates are Edwards supporters, not just any random person. If Edwards endorses one of the candidates, for example, that could hold significant sway over who they vote for.

This gets a little more complicated once you add in the superdelegates. In the Democratic Party, about 20% of the total delegates are superdelegates: party members who are not pledged to vote in any particular way. Superdelegates are made up primarily of Democrats who hold office or work within the party leadership. Many of them have not yet said who they plan to support, but many also have. Currently, about 200 superdelegates have come out in support of Clinton while about 100 have come out in support of Obama. It's important to remember that they can change their minds at any time.

The Republicans also have non-pledged delegates, but to a much smaller degree.

I'm sure I've missed details here and there, so feel free to ask more questions, but I hope that cleared some things up.

In short:

Primary voters vote for delegates who vote for general election candidates at the party's national convention.
General election voters vote for electoral college members who then vote for president.
It should also be noted that the overall results almost always mirror the popular vote.

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