Delegation is hard to understand.

Each party has a certain number of delegates throughout the United States. These are typically people like you and me, but with a little more motivation and loyalty to one party or the other. Any member of the Democratic or Republican Party can get elected as a convention delegate. These elections are held after the state has held it’s presidential primary (it’s a safe bet to say most states will hold them in March this year) and are usually divided up according to Congressional District.

The reason they are held after the primary is because many states award delegates proportionally to each candidate. Let’s use Massachusetts as an example. We have 121 delegates to be awarded proportionally to each candidate who can get at least 15% of the vote.

The superdelegate is a little harder to explain.This a term that may be the most unnecessarily confusing of the entire campaign. Superdelgates are just like you and me, except even more successful. These are the elected officials (Governors, Congressmen, Senators) and party officials (party chairs, National Committee members) in any one state.

They are what is referred to as unpledged delegates. This simply means that they have not sworn allegiance to one candidate or the other. They are free to choose their candidate despite the results in the presidential primary.