Talk:Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2004

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Contents

[edit] Early discussion

This page will soon be merged with U.S. presidential election, 2004. If you object, say so here: Talk:U.S._presidential_election,_2004#Moving_Democrats_to_own_page

I've decided not to delete this page altogether...it appears to be a potentially useful stub, if someone were to flesh it out. However, the idea of maintaining the timeline here was ill conceived, and thus I moved that material back to the main 2004 election page -- RobLa 06:22, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've replaced the long and visually horrendous list of primary and caucus results into what I hope is an understandable table format. Obviously, one we get towards Super Tuesday, we'll have to add another table below it... the other alternative would be to turn the table by 90 degrees... - Seth Ilys 01:38, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Fantastic idea, and bravo! I really like the format - compacting it really communicates a lot. The good news about adding a second table is that presumably many of the candidates have/will have dropped out, so the second table will be smaller, as will the third and fourth. Given 51 states/districts, we could either try to cram 17 states into 3 tables, or have 13 states in 4 tables. I think 4 tables will be fine. -- RobLa 05:23, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I haven't calculated how many, but a number of states don't have primaries or caucuses, so we may only need 3 tables. --Minesweeper 09:13, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Yes, great job packing a lot of information in a small space. Rotating 90° makes sense, since the "states" axis is the one that will grow. However, formatting appears to work best with the states across the top. If it's too much trouble to rotate, then just having multiple tables is fine in my book. --Minesweeper 09:13, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why is this article called "primary" and not "primaries?" or "primaries and caucuses"? Adam 01:45, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps "U.S. Democratic Party Presidential Nomination, 2004" ...that's what this is all about -- RobLa 05:23, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination, 2004 will do. --Jiang

I attempted to rearrange the table on this page, putting the candidates along the top and the states along the side (the table can't expand enough horizontally to fit in all the states that will eventually come up, and so I was trying to set it up so that it could expand down the page rather than across it). However, something didn't work with the HTML, so I reverted my edit. I haven't been able to find where exactly the problem is, but the table always appears at the very end of the page, not in the proper section (despite appearing in the correct place in the Wiki code). My attempt at a new version of the table is in the Page History - is there someone who can possibly work out exactly what part I messed up? Even if people would rather keep the original table, I'd quite like to know what I did wrong for future reference. Thanks. -- Vardion 12:21, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I restored Vardion's table and updated; someone will come along and fix the HTML so it displays in the proper position; but the improvement to the table is fantastic... (I also restored the candidates to alphabetical order, because it would be a small pain to move each candidate to the end as they drop out...) - Seth Ilys 14:24, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I've posted a little note at Wikipedia:Village pump asking for someone to take a look at it. Thanks for trying to fix it - the problem seems very difficult to pin down, and I wasn't having any luck with it. (Thanks for re-alphabeticizing the candidates, too). -- Vardion 03:21, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I seem to have nailed it: there was a single missing </small> tag throwing the whole thing off. If it's any consolation, I never would have spotted it myself; I ran the table code through a computer program that automatically checks for things like that. —Paul A 04:10, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, that's great. I'd never have found something like that. I'll have to find one of those checking programs, I think... - Vardion 04:29, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have removed Lyndon LaRouche due to the reasons given at Talk:U.S._presidential_election,_2004#LaRouche_deleted. -- iHoshie 04:50, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] wow! great chart

i love the chart. it is easy to follow. kudos! however, the delegate totals don't seem to add up. Where did Kucinich get his 2? Where did Sharpton get his 12? Kingturtle 06:00, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

From what I can gather, they're from so-called "superdelegates" (important party officials, etc.) who are not specifically bound to support a particular candidate by any primary or caucus. Also, they can change their vote up to convention time, so the current numbers are tentative. See [1]. --Minesweeper 08:48, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)
It might be useful to add a line to the table that lists superdelegate counts. Additionally, I recently read something about expatriate Democrats. Apparently, the people living abroad (estimated around 7 million people) get nine total delegates, so maybe it's not really worth worrying about (though it shows yet another way in which D.C. gets shafted :-p) [2] —Mulad 21:28, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Added clarification as a footnote to the table. - Seth Ilys 21:51, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What's up with Wesley Clark's total number of delegates? When I add up the numbers in his row, I get to 68, but the total is only 57. He cannot have a negative number of superdelegates, can he? Andre Engels 14:11, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think it had to do with state-level pledged delegates in Arizona, but very little of the delegate selection process makes sense to me. I'm getting numbers from CNN's website; the total delegate scorecard shows Clark with only 14 delegates from Arizona, while the Arizona numbers show 22. Clark's individual data only show a discrepancy between "initial" and "current" delegate count in Arizona, too. Jxg 23:24, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)


I added a superdelegate row, using data from CNN. Jxg 02:28, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] dates

it is useful to the reader to see the dates each candidate dropped out. Please put those dates back in. Kingturtle 23:17, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Should we color in Dean's victory and second-place finish(es) after Feb. 18? He didn't formally drop out of the race, after all, but "stopped actively campaigning". Jxg 01:34, 2004 Mar 3 (UTC)


Of course we should. Vermont voted for him, and he'll get their delegates to the convention. Neow 02:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)


(Naturally we should enter his numbers into the table, but as it stands now his column is bright FFE8E8 all the way down, despite his third-place finish in Idaho.) Thanks. Jxg 02:20, 2004 Mar 3 (UTC)

Super Tuesday delegate counts are available at Yahoo. Kingturtle 02:48, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The 44th President

It is less than a year till January 20, 2005! By the time John Kerry is inaugurated on that day, I wonder what people will say! Interestingly, this is the first time in 200 years when there was a President elected in a year evenly divisible by 40 who survived his full 4-year term.

Hopefully...the term's not over yet. Don't jinx it. --Goobergunch 18:10, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for narrative

Much of the current article was pieced together from bits of other articles. Here's the list of articles I copied prose from:

I think that's all of them, but I may have missed one or two. -- RobLa 20:29, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Iraq War

Does this section really belong in this article? It barely has anything to do with the actual topic, and has more to do with POV statements both for and against certain actions by the President during the war that have nothing to do with the Democratic nomination process. Jfiling 00:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The war was the backdrop for that period of the race in 2003 (and pretty much the whole race). It may be appropriate to shorten this section, but it's hard to construct a narrative that ignores the war. -- RobLa 22:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)