The Pennsylvania delegates split, explained

PITTSBURGH — As Pennsylvania voters head to the polls on Tuesday, they’ll be asked to elect delegates to represent them at either the Democratic or Republican National Conventions this summer. But depending on your party, your vote for the delegate could carry more weight at the convention than your vote for president on the primary ballot.

So we’ve talked to both parties so that we can offer you an explanation of what will happen on Tuesday.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich are all battling for Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates. Those delegates are actually divided into two groups.

The first group of 17 will be given to the candidate who wins the popular vote on Tuesday, April 26. Those delegates are bound, which means that when they head to Cleveland in July for the Republican National Convention, they are required to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote. But in a contested convention, there are often multiple rounds of voting – and those 17 delegates are only bound for the first round. After casting that first ballot, they are free to vote for whoever they would personally like to see as president.

The second group of delegates, 54 of them, are spread across the state. Each congressional district gets 3 delegates, and republicans will vote for them directly at the polls on Tuesday. Only the delegate's name will be listed, and not their personal preference for candidate. That's important, because those 54 delegates are not bound by anything other than their preference when they get to Cleveland. Some of those delegates have promised to vote according to the preference of their congressional district. Others have already said they will vote for specific candidates. Donald Trump has listed the delegate candidates who have pledged to support him on his website: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/pennsylvania. Channel 11 has reached out to both the Cruz and Kasich campaigns to ask if they have similar lists available.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

There are a total of 210 delegates from Pennsylvania that will head to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this July. Of those, 21 are “superdelegates”, which means they are not bound to any candidate based on a state-wide vote.

The remaining 189 delegates are pledged, which means they will be bound to a specific candidate based on the primary vote. 127 of those delegates will be selected on April 26, and will be voted on by people heading to the polls Tuesday. Delegates are awarded across the state by congressional district, and are given proportionally. In our area, the 3^rd, 12^th, and 18^th congressional districts each have 6 delegates. The 9^th congressional district has 5 delegates, and the 14^th congressional district has 9 delegates.

Based on the popular vote at the primary, the delegates who are elected will be told who to vote for. Rather than a “winner take all” formula, those delegates will be given to the candidates proportionally (i.e. in a congressional district with 6 delegates, if 40% of the popular vote was for Bernie Sanders and 60% was for Hillary Clinton, 2 delegates would be told to vote for Sanders at the convention, while the other 4 would be told to vote for Clinton).

The final 62 delegates will be elected by the leadership of the Democratic State Committee meeting in June. Those will also be awarded proportionally to the candidates based on the popular vote.

Cox Media Group