Proportional Representation vs. Winner Take All

What complications might result from a large field of candidates remaining competitive through a substantial portion of the primary season, especially if e winner is decided in a given state by plurality rather than majority vote?

Consider, for example, Pat Buchanan’s victory over Robert Dole in the 1996 New Hampshire primary with only a 27.8% plurality. What did “victory” mean in this context? It did not mean that Buchanan forced Dole (who received 26.7%) into a sudden death run-off. All it meant was that he narrowly won one round out of many more to come. Buchanan was “victorious” over Dole in the same sense that Pyrrhus was “victorious” over Rome. New Hampshire ended up being Buchanan’s one and only “win,” and at the end of the 1996 primary season he had cumulatively garnered only 21% of the popular vote to Dole’s 59%, who won 38 out of 41 primaries (Steven Forbes won the other two). If delegates are awarded on a proportional basis (as the Brock Commission recommended), it does no harm to the democratic process when first place is a plurality rather than a majority.

The Graduated Random System focuses specifically on solving the scheduling mess into which the presidential nomination process has degenerated. Other issues, such as proportional representation versus winner take all can be treated separately. For instance, rather than coupling this issue with the scheduling issue (e.g. imposing a scheduling penalty for state that refuse to give up its “winner take all” primary), the Brock Commission recommended that any state materially violating the rules would automatically lose a substantial portion of its delegation to the national convention. This was a recommendation that was separate from its recommendation of the Delaware Plan, which like the Graduated Random System, is a scheduling model.