Politics and elections 83selected by conventions at county level or by ad hoc meetings of party mem-
bers.
In earlier times the convention was the arena in which presidential can-
didates were really chosen. To gain the nomination a candidate must win an
absolute majority of the votes in the convention, and balloting will continue
until a candidate gets more than 50 per cent of delegate votes. Thus, in the
months before the convention, candidates must try to get as many of the
delegates as possible committed to their support, in the hope that when the
convention opens they will have either sufficient support to win outright
on the first ballot or at least enough committed votes to convince waverers
that they are in a position eventually to win the nomination. Before primary
elections became an important part of the process of selecting delegates the
conventions were the battleground in which party factions fought out their
differences. This could result in numerous ballots being necessary before
agreement could be reached on a candidate who was acceptable to a majority
of the delegates. In 1924 it took 103 ballots for the Democratic convention to
nominate John W. Davis. It was also possible for a compromise candidate to
secure the nomination while not being one of the leaders on the first ballot.
In 1940 Wendell Willkie won the Republican nomination on the sixth ballot,
although on the first he had received only 105 votes compared with 360 for
Thomas Dewey and 189 for Senator Taft. The extension of the primaries to
cover three-quarters of the states, together with the way that television helps
to crown the emerging favourite candidate before the end of the primary sea-
son, now make extended balloting unlikely, and candidates are much more
likely to be nominated on the first ballot. The convention then becomes little
more than a coronation ceremony to honour the new chief.
The reasons for this can be seen in the developments that have taken place
since the 1970s in the methods of choosing presidential candidates. Presi-
dential primary elections have increased in both number and significance,
and, combined with the enhanced role of television in electoral politics, have
transformed the nature of the presidential race. At the 1968 Democratic
Convention in Chicago, held under the aegis of Mayor Richard J. Daley in an
atmosphere of violence and tension, the representative of the liberal activist
elements of the party, Eugene McCarthy, was beaten by the candidate of the
party establishment, Hubert Humphrey, who then lost the general election
to Republican Richard Nixon. In the following year the McGovern–Fraser
Commission on Party Structure recommended a number of changes in the
method of delegate selection to the Democratic National Convention in or-
der to democratise its proceedings. These and later changes were intended
to ensure the quota representation of women and minority groups, and to as-
sure a truer reflection of the voting in the composition of the delegation from
each state. These reforms certainly achieved their aim of taking the decisions
about candidate selection away from the political bosses in the Democratic
Party. At the Democratic Convention in New York City in 1980, 50 per cent of
the delegates were women, 14 per cent were blacks and 6 per cent were from