DATELINE: Fort Stockton, Texas

The latest election news is that John McCain has just beaten Mitt Romney in Florida’s Republican primary, which is the last election until next week’s Elephantine Tuesday, when 22 states vote at once – the biggest day in the history of American primaries. Here’s what McCain’s Floridian coalition of the willing looked like when we met some of it last week. Meanwhile Rudy Giuliani’s wacky Florida-or-bust strategy backfired completely, when the state’s voters opted for the latter, deciding they liked Rudy better when he was making cameos in Adam Sandler movies. He finished far back in third place, and is about to drop out to endorse McCain, meaning the Republican race is looking like a contest between Big Mac and the conservatives: the latter divided between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton won Florida’s Democratic primary, a contest which is electorally meaningless: the candidates signed a pledge not to compete there, and no delegates will be put forward to the party convention in August. Florida’s Democrats are being punished by the national Democratic party for moving their primary too far forward in the calendar, which is of course completely unfair on the state’s voters. The same thing happened in Michigan on 15 January. On both occasions, having agreed not to compete, Hillary claimed victory, bizarrely. It’s not really cricket to agree that you’re not in a contest, then claim victory – and thus all the positive news coverage – afterwards. Here’s what she said on CNN: “It’s a really big deal. I’m thrilled. Obviously the people of Florida felt so strongly about this election [that] several million of them turned out to vote in the Democratic primary.”

Note the phrase ‘several million’ there – the figure was approximately 1.3million. Big up yourself, as we say in London.

Another very weird Democratic election was the Nevada Caucus, on 19 January. On that occasion Hillary got 51% of the vote, Obama 45%. But thanks to local variations in support, Obama actually won more delegates than Hillary; so despite the media uniformly reporting a Hillary win, Obama actually ‘won’ the caucus, because he got more Nevada delegates (the same way Bush won the 2000 election, despite Gore getting a larger share of the popular vote). At least, I think Obama won; trying to explain this to you has given me a pounding headache, and the realisation that I still don’t really understand. Allow someone else to explain:

On Jan. 19, party caucuses meet in each precinct to choose delegates to county conventions. The delegates selected are not bound to any candidate. At the county conventions on Feb. 23, delegates to the state convention are chosen. They are not bound to any candidate. The state convention is April 18-20, during which delegates choose 25 of the 33 delegates to the national convention. Sixteen of the 25 delegates are allocated proportionally to presidential candidates based on the support for the candidates in each of the state’s three Congressional districts. Nine delegates are allocated to candidates based on the support among all of the delegates attending the convention. The remaining eight unpledged delegates are chosen from party leaders.

There you are then. Simple.