Hillary has won more of the superdelegates who are added to the mix to make sure that that voters don't get too much say in the process. If you look at her page on CNN, you can see where her delegates are from and what type they are.

Do any candidates support election system reform? Cause that's looking mighty attractive right now.

(But note that 4 years ago, Dean had the support of quite a few superdelegates)

What I don't understand is why they say that Hillary won New Hampshire when came close to a tie in the vote count and got the exact same number of pledged delegates and Obama actually got one more superdelegate. It seems like he won. Not that I have a horse in the race, I'd support any of the top three, but I'm just amazed at how inaccurate the reporting is.

I agree the system is confusing, octothorpe, but if I was reporting on the primary, I'd be saying that Hillary won, because she got 8,000 (or 2%) more votes than Obama. The NH primary is interesting and newsworthy because it's one of the first true tests of public opinion, not because of the actual delegate results. Hillary won the most votes; the fact that the delegate numbers don't reflect that is just an artefact of the stupid system, not the real issue here.

what a crazy system. Thanks for the illumination, octothorpe.

I'm curious, do many other countries do open elections for party nominations? I thought that in most countries, parties assign candidates internally.

In Canada parties elect their candidates at a party convention.

In Britain, party leadership contests are entirely separate from the General Election, and happen whenever the leader of the party resigns or is ousted, rather than in the run-up to an election. Often, the leader of the party which lost the election will resign. The party's MPs nominate some of themselves as potential successors. Much skulduggery, back-biting and persuasion occurs at this stage. How the party leader is then chosen varies by party. Generally, some kind of election involving all the party members takes place. Members are people who pay a small fee to the party; there's no party registration system. Until recently the Conservative party was an exception to this: only MPs could vote in the leadership election. Before MP-only elections, and as late as the 60s, the Tories' system was for the party's éminence grises to meet in smoke-filled rooms and 'announce' the new leader to the country. In the Labour party, many people have a vote by virtue of being a member of a union affiliated to the party, rather than actually having joined Labour. In the last Labour leadership contest, Gordon Brown was regarded as the anointed successor to Tony Blair and nobody was successfully nominated to oppose him, so there was no actual election.

Campaigns involve far less money and effort than in America. The system is in some ways less democratic, but on the bright side it all takes far less time. Overall, party leadership in the UK matters less than the nomination in the US, since a Prime Minister has none of the constitutional power, and less political power, than a President does.

Dean had the support of quite a few superdelegates

And Dean now chairs the DNC. Since he was such a critic of the process when a candidate, I am disappointed he hasn't done more with reform.

^ I agree. It's kinda like the UAW: it was necessary at one time but is now antiquated.

Do any candidates support election system reform?

This is party rule reform [/pedant], and it actually does change non-trivially almost each (prez) election cycle. The superdelegates themselves were a reform following the campaign of Ted Kennedy in 1980, which could have led to a sitting President losing his own party's nomination, which honchos feared was suicidal. The SDs are free to be wooed by anyone, but they act as a ballast against populist candidates. The superdelegate count continues to be a guarantee that nearly all top elected officials in the party (Congress, Governors) have seats at the convention.

do many other countries do open elections for party nominations?

To be technically correct, the party itself is doing the nominating, but some states use primaries. To attend Iowa's caucuses you had to be a registered Democrat for a certain period of time. There's even a third type -- the state/county convention. The GOP in Wyoming used that over the weekend and Romney won.

In a few states like Wisconsin there is an "open" primary, where you don't have to declare your party, meaning you're free to vote for a Republican congressional candidate and a Democratic presidential candidate. This makes the parties really, really nervous, because when (as often happens) the other party is running an unopposed incumbent, then their members can use strategic voting to boost the chances of what they consider the easiest candidate to run against.

The superdelegates are there in part because of similar fears that independents and moderates who don't have the party's long-term interests at heart will bounce from party to party, and in part because of fears of getting dragged to the fringes by passionate radicals.