Question

How are the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates chosen?

Answer 1

http://www.answers.com/Q/How_are_the_presidential_candidates_chosen

Answer 2

Presidential candidates are self-declared, meaning they decide to run on there own. During primaries, many candidates from each party, Democratic and Republican, run for the nomination. Each one of the 50 states have either a Caucus or a primary election. In a primary election, people go to the polls and vote for the best candidate in the party they are registered for. If you are a registered republican then you vote for the best republican candidate and visa-versa. In a caucus, a group of democrats and a group of republicans from the state meet at a certain place in the state, usually a school, town center, or lecture hall. The groups are then spilt up into smaller groups for what candidate they support. When this is all done, a mediator counts the heads for each person in a group and the candidate with the most people in his or her group wins the nomination for that state.

In the national election, each state votes on the first Tuesday in November. This race is between one republican, one democrat and sometimes a third party candidate. If a candidate gets the most votes in a state then the electoral college awards that candidate how ever many votes that state carries. For example, Massachusetts has 12 electroral votes. If Barrack Obama wins the most votes in MA then he will be awarded 12 electoral votes. A candidate needs 270 out of 538 votes to win the presidency.

And that is the process.