At long last, we have reached the end of the 2016 primary election season and are making our transition into the big game - the general election. Both the Democrats and Republicans have raised up a presumptive nominee who will carry their banner on the road to November, but first they must officially select them at their national convention. The GOP will be holding their convention first, running from July 18-21. The Democrats will follow the week after, going July 25-28. So what's all this convention stuff about? How does this stuff work? Let's take a closer look.

The gist of how things go

Conventions are huge gatherings held every four years by the two major parties in the summer before the presidential election. There is no permanent location for the conventions, and each election cycle, a city is chosen to host the event (this year, the Dems have chosen Philadelphia and the GOP has chosen Cleveland). The convention serves two main functions: firstly, one of the party's candidates is selected as the official nominee for the presidency; and secondly, the party platform (a list of the party's political values and stances) is discussed and written.

The convention is attended by party-affiliated legislators, volunteers, activists, diplomats, campaign staffs, and folks we call delegates. Delegates, as you might have surmised from the race to the nomination, are kinda a big deal. Each state and U.S. territory are granted a certain amount of delegates to go and represent them at the national convention. The size of each delegation is mostly determined by the state/territory's population, but some other factors can play into it like the number of party-loyal legislators that state/territory sends to Congress. The party leadership back home usually make someone part of the delegation as a reward for solid service to the party, activism, and things like that - these people can be just average folks like you and me.

The convention is often held in a giant arena or complex. During each day, everyone attends meetings and workshops to prepare for the campaign ahead. In the evenings, the cool stuff happens. Everyone gathers in the main arena to watch rallies and listen to speeches given by a list of featured speakers for the week. These are often filled with a lot of pomp and fanfare, plenty of red, white, and blue confetti, that sort of thing. Afterwards, everyone generally retires to hotels or nearby bars to enjoy a few drinks and the company of their fellow partisans. The final night of the convention, though, is the grand finale and when all those delegates come into play.

Now, if the party has one of their own as the current president and they're running for reelection, it's generally understood that they are the nominee, and everyone pretty much agrees as such. All the delegates basically go, "Yeah, four more years of -------!" The president comes out and makes a speech, and that's it. But otherwise, the nominee must be selected through votes from each delegation. The rules for how the delegates vote is a little different for each party. The GOP in most cases has each delegation go wholesale to whoever got the most votes in that respective state's primary election (e.g. John Kasich won the most votes in Ohio's Republican primary back in March, so he will receive all 66 of Ohio's delegates).

The Democrats work a little differently though and award delegates proportionally (e.g. Bernie Sanders got 59% of the vote in the Colorado primary while Hillary Clinton received 40%, so Sanders will get 41 delegates and Clinton will get 25). The Dems also have these weird things called "super-delegates" (which have caused quite a bit of frustration this year, might I add). Super-delegates are all the governors and members of Congress who are part of the Democratic Party, and they can vote for whoever they want regardless of how their state voted. In any case, the delegates are all "pledged" to vote according to these rules. At the end of the roll-call vote, the votes are tallied, and whichever candidate receives over 50% of the vote is declared the nominee. Then, cue the balloons, confetti, celebrations, yadda yadda yadda.

But despite all the pomp and circumstance...

Party conventions today aren't quite like they used to be back in the day. Until after the turn of the century, primary elections weren't held. Instead, parties' congressional delegations just picked who among them would run for president in what is called a caucus. When parties first began holding conventions in the early and mid-nineteenth century, it was a way for the average voter to become more involved in party politics by having their wishes represented by delegates. Of course, when you open up political involvement to a whole bunch of people, some chaos can ensue. Party officials considered the convention the time and place to debate and decide who would truly be best to represent their interests in the presidential election. Things would often get heated as, through each of the three or four days of the convention, speakers would take to the stage and give great and lofty speeches about why such-and-such candidate was the real deal and should be the nominee.

When the vote was finally held, sometimes no one ended up getting the majority, so another ballot would be given. This would go on until back-room deals were struck, the less-popular candidates would drop out and throw their delegates behind a leading candidate, and someone would eventually come out on top. Sometimes things got ridiculous; at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, delegates had to vote no less than 103 times until John W. Davis got the majority and was made the nominee. Of course, there never was a President Davis, so you can probably imagine all those delegates were pretty angry that they sat sweating their asses off in Madison Square Garden for two weeks all for nothing.

These days, that intrigue is (fortunately, in some ways) mostly gone. Because most states now have primaries, it's usually predetermined to whom the delegates will go to. Usually, a front-runner emerges, and eventually in the course of winning so many states, it will be calculated that they will get enough delegates to win a majority at the convention, and the competition is basically over. Technically it's not over until the fat lady sings - er, I mean, the delegates actually vote. But for all intents and purposes, the leading candidate "clinches" the nomination. There hasn't been a "brokered convention" - the way things used to be run where the nominee wasn't known until it was finally decided at the convention - since 1952.

Thus, the conventions we have today are kind of a formality in a way. Right now in the summer of 2016, we already know that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have won enough delegates to clinch their respective party nominations. There are still some extremely tiny loopholes through which things could get a little wonky. Remember how I said delegates are pledged to vote according to the party rules which align them based on who won their state? Technically they only have to do that on the first ballot. If no one were to get a majority on the first vote, the delegates could really vote for whoever they wanted on all subsequent ballots. But the odds of it even going to a second ballot in either convention are negligible at best.

The road ahead

So why do we still have these conventions? As my favorite political science professor once put it, national conventions now are just a nice excuse for party officials to rub elbows, show off, and get drunk. No, but really, all joking aside - today's party conventions serve the purpose of unifying the party after what can often be a nasty, divisive primary campaign season. It's a time for party members to come together, compromise with each other to create a solid set of political beliefs to move forward with, and to prepare for the long road ahead that leads to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The 2016 primary season has been a crazy one, and these national conventions will doubtless be worthy of attention. As the Republican establishment remains leery of the businessman-turned-TV star from New York, Mr. Donald Trump and as the Democrats attempt to create an uncertain alliance between the Bernie and Hillary camps, the next two weeks will give us a fascinating glimpse into what lies ahead in the months until Election Day.

Now, I know some of you are thinking, "But, Brandon, you didn't say a word about any of the rising third-party candidates." I just wanted to write on the two big conventions this week, but don't you worry, my friend - you can expect a word from me about the nominees from the Libertarian Party and the Green Party very soon.