US elections: just what are delegates?

With the race for the Democrat nomination so close, the notion of ‘delegates’ continues to come up. What are they, and why are some ‘super’?

Here follows an excellent interactive link to a CNN page, which hopefully will shed some light on the issue:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/02/delegate.explainer/index.html

A quick point to make here for US Politics students (reading an article on the Economics blog about popular student misconceptions prompts me to point out one of the most common mistakes students make in American Politics exams) is that delegates are not to be confused with electors. Delegates particpate in the conventions held to determine who the presidential contendors will be. Electors vote in the Electoral College to determine who the president will be.