 <p>Some events can't be delegated using this method. 'focus' and 'blur' don't work, and in IE8 and lower 'change', 'submit' and 'reset' don't work either. It's actually in the <a href="http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html#section-156" rel="nofollow">annotated source of Backbone</a> but for some reason not in <a href="http://backbonejs.org/#View-delegateEvents" rel="nofollow">the documentation</a>.</p> <p>JQuery's documentation actually states that the method that Backbone uses (<a href="http://api.jquery.com/delegate/" rel="nofollow">$.delegate</a>) is now superseded by <a href="http://api.jquery.com/on/" rel="nofollow">$.on</a> which is able to handle those kinds of events.</p> <p>So your options are:</p> <ul> <li>overload Backbone.View.delegateEvents to use $.on instead of $.delegate</li> <li>manually bind the events as shown by EndangeredMassa.</li> </ul>