The Delegate Fight: 2012

[Erc]

In a reminder to us all that the whims of the superdelegates may be fickle, we have the first switch of the season:

Carlos Méndez (PR) has switched his support from Gingrich to Romney.  This gives Romney the unanimous support of the Puerto Rico delegation.

[Erc]

Now 1131 pops up for some reason. So many numbers, so little time. Anyway, I revised my post above, while you were responding to my earlier text, deciding that I should read rule 15(b) as well just to make sure I was not putting my foot in it, which upon reading, just reinforced my opinion I think. So maybe you want to revise yours, or not.

No, the penalty is the number of delegates to the national convention from that state shall be reduced by fifty percent (50%), not "75%."

The Committee on Contests, the Republican National Committee, and the Committee on Credentials will I'm sure take all of these fine points into account, but nothing prevents the convention as a whole from simply rejecting their findings out of hand, so long as the contest was appealed all the way to the convention.

As for if sanctions are removed...I would be very surprised if the states do not have a full set of delegates lined up in case sanctions are removed (as they were in 2008).  I know for a fact certain states (NH, for instance, and I think MI) are going to submit a full slate of delegates and let the Contest Committee sort it out.

[Erc]

In a reminder to us all that the whims of the superdelegates may be fickle, we have the first switch of the season:

Carlos Méndez (PR) has switched his support from Gingrich to Romney.  This gives Romney the unanimous support of the Puerto Rico delegation.

There were six additional GA delegates (I'm guessing statewide) given to Romney, possibly some to Gingrich as well.

Don't quite know what you mean by that, but thanks for the heads up, as I did find something while I was poking around.

Apparently, the GA GOP says that the final delegate count out of Georgia was Gingrich 52 - Romney 21 - Santorum 3, not the 54-19-3 split that I had.

How could they have gotten this count?  The source I would first think of is the CD breakdowns; the breakdowns on the Georgia SoS website are still "Unofficial," although the election results as a whole have been certified.

Was Romney close to winning additional delegates at the expense of Gingrich in any CDs?  Looking at the results, it's a definite no---he's at least 6% off from it in every CD.

So basically, there are a few possiblities:

1) The reporting by CD was completely messed up and these "unofficial" numbers are completely unreliable.

2) We don't actually understand the GA GOP rules, but they seem pretty unambiguous...

3) The Georgia GOP messed up, and the Gingrich camp should challenge this.

Regardless, I have to trust the Georgia GOP over my own calculations, and will update the main post accordingly.

[Erc]

Now 1131 pops up for some reason. So many numbers, so little time. Anyway, I revised my post above, while you were responding to my earlier text, deciding that I should read rule 15(b) as well just to make sure I was not putting my foot in it, which upon reading, just reinforced my opinion I think. So maybe you want to revise yours, or not.

No, the penalty is the number of delegates to the national convention from that state shall be reduced by fifty percent (50%), not "75%."

Who implied that it was 75%?

There are a few reasonable ways to contest Florida delegates:

1) Remove all sanctions, delegates are allocated as they were by the original FL rules (WTA by CD and At-Large.  Gingrich picks up a few delegates, but Romney is the net winner).

2) Keep the 50% penalty, but seat a delegation that is more in line with the original FL rules (WTA by CD and At-Large.  Gingrich picks up a few delegates at the expense of Romney).

3) Penalize the state an additional 50%, but the state stays completely WTA (all delegates to Romney, this is the best case scenario for Gingrich).

Of these options, 3) is what J.J. is talking about and what has gotten some attention in the press.  For understandable reasons that have been discussed, this is unlikely to succeed, but it is a possibility.  2) is a more reasonable choice and may succeed.  1) is presumably actually the most likely outcome when all is said and done.

[Erc]

2) Keep the 50% penalty, but seat a delegation that is more in line with the original FL rules (WTA by CD and At-Large.  Gingrich picks up a few delegates at the expense of Romney).

I think there is a political problem.  Newt has to say "I want one rule to apply, but not the other."  It is possible, but it could offend a lot of people.  Conversely, Mitt could move to remove the early penalty but keep the WTA rule without a penalty.  I think there would be outrage at either, if it effects the result.

This is all a bit academic, anyway, as we've glossed over one important point.  Florida is going to submit its full delegation to the RNC secretary regardless.  This delegation consists of 54 delegates by CD, 42 delegates At-Large, and 3 RNC members.  [Of those, it's around 89 Romney - 10 Gingrich, worst-case scenario for Romney].

As Florida is trying to seat more delegates than it is entitled to by the rules, a contest is automatically triggered.  What final delegation will actually be seated is then up to the Committee on Contests, the Republican National Committee, the Committee on Credentials, and, ultimately, the Republican National Convention itself.

The Florida rules say that 50 At-Large delegates will be seated if "the Republican National Convention refuses to seat the full allotment of Florida delegates," but it really doesn't seem that the Florida rules could possibly apply at that point.  The Republican National Committee (which decides which 50 of the 99 delegates will appear on the Temporary Roll of the Convention) could defer to the Florida rules, but I don't think they'd need to.

A subsidiary point: the binding of the Florida delegates to a particular candidate, after the final delegation has been decided, may be even more of a wrangle than usual...

Also complicating this is redistricting, which was not finished before the primary.  Gingrich won 3 of Florida's 25 congressional districts (2000 boundaries), it's unclear how many he won on the 2010 boundaries.

[Erc]

RULE NO. 17
Vacancies in a State Delegation...

99 is greater than 50.  We're not dealing with vacancies in a delegation, we're dealing with Excess Delegates:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Republican National Committee decides which 50 of the 99 delegates is placed on the Temporary Roll, then the normal contest procedure ensues.

[Erc]

RULE NO. 17
Vacancies in a State Delegation...

99 is greater than 50.  We're not dealing with vacancies in a delegation, we're dealing with Excess Delegates:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Republican National Committee decides which 50 of the 99 delegates is placed on the Temporary Roll, then the normal contest procedure ensues.

That rule only deals with more delegates elected than there are positions.  There, in that circumstance, would be less than the authorized number of delegates, not "more."  It is a vacancy and would be filled as such.

According to the rules of the Republican Party (including the 50% penalty in rule 16), Florida is entitled to 50 delegates.  Florida, according to its own rules, will be sending a list to the RNC secretary with 99 delegates on it, more than they are entitled to.  This is an excess of delegates, and falls under Rule 18.

I am not discussing the scenario (which is what I think you're talking about) in which Florida sends a list of 50 delegates to the RNC, this is contested by someone from Florida, and in the ensuing contest, the sanctions are lifted and 99 delegates are seated.  The Florida GOP Rules clearly state that they will be sending the full 99 delegates to Tampa, unless the Republican National Convention refuses to seat them.

In any event, we will have a better picture of what Florida is planning to do after the delegates themselves are selected; delegates by CDs are selected at caucuses from February 7 - March 30, and the At-Large delegates are selected on April 28. Source.

[Erc]

Alaska has finished canvassing its votes from the Super Tuesday Presidential Preference Poll, and finalized its delegate count.

As was quite probable, Gingrich lost a delegate; Santorum was the beneficiary.

[Erc]

Romney barely scrapes by the threshold, winning 7 delegates to Santorum's 13.

Gingrich loses his last honest shot at delegates until May 8.

[Erc]

Erc, I don't think you're reading the rules right. The delegates that would have gone to candidate who did not meet the threshold become uncommitted. It should be Santorum 10, Romney 5, Uncommitted 5 (+5).

I went back and forth on that interpretation, as the RNC rules themselves seemed somewhat ambiguous.

Here are the rules in question:

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The question is, how to interpret that last line of Rule 20 (b).  What are "all other at large delegates"?  Since the rest of the rule was dealing with the at large delegates elected in accordance with Rule 19 (d), I figured that "all other at large delegates" referred to the other at large delegates, i.e. those elected in accordance with Rule 19 (e).  All 20 delegates under Rule 19 (d) are allocated by the results of the primary, among threshold-meeting candidates.

The other interpretation is that "all other at large delegates" refers to both those elected in accordance with Rule 19 (e) and anything left over from the allocation in the rest of Rule 20 (b).  This seems to go along better with the rest of Rule 20 (b), though it would render the second-to-last line of Rule 20 (b) rather superfluous.

On net, it seems that I chose the worse interpretation.  As the media have uniformly gone with the latter interpretation, I'll go along with them as well.

The authoritative statement would of course come from the LA GOP, but they're having bandwidth issues at the moment.

[Erc]

The last possible day for Colorado County Assemblies was today, though it appears the last in fact finished on the 25th.

Lack of centralized reporting and large numbers of explicitly 'Uncommitted' delegates (some of which may be unity Anti-Romney tickets, others of which may be stealth Paul delegates) make it hard to make accurate projections.

This source has some scattered results and general reporting; I know other articles have been posted elsewhere on the forums.

Congressional District Conventions are held on April 12 and 13, and the State Convention is on April 14.


Next on the agenda:  Minnesota's BPOU Conventions wrap up this Saturday, and we have the first State Convention of the season, in North Dakota, concluding its business on Sunday.

[Erc]

MN 7th District convention elects 2 Santorum Delegates and 1 Paul Delegate.

https://twitter.com/#!/patandersonmn

This should have been Santorum's best district, he got around 57% in the straw poll.

Thanks!  Moved a delegate from Santorum to Paul on the front page.

[Erc]

North Dakota chose its delegation Saturday morning.

It appears that the original slate of delegates nominated by the Committee on Permanent Organization was indeed elected at the convention; additional names were put forward in nomination on the floor, but none of them were elected.

The 25 delegates chosen include Rick Berg and John Hoeven (as expected), First Lady Betsy Dalrymple, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, and seven state legislators. 

The 28 delegates (the 25 chosen plus 3 RNC members) may choose as a group to vote based on the caucus results; however, they need not do so, in which case they are simply unpledged delegates.  If, as is rumored, most of the 25 are pro-Romney, they will likely choose not to follow the results of the caucus and just vote for Romney.

At least one of the 25 delegates (Gary Emineth) is in the Santorum camp.

When I get a full list of delegates I may change the main page; most likely the vast majority will move into the "Uncommitted" column and be treated like superdelegates.

[Erc]

Twitter rumor is 20 Romney, 6 Santorum, 2 Paul. 

I'm a bit skeptical of this, because the total is 28, and (as far as I know) the 3 RNC members haven't committed to a candidate yet.  Perhaps this may be including the RNC Committeeman and Committeewoman elected at the convention (whose terms start after the close of proceedings at Tampa), and assuming Stan Stein is in the Romney camp?

Hopefully we have a bit more info in the coming days.

[Erc]

Our good friends at Demconwatch have the list of all 25 delegates selected at the ND GOP state convention.

Of these, 5 can be explicitly confirmed to be for Romney and 1 for Santorum, while the intentions of the other 19 cannot be confirmed at this time.


In other news, one of Huntsman's three delegates in New Hampshire, Paul Collins, has endorsed Romney, while the other two have confirmed they remain uncommitted.  As New Hampshire is subject to sanctions due to its early timing, it is unclear which (presumably two) of the three will be seated, so the main page count remains unchanged at the moment.

[Erc]

I'll be treating North Dakota's 25 delegates as superdelegates, so we'd better start keeping track of them.

The official list of delegates and alternates elected can be found here.

John Hoeven (US Senator) - ROMNEY
Rick Berg (US Congressman)
Betsy Dalrymple (First Lady)
Wayne Stenehjem (Attorney General) - ROMNEY
Robert Harms (NDGOP treasurer) - ROMNEY
Kyle Handegard (associated with Rick Berg's office)
Clare Carlson - ROMNEY
Gary Emineth (former NDGOP chairman) - SANTORUM
Joe Miller (State Senator) - SANTORUM
Margaret Sitte (Former State Rep.) - PAUL
Delores Rath (2004, 2008 Delegate)
Jim Poolman (ND GOP Vice-Chairman) - ROMNEY
Kelly Schmidt (State Treasurer)
Paul Henderson - PAUL
Gary Lee (State Senator)
Francis Klein
Mike Schatz (State Rep.)
Carol Nitschke
Shane Goettle (U.S. House candidate) - ROMNEY, but would support a proportional allocation
Caren Mikesh
Karen Rohr (State Rep.)
Craig Headland (State Rep.)
Paul Owens
Jim Kasper (State Rep.)
John Kerian - SANTORUM

And, don't forget the three RNC Members:

Stan Stein
Curly Haugland
Sandy Boehler - ROMNEY

This gives a confirmed total of Romney - 5, Santorum - 3, Paul - 2, with 18 still uncommitted.  If the general rumor of Romney - 20, Santorum - 6, Paul - 2 is correct, it means the vast majority of the above are going to break for Romney.  However, since several of the above have explicitly refused to make an endorsement (Rick Berg, Betsy Dalrymple), I'm disinclined to completely trust the rumors.

The AP has surveyed all 25 delegates, and found that 12 supported Romney, 8 supported Santorum, 2 supported Paul, and 1 supported Gingrich.  2 were still undecided.

This leaves open the question of whether the delegation as it stands will vote according to the results of the caucuses, or according to their personal preferences.

Shane Goettle, a Romney supporter, has said he will support a proportional allocation of their votes, and it seems that others may agree with him---of course, if this should come down to a fight at the convention where every delegate matters, I doubt the Romney supporters would be so quick to agree to a plan like that.

[Erc]

In other news:

Tennessee has finally certified the results of its primary.

As we knew already, Santorum won CDs 1-8 and placed second in CD 9 (which Romney won).

Romney placed second in all other CDs except CDs 6 and 8, where Gingrich placed second.

Basically, as far as the front page is concerned---Romney placed second in CD 4 instead of Gingrich, and picks up a delegate at Gingrich's expense.

TN delegate breakdown is 29 - 17 - 9, S - R - G.

[Erc]

Romney sweeps Maryland and DC, wins Wisconsin by about 33 - 9.  While we aren't entirely certain about the exact Wisconsin breakdown, this is clearly a good night for Romney on the delegate front.

Santorum did better than expectations (my expectations, certainly), but we're in WTA (or nearly WTA) country now, and close doesn't quite cut it.

My current Santorum-favorable projection for future contests (it had Santorum winning Wisconsin before today) has Romney coming in with 51 more votes than he needs for a majority, even if every single remaining superdelegate breaks against him.

While it's still of course possible that Romney won't have clinched in an extremely technical sense by the end of this process (not all of his delegates will be technically bound to him, and could still change their minds or be Paulista fifth columnists), that's a hope even more distant than Gary Hart's in 84.

Santorum needs to completely shake up the race in order to have a shot at this, and Gingrich dropping out wouldn't cut it at this point.   Basically, he needs to follow up a win in Pennsylvania by sweeping all the May states, and then somehow turning that into a win in California...and possibly New Jersey as well, while we're at it.

May is a very good month for Santorum (if he survives April)...but if CA/NJ don't budge from the Romney camp, Romney gets declared the nominee June 5.

[Erc]

A change in the delegate selection process this late in the game is very expressly against RNC rules.  While a vote at the convention itself (excluding Texas' delegates) could overturn that, there's no way that, if Texas were the deciding factor in stopping a Romney majority, that the vote would pass on the floor.

[Erc]

Alabama has finished and reviewed the certification of last month's primary results.

The biggest mess, as we all knew, was CD 7, due to its huge number of split precincts.  After a review of results there, it was determined that Gingrich did in fact beat Romney for second place there.  Sadly I don't have numbers for you guys.

The resulting delegate count is Santorum - 22, Gingrich - 13, Romney - 12, luckily enough in exact accordance with my original projection.

[Erc]

Those fate of those four delegate slots in Ohio (where Santorum won the vote but had no delegate candidates) is still up in the air.  Romney is actively pushing to have his delegates (which were on the ballot) seated instead.  There are similarly 15 alternate slots---which may prove important if any of Santorum's delegates, many of whom were chosen in an extremely slapdash manner, fail to make it to the convention.

It seems the matter may be decided next week, when the State Central Committee meets on April 13.

[Erc]

The RNC apparently keeps a similar post updated from time to time; they get their counts directly from the state parties.  As is understandable, it only tracks delegates from states that bind their delegates (or 'morally' bind them, in the case of Illinois and Ohio), so many caucus states are left out.

The only discrepancies between their count and mine are in Alabama and Tennessee, where Gingrich has an extra delegate at the expense of Romney.  All the other media sources seem to agree with my count, though.

Between this and those two weird delegates in Georgia, I don't know what's going on down South.

[Erc]

The AP has interviewed North Dakota's 28 delegates, and found that the Twitter rumors were, of course, exaggerated.

Romney - 13
Santorum - 8
Paul - 2
Gingrich - 1
Uncommitted - 4

More tellingly, however, it seems that the delegation may, despite the large amount of Romney support, decide to vote on the basis of the caucus after all.  One Romney supporter (US House candidate Shane Goettle) was quoted as saying that he would vote as necessary to ensure that the delegation's vote reflects the caucuses, and the AP has implied that this is the general consensus.

Of course, in the event this actually does go to Tampa, it's likely going to be every man for himself.

To reflect this uncertainty, the main page will give each candidate the minimum number of delegates among the two counts (i.e. their worst-case scenario).  This works out to be:

Santorum - 8
Romney - 7
Paul - 2
Gingrich - 1
Unallocated/Uncommitted - 10

[Erc]

Your caucus estimates are way off and favoring Romney while underestimating Paul.  There's nothing conservative about them.

Romney is likely getting zero delegates in Iowa and less delegates than Paul in Washington.  Paul also seems like he's going to win Maine by quite a bit.  The Paulites seem to think they have Colorado too but I find that hard to believe.  Minnesota looks like Paul probably will have more than Santorum though.

If I were to do this over again, I'd probably leave out the caucus states entirely; the overall format of this thread is a holdover from the 2008 Democratic process, which has strict rules to prevent these sorts of shenanigans.  That year, the only real uncertainty in caucus states like Iowa was what would happen once Edwards' delegates dropped out (and smaller versions of the 'enthusiasm gap' were concerns in states like Idaho)---you could pretty accurately project the final results based on the results of the caucuses themselves.

On the Republican side, of course the process is a lot more ugly.  I made projections based on the caucus results themselves, that for a variety of reasons, many of which you have listed (and more of which I've listed in the main post) are likely to be incredibly wrong.  My plan was to update these projections as the caucus/convention process continued in each state; however, there is very little centralized reporting, and I'm not going to take anecdotal reports by Paulistas as gospel.

So, we're going to have to wait until the CD and State Conventions in each state.  The only state that's held one so far is North Dakota, and there Romney (of all people) did better than anyone's original projections.

We'll see what happens in Wyoming (which I currently project to be swept by a Romney slate) and Colorado (Lord knows) this Saturday.

[Erc]

What's going to happen to Santorum's delegates?

As America First mentioned, there is a difference between 'dropping out' and 'suspending a campaign'---but, more importantly, there are many differences from state to state as to how the pledges work.

Let's go through it state by state:

IA/CO/MN/ME/WY/WA:  Iowa-style caucuses.  Most of the delegates haven't even been chosen yet, and those that have are unbound.
North Dakota, Ohio, Illinois: delegates are unpledged.
Michigan, Alaska:  Delegates are released if the candidate suspends their campaign.

Nevada (3): ?
Georgia (3): Delegates are released if the candidate withdraws, releases their delegates, or receives less than 35% of the votes on a ballot, or after 2 ballots.
Oklahoma (14): Delegates are released if the candidate is no longer a candidate.
Tennessee (29):  Delegates are released after two ballots.
Vermont (4): Delegates are released if the candidate withdraws, is not placed into nomination, or after one ballot.
Kansas (33): Delegates are bound unless released by the candidate.
Alabama (22): Delegates are bound unless released by the candidate, or by the decision of two-thirds of the Santorum delegates.
Mississippi (13):  Delegates are bound unless released by the candidate.
Hawaii (5):  Delegates are bound unless the candidate withdraws, or after one ballot.
Louisiana (10): ?
Wisconsin (9):  Delegates are bound unless released by the candidate, or the candidate receives fewer than 1/3 of the votes in any ballot.

The exact definition of 'withdraw' may be open to interpretation. 

Of course, there is also the quite definite possibility that Santorum will not even be placed in nomination---you need the support of a plurality of delegates from 5 states in order to be placed into nomination.  At the moment, Santorum can really only count Kansas, Alabama, and Tennessee.  Although he presently has pluralities in Oklahoma and Mississippi as well, there are enough unpledged delegates to give someone else (Romney or Gingrich) a plurality there instead, so Santorum may not be able to have his name placed into nomination even if he wants to (and he probably won't have his name placed in nomination even if he could).

This, of course, skirts the entire question of how enforceable any of these rules are.