March 10 Kansas + miscellaneous islands primary/caucus **results thread**

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This is really an f'd up way to pick a nominee. I have no problem with these small territories having some representation at the convention but 9 Delegates each?   Way to many.

American Samoa (pop. ~55,000) has 9 delegates.  This is, in fact, less screwed up than Niobrara County, Wyoming (pop. ~2500), whose 22 voters elected a delegate all to themselves this Wednesday.

[Erc]

Fun old post by Richard Berg-Andersson on how we got here in the first place.

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I would still call it an outside chance, but there is an increasing possibility that Romney will a majority of the delegates today.

While Santorum will get a majority of the delegates in KS, I still expect Romney and Gingrich to pull a few.  It looks like it could be a situation where Santorum gets 75% of the delegates in KS, and Romney still wins the day.  I expect that, today, Romney will get a slight boost from Super Tuesday.

In terms of sheer numbers, sure.  But we all knew that Romney was going to sweep the insular territories ahead of time.

More importantly, the media doesn't care about the insular territories and will take the Santorum win in Kansas (even if it isn't as big as some people expect) as a sign of Santorum's continued strength.

[Erc]

If Santorum wins the Kansas caucus, I really doubt the headlines are going to be anything as milquetoast as "Romney increases lead, Santorum weak in Kansas."

Unless Santorum barely ekes by (< 3% margin) or loses in Kansas, this is a good night for him.  Even the AP doesn't care about delegate arithmetic when writing its headlines.

Oh, and an actual AP source for the Northern Marianas result, with some actual numbers.

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@fivethirtyeight @FHQ: If only Santorum is over 20%, then no threshhold. Only applies if 2 are over 20% KS rules: #kscaucus

That's absolutely right, I didn't catch that earlier. "In the event that a single candidate or no candidate receives in excess of 20% of the certified statewide vote total then the sections pertaining to that requirement shall be null and void and the allocation determined from the results of the entire pool of statewide candidates."

So Santorum actually wants Gingrich to break 20%, lol.  That's screwed up.

[Erc]

It's also really stupid, because a large part of the point of thresholds is to prevent Lyndon LaRouche or equivalent from winning delegates in years when there's only an incumbent.

[Erc]

Delegate allocation, as it currently stands:

Santorum - 29
Romney - 5
Gingrich - 5
Paul - 1

How this can change...

Assuming everyone stays below 20% but Santorum:

Santorum gains a delegate if he breaks 56%, loses a delegate if he drops below 52%
Romney/Gingrich lose a delegate if they drop below 16%.

All changes are at the expense / to the benefit of Paul.

If Gingrich or Romney breaks 20%:

It would be approximately:

Santorum - 34
Gingrich/Romney - 6

[Erc]

If you consider Gingrich as "anti-Romney," it's a better result for Romney anyway.

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Polls in the USVI should have closed a few minutes ago.  Delegates are directly elected (though Presidential Preference is listed next to the delegate); I don't know if there's also a beauty contest.

[Erc]

Virgin Islands Official Ballot.

http://vigop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Official-Ballot-2012-Caucus.pdf

Only Ron Paul (6 )has a complete set of delegates. Romney (3),  Santorum (2) and Gingrich (2) have incomplete slates. 9 people are running uncommitted.

Rare fail by the Romney camp, especially given his institutional support here.

[Erc]

Just relating to the coverage:

NBC:  Big wins for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

Yeah, but they're talking about Wyoming, not Guam.