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

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"And on Friday the campaign touted the endorsement of Guam Gov. Eddie Baza Calvo, who told Pacific Daily News Romney "understands" the impact federal regulations have on isolated islands like his."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/09/latest-2012-battle-guam/

A gubernatorial endorsement? Does that mean Romney will lose Guam?

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Guam is 0.05% of the U.S. population though.

Delegates, not population.

Yes that's literally the point I was making. There is a discrepancy between the two.

They are kind of rotten boroughs.

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Santorum won 56% in Wichita. Romney at 13%.

And Paul at 18%.

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For once, it looks like Santorum is winning an optimal number of delegates for his total vote.

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Wyandotte County slams Romney at 15%. Santorum almost at 60% there. No KC stronghold for Mitt.

Not a ton of votes though.

In 2008 general election, Wyandotte gave McCain 16.5k votes, compared to 152k in Johnson. Not a lot of Republicans in Kansas City proper.

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can someone explain how the delegates would be different if Romney goes under 20 vs if he goes over 20? Did Romney pull out of KS in hopes that he wouldn't break 20?

If you are below 20%, you lose your proportional share of the 25 at large delegates, so if Mittens were held below 20%, he loses his 7 delegates, which is a fair amount of change. If Mittens knew it was going to be this tight, he would have dropped by Johnson County for a visit I suspect.

Yes. Romney getting over 20% was probably worth two extra delegates for Romney, and 4-5 extra for Santorum.
Not true. If Romney dropped below 20%, he would still get some at-large delegates, but so would Gingrich and Paul. With Romney above 20%, Gingrich and Paul don't get any.

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Fun fact: total number of votes for four remaining candidates in today's KS caucuses: 28 752
total vote for Barack Obama in 2008 KS caucuses: 27 172

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Two counties left in Kansas, both on Colorado border.

One of them, Greeley, is the smallest KS county in terms of population  (1247 as of the 2010 census). Sherman, the other, is slightly bigger, at 6010.
I think they're both on Mountain Time.

[ajb]

Two counties left in Kansas, both on Colorado border.

One of them, Greeley, is the smallest KS county in terms of population  (1247 as of the 2010 census). Sherman, the other, is slightly bigger, at 6010.
I think they're both on Mountain Time.

... and Santorum wins Sherman. 89 votes, to 30 Romney, 27 Gingrich, 23 Paul.

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CNN now showing 4 Romney delegates, 1 Paul delegate, from USVI. One delegate remains unaccounted for.

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/vi

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A pretty much perfect result in Kansas. A disastrous result (though expected) for Romney's near candidate best friend. Hoping it affects MS and AL.

Literally breaking even is not a good day, when you are behind.

Tuesday looks worse.  That's the bad news.

The good news is, MO is after that, on 3/17.

IL, on 3/20, might well be the key.

Not that relying on a series of contests in places with zero electoral votes to claim to have broken even is exactly a great day.

[ajb]

A pretty much perfect result in Kansas. A disastrous result (though expected) for Romney's near candidate best friend. Hoping it affects MS and AL.

Bad? Certainly. Disastrous? That's pushing it. It's overshadowed by our ninja delegates.

You're a Newt supporter? Because he's to whom I was referring.

Really? I haven't heard Newt being called his best friend before. And I wouldn't call his showing disastrous either. He had no expectations and is focusing on the south.

He's his new best friend because he keeps the Anti Romney vote split.

Newt dropping out actually nets Mittens a few delegates per Nate Silver. Well, about 10 delegates net if Newt hadn't been in the race to start with, and not much if Newt drops out now. It is obvious when you think about it. If Mittens with everyone around is on track with the supers to get an absolute majority of the delegates, it doesn't matter who has the other 45% to 49% of them or whatever. In short, this whole if only one "conservative" were in the race meme against the suspiciously moderate Mittens (I have to laugh every time I hear that one - I'm a moderate - Mitttens isn't - period), has been and remains way over hyped. There is no there, there.

According to that same Nate Silver piece, Santorum would have gained 110 delegates relative to what he's currently got if Gingrich were not in the race, thus reducing the gap between him and Romney by about a hundred delegates. He would also, by Silver's argument, have won SC, GA, OH and AK.

[ajb]

A pretty much perfect result in Kansas. A disastrous result (though expected) for Romney's near candidate best friend. Hoping it affects MS and AL.

Bad? Certainly. Disastrous? That's pushing it. It's overshadowed by our ninja delegates.

You're a Newt supporter? Because he's to whom I was referring.

Really? I haven't heard Newt being called his best friend before. And I wouldn't call his showing disastrous either. He had no expectations and is focusing on the south.

He's his new best friend because he keeps the Anti Romney vote split.

Newt dropping out actually nets Mittens a few delegates per Nate Silver. Well, about 10 delegates net if Newt hadn't been in the race to start with, and not much if Newt drops out now. It is obvious when you think about it. If Mittens with everyone around is on track with the supers to get an absolute majority of the delegates, it doesn't matter who has the other 45% to 49% of them or whatever. In short, this whole if only one "conservative" were in the race meme against the suspiciously moderate Mittens (I have to laugh every time I hear that one - I'm a moderate - Mitttens isn't - period), has been and remains way over hyped. There is no there, there.

According to that same Nate Silver piece, Santorum would have gained 110 delegates relative to what he's currently got if Gingrich were not in the race, thus reducing the gap between him and Romney by about a hundred delegates. He would also, by Silver's argument, have won SC, GA, OH and AK.

No, those delegates just move from the Newt column to the Rick column, which is irrelevant to the Romney systems engineering delegate blueprint. Just add the Newt and Rick totals together and consider them one candidate. The only wild card delegates really are the Paul delegates in a brokered convention. Rick would just put Newt on his ticket if need be to get the Newt delegates. What a team! 

If this is indeed the Romney blueprint, it's a faulty design. There's a non-trivial chance that Santorum in a Gingrich-free race might a) increase the odds of Romney not getting a majority of delegates, and b) actually start winning more votes, and delegates, than Romney himself. This would be a problem, assuming that the goal of the Romney blueprint is to elect a president, and not merely a presidential candidate.

[ajb]

Dammit Romney broke 20%. He gets delegates.

         

And in the process helped Santorum to collect even more delegates than he would have if Romney had scored 19.9 instead of 20.9.

[ajb]

Well that'd still mean less for Romney and some for Paul.

Fewer delegates for both Romney and Santorum (basically, they would have had 2/10 and 5/10 of the at-large delegates, instead of 2/7 and 5/7). Since Santorum would have lost more delegates, the gap between the two of them would have narrowed.