Nate Silver on 12/10: 20% chance of a brokered convention

[Torie]

It won't happen exact as a remote chance, because a deal will most probably be cut before the convention if nobody has a majority. Granted it might take two ballots to implement the deal, since delegates might be legally committed to vote a certain way on the first ballot.

[Torie]

It won't happen exact as a remote chance, because a deal will most probably be cut before the convention if nobody has a majority. Granted it might take two ballots to implement the deal, since delegates might be legally committed to vote a certain way on the first ballot.

Will the establishment swallow their pride and cut a deal to make Cruz the nominee, if that's the only way to defeat Trump?

Assuming they don't think waiting until the convention, and a lot of ballots, will have some chance of ending up with one of the "acceptable" candidates, yes, absolutely. That will not stop some of the drain away of the Pub bourgeoisie, but it will mitigate it. I mean while I can't live with Cruz, Bill Kristol apparently can. We both cannot live with Trump. And if I really had to pick who gets the Pub nomination, I would prefer Cruz, although I will then still be voting for Hillary, just as is the case with Trump.

[Torie]

It won't happen exact as a remote chance, because a deal will most probably be cut before the convention if nobody has a majority. Granted it might take two ballots to implement the deal, since delegates might be legally committed to vote a certain way on the first ballot.

I think most people would lump the "cut a deal before the convention" scenario in with a brokered convention. When I say ~25%, I am talking about no candidate winning a majority of delegates in the primaries.

OK, as a guesstimate, I think that is a reasonable percentage to pull out of one's butt.

[Torie]

It won't happen exact as a remote chance, because a deal will most probably be cut before the convention if nobody has a majority. Granted it might take two ballots to implement the deal, since delegates might be legally committed to vote a certain way on the first ballot.

Will the establishment swallow their pride and cut a deal to make Cruz the nominee, if that's the only way to defeat Trump?

Assuming they don't think waiting until the convention, and a lot of ballots, will have some chance of ending up with one of the "acceptable" candidates, yes, absolutely. That will not stop some of the drain away of the Pub bourgeoisie, but it will mitigate it. I mean while I can't live with Cruz, Bill Kristol apparently can. We both cannot live with Trump. And if I really had to pick who gets the Pub nomination, I would prefer Cruz, although I will then still be voting for Hillary, just as is the case with Trump.

Bill Kristol was Palin's biggest cheerleader. I would do the exact opposite from whatever he says.

Prefer Trump to Cruz? No thanks.  A lot of folks made the Palin mistake - for awhile. Heck, Muon2 was impressed with her at first. And then we all learned that she was an air brain. Who knew that McCain was so feckless, and totally failed to do any due diligence?  Well, we learned, along with why McCain was unfit to be POTUS.

[Torie]

Again Silver is using data, he believes in the 'party decides' theory that the best early indicators are endorsements (from currently elected politicians) and Trump has zero. This cycle will test the 'party decides' theory. Silver is also right that early polling, especially early national polling has not been a good indicator. However we are now transitioning into the time when it isn't early polling and Trump still has a lead in NH and is in second in IA, so history is slowly but surely moving in Trump's direction to at least be a serious contender.

That says about all that needs to be said as to Silver. But just because you summed it up all perfectly, will not stop Silver bashing around here. It has become some posters' obsession. Sort of like Trump himself!

[Torie]

It won't happen exact as a remote chance, because a deal will most probably be cut before the convention if nobody has a majority. Granted it might take two ballots to implement the deal, since delegates might be legally committed to vote a certain way on the first ballot.

Will the establishment swallow their pride and cut a deal to make Cruz the nominee, if that's the only way to defeat Trump?

Assuming they don't think waiting until the convention, and a lot of ballots, will have some chance of ending up with one of the "acceptable" candidates, yes, absolutely.

I think if this happens, it probably happens in March or April, with the establishment candidates suspending and putting their support behind Cruz.  If the GOP sees no other way to defeat Trump, i.e. the math just doesn't work out, and Cruz is, well, cruising, the establishment candidates may be asked to fall on their swords.

The fact that the current #1 polling candidate is utterly unacceptable, and the #2 candidate is an outsider, makes 2016 a unique set of circumstances.

I still think Rubio or Other will see a March surge, Trump will fall away, and Cruz will be out by May.  Alternatively, I can see Trump falling away, Cruz gaining the Trump vote, and him being unstoppable and wrapping up the nomination, also by May.  The question is, how incompetent is the GOP establishment?

If the Pub establishment after NH, does not force a culling of the list of acceptable candidates down to one, or at least a splitting up of the real estate, as I posited with Christie and Rubio, or some protocol that does not entail a delegate drain to Trump/Cruz that otherwise could be avoided, then it is indeed incompetent. It must be done. If it is not done, then they need to be punished with some down ballot damage come November. And maybe get some law passed to punish them where it hurts, like forcing banks to get out of any business that is risky, by forcing their business that relies on deposit insurance, to really not take much risk. The rest can be spun off to non deposit insured merchant banks. Then we don't have to worry so much about too big to fail. And maybe raise the estate tax some as an extra kick in the nuts.

[Torie]

If the Pub establishment after NH, does not force a culling of the list of acceptable candidates down to one, or at least a splitting up of the real estate, as I posited with Christie and Rubio, or some protocol that does not entail a delegate drain to Trump/Cruz that would otherwise could be avoided, then it is indeed incompetent. It must be done. If it is not done, then they need to be punished with some down ballot damage come November. And maybe get some law to punish them where it hurts, like forcing banks to get out of any business that is risky, by forcing their business that relies on deposit insurance, to really not take much risk. The rest can be spun off to non deposit insured merchant banks. Then we don't have to worry so much about too big to fail. And maybe raise the estate tax some as an extra kick in the nuts.

If Cruz gets the nomination, the collective ego boost to the TP delegation in Congress will be so gigantic that this could never, ever happen.  The TEA Party extremists (and Cruz) don't believe in bailouts, true, but they would rather let the banks fail than give regulators any more power.

Now wait a minute. Cruz gets the nomination. Hillary is elected POTUS. The Pubs lose the Senate, and lose 20 seats in the House, so their margin is down to 10 congresspersons to pick off. The filibuster is nixed. So now we are down to 10, and the job gets done! Or wait a minute. Many Dems have been bought off by the banks - including Hillary. I guess the Pub establishment is un-punishable then. Well we still have the estate tax. It goes up to 50% if the banks are reined in. If not, it goes up to 70%. Maybe that little compromise will appeal to them. What do you think?

[Torie]

Now wait a minute. Cruz gets the nomination. Hillary is elected POTUS. The Pubs lose the Senate, and lose 20 seats in the House, so their margin is down to 10 congresspersons to pick off. The filibuster is nixed. So now we are down to 10, and the job gets done! Or wait a minute. Many Dems have been bought off by the banks - including Hillary. I guess the Pub establishment is un-punishable then. Well we still have the estate tax. It goes up to 50% if the banks are reined in. If not, it goes up to 70%. Maybe that little compromise will appeal to them. What do you think?

If Hilary Clinton is president in 2018, there's no way the Democrats take over either chamber.  The GOP knows this.  And if the GOP participates in sweeping regulations AND a tax increase, every single representative responsible will be primaried to hell and gone.  The GOP knows this.

The TP wing won't care if Cruz loses in the general.  They'll just double down.  "Cruz wasn't conservative enough to excite the vast, silent majority of right-thinking Americans" will be the narrative.

Ah, I was thinking about 2016 myself. And the House will not flip. Thus my comment about a 20 seat loss. That is possible - maybe.

[Torie]

Ah, I was thinking about 2016 myself. And the House will not flip. Thus my comment about a 20 seat loss. That is possible - maybe.

The Senate won't flip in 2016 either, unless something really drastic changes.  If Feingold, Duckworth, and Sestak/McGinty all win, that gets them to 49.  They still need to pick up another seat (from where?) and hope that Michael Bennet and Patti Murray can hold on.

Oh, it is quite possible under a ticket led by Cruz or Trump. First, Murray is safe no matter who the Pub POTUS candidate is, and Bennet would be close to safe in this scenario. Heck he does not yet have a creditable opponent.  And then there is  ...  drum roll please - New Hampshire! I will leave NH to TNVolunteer to help you with that one. He specializes in NH, and while he is idiosyncratic on the matter, he good enough for government work as it pertains here. And then there is Florida, which is marked as a tossup seat at present. Assuming Grayson is not nominated, that one goes down. So now we are up to 51. Hillary's VP is not even needed.  That is about where the music stops. Burr is not going down in NC. The Dem trend there will be muted anyway. It is not part of the "when the roof falls in" zone. Oh, Ohio actually is where the music actually stops for the Dems, at 52 seats. I don't want to think about that one. Portman should be exempt from the punishment regime. He's special.

[Torie]

Ah, I was thinking about 2016 myself. And the House will not flip. Thus my comment about a 20 seat loss. That is possible - maybe.

The Senate won't flip in 2016 either, unless something really drastic changes.  If Feingold, Duckworth, and Sestak/McGinty all win, that gets them to 49.  They still need to pick up another seat (from where?) and hope that Michael Bennet and Patti Murray can hold on.

1. Murray isn't going to lose, forget about it.
2. Ayotte is more likely to lose than not.
3. Katie McGinty isn't going to defeat Toomey.
4. Florida is a pure Tossup.
5. Nevada will be competitive as well.

This idle chatter presupposes a Pub ticket led by Trump or Cruz.

[Torie]

Technically, the establishment survivor doesn't need to get many delegates in May/June - all that needs to happen is Trump and Cruz split them fairly evenly. The establishment survivor simply needs to stay in the race. What the establishment would be aiming for is something like this on the first convention ballot:

Trump 1,050
Cruz 960
Establishment Survivor 430
Abstain/Scattering 26

The number needed to be nominated this year, per the green papers, is 1,233. No one is there, so no one can be nominated via the first ballot. Under party rules, delegates are freed from pledges to support a candidate and re-vote on the nomination. The hope would be that a sizable number of Cruz/Trump delegates don't actually support them and only voted that way on the first ballot because they had to under party rules, and would therefore gravitate to Rubio (etc.) and get him nominated. Of course, Trump would be furious and blame the party for not giving him reliable delegates, but he would have no legal recourse under the party rules and it would be too late to mount a meaningful independent run.

Even assuming that the Cruz and Trump delegations have a lot of Quislings in their ranks, if it appeared that the Pub establishment was going to poach the Quislings, and successfully give the nomination to the Establishment choice, one would think that Cruz and Trump would cut a deal, and one of the two would release his delegates before the first ballot, giving the nomination to the other. And then presumably the other would get the VP slot. Morden etc. is right that in your scenario, if the Establishment did what it did, the nomination would probably become worthless. It would look like the will of the people had been ignored. It won't be happening. Alternatively, the establishment might pick Cruz.

[Torie]

Sure if one candidate gets a clear majority of votes and delegates from the primaries, then the nomination isn't going to be stolen from them.  But I'm talking about more ambiguous cases.  Say Trump has won a 45% plurality of all votes in the primaries, but whether he has a majority of delegates is a matter of dispute, because of the fuzzy math I talked about in terms of unbound vs. unpledged etc. that seems to create all these disagreements in the tracking of the delegate count every four years.  There'll then be various attempts to create mischief with the convention in a way that there wouldn't have been if all of the candidates were broadly acceptable to the party leadership.

That's what I mean about having to pay attention to how the delegates are actually chosen.  In a true contested convention scenario, the delegates are free agents.  They're not necessarily going to do the bidding of the candidate who they're "supposed" to back.

Well, to make it really simple, if Trump had 45% of the delegates (I don't think the popular vote totals matter much), and the establishment candidates had 42%, Cruz had 7%, and the balance were uncommitted, I don't see a problem with denying the nomination to Trump. That is how the game is played. It is the Quisling thing that gets to be a problem, where on a second ballot, or even first ballot, delegates that should be his, don't vote for him, and even though on say the second ballot, Trump gets more delegates to vote for him, say from Cruz people, that would have put him over the top, if he still loses because he has Quislings who abandon him, then we have a problem. That is how I see it anyway. Sure Trump will whimper in all events. It is more of matter as to how much his whimperings have bite.