Talk Elections

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Above: Matt Romney (son of Mitt) arrives in Guam last night.  He will speak at the territorial convention, where RNC convention delegates will be chosen.

It may still be Friday afternoon in the USA, but it's Saturday morning in the Asia/Pacific region, so the contests in Guam and Northern Mariana Islands are today.

Saturday, March 10 contests:

Kansas caucuses:

http://ksgop.org/caucus/

Caucuses begin at 10am Central / 11am Eastern.  Results must be reported to the the Kansas GOP headquarters by 5pm Central / 6pm Eastern.

http://edition.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/ks

AP results (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2012/by_state/KS_President_0310.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS)

Guam territorial convention:

http://mvguam.com/local/news/22594-romney-son-to-visit-guam-woo-gop-.html

Convention begins at 9am Guam time, and votes will be tallied by noon, Guam time.  Noon Saturday Guam time = 9pm US Eastern time on Friday night.

Northern Mariana Islands territorial convention:

Voting is between 7am and 7pm local time:

http://www.saipantribune.com/newsstory.aspx?newsID=117170&cat=1

They're in the same time zone as Guam, so 7pm Saturday local time = 4am Saturday US Eastern time.

Virgin Islands caucuses:

http://vigop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Rules-of-the-Virgin-Islands-Republican-Caucus-Approved.pdf

Caucus balloting begins at noon Atlantic time / 11am Eastern, and ends at 6pm Atlantic time / 5pm Eastern.

Wyoming county conventions:

Wyoming county conventions also wrap up on Saturday.

So yeah, the Guam convention starts in a little over an hour, and then results should be tallied about three hours after that.  But I don't know where they'll be reported.

And as mentioned, Mitt's son Matt Romney is speaking at the Guam convention.  He was also in the Northern Marianas yesterday to speak with local GOP leaders.  None of the other campaigns have sent any surrogates in person, but Santorum had an hour-long conference call with Guam Republicans a few days ago.

I thought Romney already won WY?

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-02-29/politics/politics_primaries_1_wyoming-caucuses-romney-victory-romney-and-santorum?_s=PM:POLITICS

There are still a number of unassigned delegates.  I think only five have been given.

These are the county conventions. We had the precinct caucuses already.

"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? :)

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/dates/20120310

Looks Like CNN will have all the Caucus results, although how timely they will be....

Why do we have predictions for Puerto Rico but not Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands?

Romney sweep

It'd still be fun to have them.  If you start saying we should only do states that will be competitive, we'd be leaving out MA, GA, VA, etc.

As for my Kansas prediction:

Santorum - 43%
Romney - 38%
Paul - 13%
Gingrich - 6%

You are in for a rude awakening tomorrow.

How so?

The Iowa county conventions are tomorrow too.

Probably because Dave only has Puerto Rico in his automatic maps, which makes sense in one respect, since Puerto Rico is the only one of then that has a shot at participating in the November elections anytime soon.

The Huckster won here with 60% after being thrashed on super tuesday, I think Santorum should be able to do very well. There's also the factor that Romney is not focusing on it. We could potentially see Santorum sweeping the delegates here if he does as well as Huckabee.

My Kansas prediction
Santorum 51%
Romney 26%
Newt Gingrich 16%
Ron Paul 7%


Guam Prediction
Romney 68%
Santorum 21%
Newt Gingrich 8%
Ron Paul 3%
---
what occurred
Romney 83%


Virgin Islands
Romney 54%
Santorum 26%

Northern Mariana Islands
Romney 52%
Santorum 34%
Newt Gingrich 12%
Ron Paul 2%

I could see Santorum doing better than what I predicted, but I don't think he'll get over 50%.

I suspect Rick will break 50% in KS. It should be close to his best state in the nation. We shall see.

Happily for the Mittbots, KS does not have that if a candidate gets more than 50%, he gets all the at large delegates thingy (that rule is largely "reserved" for the Mittens states). It is all proportional, with any candidate getting 20% sharing in the spoils. Mittens should win KS-03 and get the 3 delegates there as well. So say Rick gets 52%, and Mittens gets 35% of the vote, that gives 15 at large delegates to Rick, and 10 to Mittens, and Rick gets 9 CD delegates, and Mittens gets 3 CD delegates, netting Rick 24 delegates, and Mittens 13, with 3 super delegates, more than likely going to Mittens, but say Rick gets 1, and Mittens gets 2. That gives Rick a net margin of 10 delegates over Romney (25-15) as a reward for one of his greatest triumphs.

Life is beautiful.  

The super-delegates are pledged to the winner of the state.

But I'm glad you find this sham democracy "beautiful." I'm sure the Republican base will as well when they don't turn out for your boy in November.

Some guy on Twitter who claims to be at the GOP convention in Guam writes:

http://twitter.com/#!/Anthony96931


Still waiting for confirmation from some official news source.

Don't a lot of the Pacific Islands have a ton of Mormons?

Pacific News Center reports on Twitter:

link (http://twitter.com/#!/PNCGuam)


So I guess Romney gets more delegates out of Guam than he got out of New Hampshire?

You are right about the super delegates Lief. Curious. So 27-13.  Think about it this way. Obama has his issues. The gas price thing strikes me as a particularly dangerous specter for him, feeding into the Pub fossil fuels narrative. So it is barely possible albeit quite unlikely that Rick could beat him, given the "right" chain of circumstances (without my vote of course, but whatever). Would you rather have Mittens or Rick as POTUS?  Just a thought.

I think Rick and Mitt would govern about the same as presidents. They'd appoint the same SCOTUS judges. They'd both be as dangerously belligerent towards Iran. If anything Rick Santorum might be willing to more often stand up to the Tea Party Congress, just because he actually has values and beliefs and potentially has some vague understanding of what it's like to worry about making ends meet deep down in him.

Only 6 are tied to today's caucus.

Lief, where are you getting information that the SDs are tied to the winner of hte state?

Erc said so: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=145763.msg3209072#msg3209072

True, though if every single person attending the convention voted for Romney, then he must be getting the super delegates as well (since they presumably attended the convention).  So that's 9.  How many does Romney have out of New Hampshire?  About the same number?

Well, Mittens is a bit more cautious about Iran, just saying that he would stop them from getting nukes, but not saying how. Rick is more into the bomb, bomb away narrative. But here is the thing.I think Rick might really believe what he says, while Mittens lately has said some things, that I don't really think he really believes, to get past the Pub post. I think Mittens in short would be smarter, more cautious and more pragmatic. Rick strikes as rather a hothead and impulsive. And on many policy issues, they will essentially be the same. But being a competent POTUS is more about policy positions in my view - a lot more. Issues and challenges and crises will come up, which we are not even discussing now. Whom do you trust most to come up with the most reasonable solutions?  

But this is hardly an objective exercise, so I understand where you are coming from.

Oh ok - you're just talking about Kansas.  I thought you were talking about Guam for some reason.

OK, looks like it wasn't quite unanimous on the first ballot.  The RNC external affairs director tweets:

link (http://twitter.com/#!/Jmrhosborne)

ARRRRGH!  Of all the stupid things Republicans are deluding themselves into believing about the coming election, the "If gas prices go up, we must win." is one of the worst.

First off, the available evidence indicates that unless an actual war with Iran breaks out, gas prices have hit a peak and are starting to come down again.  If there is an actual war, that war and how it starts will be far more influential on the election than what happens with gas prices.

Second, not too many people are blaming Obama for the gas price hikes now (18% overall , 5% of Dems, 20% of Inds, 33% of Reps, according to Pew).  This suggests that what is happening is that people who don't like Obama are looking for reasons to ding him and that since gas prices are up, that'll be one of the things to ding him, and that we aren't seeing people enraged by high gas prices then lashing out at Obama even when they hadn't done so before.

Third, remember 2008?  We had rising gas prices then and while McCain and Clinton both endorsed a gimmicky gas tax holiday, Obama dismissed it for the gimmick it was and benefited politically from it.  There are a few voters who will be impressed by gimmicks, such as Newt's promise to being gas down to $2.50/gal.  However, it appears the majority of voters are skeptical of magic wand claims.  Frankly I think Keystone XL so far has been a millstone for the GOP.  The Republican effort to push Obama to make a decision before he wanted to make a decision made them look like a party of gimmicks.

That isn't to say that gas prices won't have an indirect effect on the election.  If they remain high and cause the economy to stall, that stalled economy will help the Republicans come November.  But the direct effect will be minimal unless the Republicans keep pushing plans perceived as gimmicks, in which case it will be negative.

Gingrich promising that if he's elected, gas prices would drop to $2.50 was the most politically idiotic thing I've ever heard.  Part of me hoped he wins just so I could watch gas prices stay above that.  You can't promise a drop in gas prices.  The only way you could come close to doing that is ban exporting of oil, and that's not exactly a small government thing to do.

I tend to disagree with you on this one Ernest. All else aside, at a minimum, it will truncate economic growth, increase unemployment over what it otherwise would be, slow down retail sales, and so forth. Even if it come down a bit later (how much?), damage will be done, and is being done as we speak, in the interim. It cost me $94 to fill my gas tank today. How many folks can afford that without having to cut back in a rather substantial way somewhere else? I remember listening to a speech by the CEO of Walmart during the last gas spike, and he said gas price increases really hurt Walmart sales. Folks buy gas to get to work and go to the supermarket, and cart the kids around, and cut back on buying underwear and T shirts.

I fear I may be hijacking this thread a bit. Sorry. I will cease and desist. :)

Romney repeats even close to that in Northern Marianas and VI, it is almost impossible for Santorum to get a plurality for the day.

And why do rising gas prices hurt Americans so much?  Because we've become used to artificially low gas prices.  End the subsidies and let the market actually function, and you would've see people moving to alternative fuel for automobiles years ago.  If we keep trying to keep prices artificially low, Americans will keep being more and more dependent on the government for cheap gas, and we'll never solve the base problem.

More nonsense has been said about gas prices, and energy, and the economic effect of the Keystone Pipeline, et al, by almost everyone in both parties (yes the Dems are worse here, but the Pubs are almost equally as delusional), in a shorter period of time, that is just flat out wrong and ignorant, economically and otherwise, than I can at the moment recall than about anything else, and I have been around a long time. Absent a lot of pot, I am in danger of turning into an irascible old man methinks. Hey maybe I will tell my pot doc next renewal time, that that is my medical issue for the year. :P

Keystone really pissed me off.  I wrote a column blasting the GOP for their actions there.  It was a dumb move to try to push the president to action.  The one thing I'd really like to see happen soon is end subsidies for oil companies (and quit with this stupid "gas tax holiday" crap), and let the market balance itself out.  If oil wins the day, so be it, but I think it'd help us move forward in establishing alternative fuels if we weren't artificially lowering prices.

My delegate prediction for KS is:

Santorum - 23
Romney - 9
Gingrich - 7
Paul - 1

For the day:

Romney - 27
Santorum - 25
Gingrich - 7
Paul - 8

A plurality for Romney, but not a majority.

OK, the AP now has a story on this, so we don't just have to rely on Twitter:

link (http://www.htrnews.com/usatoday/article/38763743?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs)

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.

Not really.  It is less than 0.5%  of the total.

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

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.

But they have zero voting representatives in Congress and zero electoral votes, so this is their one opportunity to influence national politics.  The least we can do to make it up to them for their underrepresentation in general elections is let them keep this overrepresentation in the party nomination process.

Delegates, not population.

NMI- 1 Del per 6,000 pop

VI- 1 Del per 12,000 pop

Gaum- 1 Del per 18,000 Pop

California- 1 Del per 220,000 pop

Fun old post by Richard Berg-Andersson on how we got here in the first place (http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/NatDelegates.html).

Again, delegates are not based solely on population.

No sh**t.

Guam may be only .05% of the population but it is worth a lot more than that in our hearts

As I acknowledged, high gas prices will have an indirect effect via their effect on the economy.  Indeed, they've already done their part by keeping the recovery so sluggish in 2011,  But 2011-12 is not shaping up to be 2007-08.  Last election cycle, gas prices had been averaging lower than they had been averaging this election cycle.  So far the spike has not been as severe in either absolute terms (the price of gas)  or relative terms (the change in the price of gas.

We're going to have to hit average gas prices of around $5/gallon between now and the election for the current price hikes to have a comparable political and economic impact as what 2008 saw.  Absent a war with Iran or some other externality that severely crimps world oil supplies, I just don't see $5/gallon being reached in that time frame.  We're number to high gas prices than we were four years ago because they've been high for so long.

And what is the problem with that?

OK Ernest, but there has been quite a spike up, like 80 cents maybe in the past 3-4 months or something, and my guess/instinct, without having really dug into it, is that most of the uptick is not going to be reversed. That kind of hit has to be depressive, from whatever was anticipated before.

They are determined by the establishment based on what is best for the establishment.

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

Maybe it's to make up for the fact that they have no Senators. :)

They are kind of rotten boroughs.

Voting continues in the Northern Mariana Islands (commonly abbreviated CNMI, so we don't have to type as much) for another hour or so.  A few hours ago, Jason Osborne (who, again, works for the RNC) tweeted:

link (http://twitter.com/#!/Jmrhosborne)


No idea what fraction of the vote that represents, but it doesn't look good for the not-Romneys here.

If we're counting SDs, then I think Romney wins the islands 27-0. I think he'll just about get 20% in Kansas (though this contest is the last thing in the world he needs) which will give him 6 delegates, to Santorum's 34. So 34-33 to Santorum.

Final results in NMI (posted via Twitter from the guy at the RNC):

Romney 87%
Santorum 6%
Paul 3%
Gingrich 3%

This is my only news source for this, since the major news outlets aren't covering this.  (And the local news outlets in NMI seem to be kind of a joke.)  CNN confirms that Romney wins both Guam and NMI, though doesn't give percentages:

http://edition.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/dates/20120310

Kansas caucuses begin in less than four hours.

I think it's safe to say Romney will thump everyone in the Virgin Islands and will do the same in Samoa/Hawaii on Tuesday. Is Hawaii having a straw poll this year?

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.

I did not expect the possibility of all 27 island delegates.  That is now a possibility.


As a media story, like WA last week, it won't have very much impact.  It comes out on Saturday.

The story is yet to be written.  Let's assume Santorum wins a majority of the delegates in KS and has a big win.  The story is:

"Santorum Wins Kansas: Romney Increases Lead"

Now assume that Santorum wins KS, but not as strongly as many are predicting.  The story is:

"Romney Increases Lead: Santorum Weak in Kansas"

Whatever story comes out, any Santorum victory in KS (short of a 35 delegate victory) gets stepped on by the rest of the story.  As indicated, it won't be a big factor because of when the story comes out.

Actually the spike has been 50 cents in the past 3 months.  The current spike has come after a period of declining gas prices and is still 25 cents below the level prices were at ten months ago.

The mid 2008 spike was over a dollar and came after a period of steady gas prices.

I just do not see gas prices by themselves as being able to dent Obama's poll numbers sufficiently to prevent his reelection.  It will take a campaign by an opponent who can generate enthusiasm, and that absolutely does not describe Mitt Romney.  His successes to date have come by burying his opponents with negative ads at a rate far beyond their ability to respond.  He won't be able to do that in the general election.

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 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/romney-wins-in-northern-marianas-caucus-with-gop-chairmans-endorsement-picks-up-9-delegates/2012/03/10/gIQA9S322R_story.html) for the Northern Marianas result, with some actual numbers.

Classic clueless J.J.

Putin would envy that result.

Actually, J.J. is one of the more intelligent and insightful posters on this forum.

Maybe from your perspective.

Full NMI results:

Romney 740 (87.26%)
Santorum 53 (6.25%)
Paul 28 (3.30%)
Gingrich 27 (3.18%)

I believe voting in Kansas closes in 17 minutes.

Apparently Romney has not sent anyone to speak for him in Wichita, which is not going over well...

:D

Rumors from Twitter:

Santorum narrowly beat Paul in Riley County, has large lead in Jefferson County (53%), strong in Sedgwick County. Apparently Romney didn't even send a representative to the Wichita caucus.

lol, more subtle racism.

Wow guys, #atlasforum is empty with 7 minutes until polls close on a primary day :(

Are the cable networks even covering this one?


Perhaps Paul can edge out Romney. That would be pretty embarrassing for Mitt.

First votes in from Logan County:

Santorum 49%, Gingrich 33%, Paul/Romney 9%

EDIT: Rawlins County as well: Santorum 46%, Gingrich 24%, Paul 19%, Romney 11%

Could Romney finish fourth with Gingrich second?

fffffff should have predicted santorum >40%

3% in:

Santorum 279 (43%)
Romney 144 (22%)
Gingrich 135 (21%)
Paul 81 (13%)

I suspect the battle for second will be more interesting than who wins.

Romney and Gingrich better not both break 20%.

People are actually voting for Gingrich in a caucus state?

From the early results it looks bad for Paul, though if Gingrich and Romney are both under 20% that could really help Santorum.

Anyone have a 2008 county map for the caucus?

Romney won Lane County, though it had like 40 votes. :(

It's on this map:

() (http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp131/rarohla/2008RepublicanPartyPresidentialPrimariesbyCountywithAllContests.png)

goddamnit JJ might turn out to be right.

The Santorum + Gingrich vote will probably be similar to what Huckabee got in 2008. Can't expect Santorum to get the same as the only socon left in 2008.

That said, he's at 50% now with both Romney and Gingrich under 20%. That's the ideal outcome.

Haha, please let Romney come in fourth.

Up to 51% now.

EDIT: 52%

Santorum seems to be doing slightly better in the eastern Kansas counties than in the western ones (above 50% and forcing both Romney/Gingrich below 20%). We'll see how things turn out. Keep in mind that the Wichita CD was Huckabee's best in 2008, even better than the big rural district in the west.

Johnson County will probably be enough to get Mittens over 20%

Not gonna happen it seems. Let's just root for a Santorum delegate sweep.

Great! Congratulations, Phil!

Oh, and when you enter Politico, the first you see is WY results. Biased site?

Why would Mittens win Lane County, some rural county with nobody in it?

Put CNN on. They only mentioned it for a minute in their little update segment. MSNBC is running one of those stupid specials. I guess this isn't going to get much coverage no matter how it turns out.

Oh well, Tuesday should be different.

Could you give me the link of google's map?

One big Mormon family?

www.google.com/elections

He has a point. Romney cares more about some island a million miles away than the conservative heartland.

Thanks. I didn't know it was that easy.

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

Who'll finish 5th? Huntsman, Bachmann, Cain or Perry.

Wait what. So if only Santorum is over 20% then everyone gets delegates? What kind of bullsh*t is this?!

So why is Ron Paul still running again?

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.

Damn I misread the rules. So if the results were as they are now at large Paul would get 2, Gingrich/Romney 5 each and Santorum 28. So should Santorum actually be hoping Romney gets over 20%?

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.

Ideally, Gingrich would get 20.01%.

Santorum is cleaning up in eastern Kansas.

Yeah, Gingrich is doing a lot worse there and Santorum is making it up.

Gingrich will probably fall behind Romney very soon. Oh well.

Leavenworth County came in big for Santorum.

Goddamnit, Santorum is going to do so well that he makes it completely proportional. Republican delegate allocation is so completely stupid and nonsensical.

Why haven't they projected a winner?

Why the one random Romney county?

They're waiting to see how Johnson County votes.

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

Romney will get 20%. Johnson and Sedgwick, the two biggest counties in the state are still out and they should be a little better for him.

Wow, the Gingrich-Romney battle for second has been pretty epic. Romney took the lead but Gingrich just took it back.

Everything in so far is where Rick should run best.

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The island in the sea of grain:

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So, Mitt still can't break into middle (in the very literal sense of the word) America.

Gingrich will come 3rd. Rural areas and western KS seem to be reporting first; that benefits Romney and Paul, relatively.

Riley County just came in, Romney did well there (though still lost it).

Santorum won 56% in Wichita. Paul 18%, Romney at 13%. Gingrich last at 12%.

And Paul at 18%.

We might have a three-way race for second...

Wow. Maybe Romney won't get 20%.

This is definitely going to be a massive landslide for Rick (as expected).

Anyway, I'm gonna be annoyed if Romney only beats Gingrich by a point or two.

Finally called for Santorum.

Wow, dominant.

They just called it now with 27 percent outstanding and Santorum up by 30+?

Wow. Fail.

More than 27% of the vote outstanding. Joihnson county is 19% of the states population by itself.

I must be a supergenius to call this one yesterday.

Yeah the percent reporting is based on counties, not precincts. So we're really only at 40-50% or so.

The percentage in I think is based on percentage of precincts, most of which are tiny, so based on absolute votes outstanding, maybe only half is in. Topeka and the KC burbs are not in.

Leave Mitt Romney alone. Many people are calling him the "worst frontrunner ever" and a "loser" and a "joke". Have you all forgotten his performance in the Northern Marinara Islands? Mitt Romney did his best in Kansas. It's not his fault he is a "loser". I want everyone in this topic to say something nice about Mitt Romney.

I sense a new meme.

Come on, Newt!

C'mon Paul! I wanna see Paul take second.

Santorum is really strong in the KC exurbs.

Stop trolling.

Dammit, Romney is gonna come in second.

Perry just overtook Cain for 5th place!  Oops!

Delegate Projection (assuming Santorum wins all CD's)

Right now

Santorum 29
Romney 5
Gingrich 4
Paul 2

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I assume Gingrich's relative strength in western Kansas can be attributed to the fact that they likely do not have the internet there and still think he's the anti-Romney flavor of the month.

Assuming nobody but Santorum gets over 50% the rounding rules for delegates make the difference between 3rd and 4th worth a couple of delegates. (Start with the highest vote getter and round up their share of the At Large delegates to next whole number, then the next highest vote getter etc until all 25 At Large delegates are allocated).

It could be 1994 there and they're thinking the caucus is to determine who will be the Republican leader of the House.

Another terrible performance by Ron Paul. He is barely improving upon his '08 numbers.

If you want to play that game, I'll go ahead and call DC for the Dems for 2012, 2016, and 2020.

Topeka just came in:

Santorum 50%
Romney 24%
Paul 15%
Gingrich 11%

Yes, Mittens will need to rock in Johnson County to crawl up over 20%.

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I like the Clark County results:

Santorum 21
Gingrich 15
Romney 9
Paul 2
Perry 2

At least Paul isn't losing to Perry there.

Sarcasm > you.

Perry will take 5th place!!!

Johnson County just came in:

Santorum 47%
Romney 30%
Gingrich/Paul 11%

Romney over 20% now.

NOOOOOOOO

Polls close in the Virgin Islands in about 40 minutes.  Not clear how long after that before we have results.

At least I still have my 2 points.

And it looks like Santorum wins all 4 districts then, right?

Yeah

FFS Romney shutting out Paul and Gingrich. How many people live in those other counties around KC? And why do all the counties that report have substantial numbers but many counties don't even vote? Do they just merge counties for the day?

Romney's only at 20.9%. Could still fall below 20% potentially.

I think there's a decent chance of that. Not really any great counties left for him.

If Romney holds 20% we are looking 33 Del for Santorum, 7 for Romney.

33 delegates to Rick, 7 for Mittens, assuming a 51% to 21.5% margin  (Mittens should creep ahead a bit more when Wyandotte and Douglas counties come in).  Rick got 6 more delegates than I had assumed (with Mittens underperforming my guess by a mere 14.5% or so, but hey I was right on for the Rick percentage!  :P). Congratulations Phil!

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

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

What's with southeast Kansas not holding caucuses?

Surely KC? Also you may think a lot of the grey counties are yet to report, many have but there are no voters there, like last time.

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

Not a ton of votes though.

So if Romney sweeps VI as expected, it'll be 33 x 28 delegates for Rick today. Not bad, but a net gain of 5 won't help him much in the long run.

So it looks like KS will be Santorum's best state ever.

But if Mitt gets all 9 of the VI delegates, then Mitt will still end the day with more delegates with 34 vs. Rick's 33. But Rick should win the news cycle regardless

Where do republicans from counties which haven't had caucus vote?

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

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but Uncommitted is actually fifth with 113 votes so far.

Romney's no-show in KS isn't going to help him.

Dammit, KS not KA.

AP is saying 30 for Santorum.  Is that the final?  How many for the others?


The news cycle will be as important as it was last week with WA and Fox, at least, was noting Romney takes the islands.

They can vote at any Caucus in their Congressional District.

http://ksgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/2012-Caucus-FAQ-Voter.pdf

11 rural precincts left. Romney has to go down .7% for me to be happy. Don't let me down now, bible-beaters.

Thanks

Looking like Santorum gets 51-52% for Kansas. Huckabee won it by 60 percent in 2008, so I'd say Santorum has underperformed. I don't expect Santorum to break 50 percent in Missouri as 1# it has twice as many people, 2# far bigger population centers.


My prediction for Missouri
48% Santorum
28% Romney(At least)

Depending if Gingrich gets to be on the ballot here. If he does then Santorum will be in the lower 40's.

Guam outperformed for Romney.
 Northern Mariana want strongly for Romney...

IMO, even the KS caucuses won't get much spin - everyone knew Santorum was winning there from the beginning. Plus, Romney seeks to be in good shape in AL and MS, all he has to do is keep spending there like there's no tomorrow.

We have learnt something from this Caucus. There are mormons living in Lane County.

Two rural counties came in with Romney over 20%. He should be locked in now.

Well, you guys were right - Santorum did get over 50%.

He got 52 in Missouri before. See no reason why that would change now.


Newt's done, as tonight showed. Yet another state where he can't beat Romney.

7 counties left. The only sizeable one is Douglas, where Paul should do well...maybe.

They must be recent arrivals or converts.  :)

()

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?

Santorum won Douglas with 37%. Paul was third with 22%. Paul fail.

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.

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.

So, I was trolling. Sorry you all.

Yup. "However, if only one candidate or no candidate receives the 20%, there is no threshold."  Odd little curveball. So 2 delegates were at stake for Mittens, and ironically, 5 for Rick, if Mittens fell just short of 20%, with those 7 lost delegates going to Newt and Paul. So maybe Rick is happy to give Mittens those two extra delegates. :)

It would have probably been ever so slightly better for Romney to get just under 20%, if only to fracture the anti-Romney delegates. But it doesn't really change much either way.

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

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.

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.

Sign of an upset?

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

To be fair, those sorts of surveys count people where their denomination's worship centers are located, not at their own residence. Mormon congregations exist in Finney County to the south and Scott County to the west; it's possible there are Mormon voters in Lane who cross the county line to go to church.

Here is the VI GOP Website (says results coming soon)

http://vigop.com/

Wait a second, this is groundbreaking... the GOP has held a caucus without any accusations of corruption and has sent in the results on time? That's a first.

Well, yeah, but the Kansas caucus still comes included with some of the standards: arbitrary rules (the silly threshold thing) and organizational shortcomings (the dozen counties that made voters go somewhere else to caucus)!

Two counties left in Kansas, both on Colorado border.

Santorum country. So he may go from 51.2 to 51.5

I'm glad I stuck by my guns and didn't change my >50% prediction. It's an important two points that should hopefully give me some momentum going into the second half of the season.

Those 2 counties have about 100 times the number of cattle as people.

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.

Has there been any word out of Iowa or Nevada on the county conventions?

Yeah, extremely favorable for Paul. A lot of the discussion is in this thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150508.0

Greeley County is in, and Santorum barely edged Romney there, of the 40 votes or so that were cast. Kansas is done.

The Lane County results could be because of the lack of a caucus in adjacent Scott County.  The LDS does have a ward (their name for a larger church) in Scott City.

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

Just relating to the coverage:

NBC:  Big wins for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

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

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNbv47075JA8AyZYEK_X71TXjOww?docId=ac12385cdd4545d28a42cbd82a830e18

:D

CNN is showing KS:

Santorum:  33
Romney:  07

Paul picked up a delegate in VI

Tie for the day?

Media is also playing up WY, but counting the prior delegate assignments.

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.

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.

51 percent in a state that you should of won by 60 percent+ isn't very good. I'm predicting the offical numbers out of misr for Santorum on the 17th will fall below 50 percent.

NP-9
Guam-9
Vi-7
Kansas 7
=32 delegates

Santorum
Kansas 33

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.

Should have won by 60?

It is about delegates, not electoral votes.  Bluntly, possibly excepting Paul, any of the other three candidates will win KS.

Santorum is going through a really bad period at this point.

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

Nat Silver summed it all up. For Mittens to be in real danger of facing a brokered convention, about 5% of the Pub electorate needs to switch from Mittens to Rick. In other words, Mittens has about a 5% pad over and above the danger zone at the moment. Absent that 5% switch, it will be mathematically wrapped up when you count the supers after CA turns in its votes. What happened today changes nothing in that formula.  Mittens is right on track. And it looks like maybe he will be more than on track, if the current polls hold up in Alabama and Mississippi, and Mittens garners maybe 15 delegates or something like that that he (and Nate Silver for that matter) wasn't expecting two weeks ago.

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.

Should of gotten 60 percent...Kansas has less then 3 million people or around half of Missouri 6,010,688  

This means that Kansas is much more rural in its nature with far less population centers that Romney does good in. The majority of Kansas city is in Missouri with st.louis. 51 percent is good an I expect Santorum to win Missouri on the 17th, but maybe not by 55 percent.  

Kansas city, kansas has around 200 thousand people compared to the Missouri half that is over 500 thousand.

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

Virgin Island totals:

Uncommitted 130 (33.85%)
Paul 112 (29.17%)
Romney 101 (26.30%)
Santorum 23 (5.99%)
Gingrich 18 (4.69%)

That elected delegates as such: Paul 1, Uncom 2, and Romney 3. One of the Uncom delegates subsequently pledged for Romney.

If you go by only the highest totaling delegate for each candidate, you get:

Romney 41 (29.93%)
Uncommitted 37 (27.01%)
Paul 29 (21.17%)
Santorum 15 (10.95%)
Gingrich 15 (10.95%)

What a joke.

Huckabee did win KS with 60%, so I suppose you could say that Rick "should have got 60."

However, since FL the only other state where Santorum hasn't outperformed Huckabee is GA (and VA, but Rick wasn't on the ballot). In general Rick is showing greater appeal. Averaging both of their results for the contests to date. Rick has an avg of 29%, whereas Huckabee had 21%.

The 2008 caucus was also much lower turnout and a largely ignored contest that occured after McCain always had essentially wrapped it up. Additionally, Romney had dropped out, so no one was splitting the conservative vote with Huckabee, unlike now where Gingrich took votes from Santorum.

One interesting thing about the Virgin Islands voting was that there was a strong divide between St. Croix and St. Thomas. Under either of the above metrics, Uncommitted won St. Croix, and Ron Paul won St. Thomas.

Total delegates split
St. Croix

Uncommitted 104 (44.64%)
Romney 78 (33.48%)
Paul 26 (11.16%)
Santorum 13 (5.58%)
Gingrich 12 (5.15%)

St. Thomas

Paul 86 (56.58%)
Uncommitted 27 (17.76%)
Romney 23 (15.13%)
Santorum 10 (6.58%)
Gingrich 6 (3.95%)

Highest delegate only split
St. Croix

Uncommitted 34 (36.17%)
Romney 27 (28.72%)
Gingrich 12 (12.77%)
Paul 11 (11.70%)
Santorum 10 (10.64%)

St. Thomas

Paul 18 (41.86%)
Romney 14 (32.56%)
Santorum 5 (11.63%)
Uncommitted 3 (6.98%)
Gingrich 3 (6.98%)

Yep, Santorum's ran a significantly better campaign. 

Newt dropping out actually nets Mittens a few delegates per Nate Silver (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/how-would-santorum-do-without-gingrich/#more-28001). 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. It only matters in absolute winner take all states, like Florida, where Mittens on his own one on one would have won anyway, since he got 46% on his own, and gets about a quarter of the Newt votes to boot. Ditto AZ, where Mittens got 47% on his own.

If Rick had not screwed up the delegate thing in VA, along with Newt, along with the 14 Ohio zombie delegates due to the Rick cf there, the 5% pad would be thinner, but they did cf themselves.

I think making comparisons to 2008 is off the mark.  That was a situation where the voter knew that Huckabee could not win.  He was getting protest votes.

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!  :P

Not really.  It also matters in any state that's WTA by congressional district.  Especially going forward, now that there are going to be more states with WTA by CD + WTA at large beyond April 1.  With Gingrich in the race, Romney can win quite a few CDs with just ~35 to 40% of the vote.  But if Gingrich is out, then that's no longer the case.  In the other post by Nate Silver, he talks about how Santorum can only beat Romney if he starts doing so well that he wins the majority of delegates in states like California.  Obviously, he's more likely to win more delegates in CA (and Romney's likely to win fewer delegates in CA) if Gingrich isn't in the race, pulling more votes from Santorum, given how the CA delegate allocation works.

This is why whether Gingrich decides to drop out or not this week is the key question going forward in terms of how quickly this process gets wrapped up, and whether Romney is able to have a "clean victory" in primary season or not.

Yes, except that about half of the CA CD's have next to no Pubs in them, and the Pubs that are there, are not Santorum types. If Newt is gone, it might flip 2 or 3 CD's in the Central Valley, and maybe a couple in the inland empire. That is about it. CA is one state where the salience of economic issues for Pubs is very high - and for good reason. Also the primary is closed, so we won't have any mischief voters, like happened in Ohio and particularly Michigan.

Newt by the way says he is going to Tampa even if he loses both Alabama and Mississippi. I think he means it. He is not in this race at this point to win the nomination. He's in it for the klieg lights.

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.

Thank you Guam, from Mitt and myself.

:D 

I'm sure the entire island of Guam feels blessed to have Winfield's thanks.

Which of the remaining primaries are open ones where Santorum could appeal to Democrats to vote for him?

Dammit Romney broke 20%. He gets delegates. :(

Grasping at straws now are we?

:D  :D  :D  :D  :D  :D

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.

Open Contests

Alabama (50)
Arizona (Semi-closed, with primaries open only to unaffiliated or unrepresented voters, except for the Libertarian primary.)(57)
Arkansas (36)
Georgia (75)
Hawaii (Open primary for state, local, and congressional races; caucus system for presidential races.)(20)
Idaho (32)
Indiana (46)
Massachusetts (All races' primaries open for "unenrolled"/unaffiliated voters only)(41)
Michigan (59)
Mississippi (37)
Missouri (53)
South Carolina (50)
Tennessee (58)
Texas (152)
Vermont (17)
Virginia (49)
Wisconsin (42)

Howso? If Romney had failed to break 20% everyone but Santorum would fail viability and Santorum would take all delegates.

If only one candidate got above 20% in Kansas, then delegates would have been awarded proportionally with no cutoff, so all four candidates would have split them.

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

Did all those blank counties on the google map just have 0 turnout?

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.

No; for whatever reason those counties didn't have a caucus. Republicans in those counties could apparently instead caucus at any other county in their congressional district, if they still wanted to participate.

.... but looks like Romney won the most delegates.

384 total cast

112 to Paul (29%)  Won one delegate

101 to Romney (26%) Won three delegates plus three RNC  member pledge.  (Pick up a uncommitted delegate after the balloting for a total of seven.)

23 to Santorm (6%) No delegates

18 to Gingrich (5%) No delegates

130 Uncommitted (34%) Two delegates but one changed to Romney after the vote totals were announced

http://vigop.com/

So, Uncommitted won the Virgin Islands popular vote. :P

Not surprising Ron Paul won the Virgin Islands considering his supporters are most likely to be virgins.

Are there many in your class, Prof?

No, no virgins in his class, because he does not have a class :p

We actually established a while before you showed up that he may very well be an actual professor involved with some particularly surreal strand of postmodernism.

I wonder what he teaches. Sociology?

It's probably just someone like Aizen screwing around.

Hmmmm, his IP was traced to the University of Colorado...

Maybe he's a virgin student.

I could see that.

Ron Paul has actually won the popular vote somewhere? This is the happiest day of my life. Odd that an organisation so astute at getting the delegates couldn't manage them here. I guess they were all too overwhelmed.

Uncommitted beat Ron Paul? That's just sad.

Uncommitted beat Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich? That's just sad.

Technically, uncommitted will win Pennsylvania.  :)

Virgin Islands delegates Romney 7, Paul 1

Thank you Virgin Islands from Mitt and myself.

:D

And yet you are outraged when the Paulites are getting more delegates than they should receive based on popular vote.

Very principled, Winfield.