The Delegate Fight: 2016

[Mr. Morden]

It continues to amaze me that Trump pulled off 3/4ths of the PA unpledged delegates.  He's still getting creamed in that type of contest everywhere else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "that type of contest".  The PA unpledged delegates were directly elected by the voters, whereas all of these other events involve selection by "party insiders".  Seems pretty clear why Trump did better in the former than the latter.

Well, they weren't even identified on the ballot by whom they supported, which should favor well-organized insiders.

Only in the sense that you need to be well organized enough to get this information about who to support to your voters.  In the other delegate contests, it doesn't matter if you give people the information or not.  The people doing the voting at these state conventions are anti-Trump.  That's why they aren't voting for Trump delegates.  Not because they don't have the right info about who is and isn't a Trump delegate.

[Mr. Morden]

Trump won't have a majority of delegates who are actually loyal to him.  But that doesn't mean they're going to go nuclear and deny him the nomination.  The question is, do they still give him trouble on the VP nomination and/or the running of the convention?  Can the delegates actually seize control of the convention, and overrule Trump's choices as to who gets to speak, when, about what, etc.?

Also, if we suppose that a majority of delegates are anti-Trump (but will still nominate him for prez because of being bound by the primary results), are there other things they can do at the convention that will impact how the RNC operates during the fall campaign?  For example, can they force the party to direct money to help congressional candidates and avoid the presidential race, throw up roadblocks on data sharing between the RNC and the Trump campaign and so forth?  Or is that something that's really just decided by Priebus and a handful of people around him, which the delegates to the convention have no control over?

[Mr. Morden]

Should I keep this thread stickied?

Which threads do people want stickied at this point?  I was thinking of stickying the VP denials thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=234526.0

after repurposing it as a general purpose thread about VP news.  As with four years ago, I'd prefer to have a separate thread about VP idle speculation, so that the news thread doesn't get swamped by people's dumb speculations.

[Mr. Morden]

I'm fine with unstickying it.

OK.  Here we go...

[Mr. Morden]

Looks like Cruz loyalists did well in delegate selection in Washington state:

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-state-gop-convention-backs-cruz-over-trump/

[Mr. Morden]

Erc-

Given all the recent talk about a convention coup against Trump, I don't suppose you can give us any insight into approx. what %age of the RNC delegates will be true blue Trump loyalists?