| The AP has a story today on delegate counts. There were only 12 delegates at stake in the primary because New Hampshire was penalized half its delegates for holding the contest before February. Romney won 13 delegates in last week's Iowa caucuses, giving him a total of 20 for the race.
They're right about New Hampshire's totals as Matt reported last night. The problem is with Iowa. After the Iowa caucuses we told you what the real delegate allocation was. ZERO. Iowa's delegates are not only unbound to a candidate but worse they haven't even been selected yet. That makes them uncountable. For all we know Ron Paul could sweep the delegates the way they stand now. The AP goes on to explain their delegate allocation in Iowa Political parties in some states, including Iowa, use local caucuses to elect delegates to state or congressional district conventions, where national delegates are selected. In Iowa and other caucus states, the AP uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win if the candidates maintain the same level of support throughout the process.
Iowa has a total of 28 delegates to the National Convention. The AP gave Romney 13 of these delegates, gave Santorum 12 and gave no delegates to the rest of the candidates. This includes Ron Paul who received 21% of the vote? By some magic they decide Paul doesn't get any delegates (even though none of the candidates actually have delegates). If I was a Ron Paul supporter I'd call shenanigans. Beyond the APs counting of the yet-to-be-named unbound delegates from Iowa, they fail to consider superdelegates. We give solid evidence in our 2012 GOP Superdelegate List that Romney has 13 supers on his side. Why wouldn't they count these unless they're not entirely sure what they're doing? |
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