Category Archives: Primary and Caucus Results

California Chaos — Part II

There are two features of the California election cycle that makes things difficult to try to figure out what is and will happen.  The first, as discussed last week is its use of an open, semi-partisan, top two primary in which the candidates who finish first and second, regardless of party and regardless of percent, advance to the November general election.  The other is how California votes and count votes.

Like its two neighbors to the north, Oregon and Washington, California has very liberal rules on mail-in ballots.  The deadline for the local election authorities to receive mail-in ballots is this upcoming Friday (June 8), and those ballots will count as long as they are postmarked by yesterday.  In addition to mail-in ballots that have yet to arrive, there are also provisional ballots (and, based on early news reports, there may have been a problem with voter registration records in Los Angeles County that could result in a large number of provisional ballots in that county).  In short, we will not know how many votes remain to be counted until this weekend or early next week when counties report to the state how many ballots remain to be counted.  The California Secretary of State’s website has two relevant tabs for the remaining count — one that summarizes the status of unprocessed ballots in each county (crucial to knowing how many votes remain) and one on country reporting status that provides information on each county’s on-going updates (e.g. if done, when last reported, etc.).  The county reporting status update (as of this posting) indicates that most of the counties have completed their election day vote counts, but a handful of counties, primarily Santa Clara are not yet done from last night.

Because of the late ballots,  the current vote totals are a little like highly accurate pre-election polls.  We know that there will be some differences between the election night percentages and the remaining uncounted ballots, but it is reasonable to expect that those differences will be small.  In a general election, based on past history, we would expect the late votes to lean Democratic compared to the election day results.  However, in a top two primary, the issue is not whether the votes will be for a Democrat or a Republican, but which Democrat or which Republican.  If the late votes favor a fourth-placed Democrat over a second-placed Democrat and a third-placed Republican over a first-placed Republican, that could move the third-placed Republican into second place even if the overall Democratic percentage in the district improves.  In other words, depending upon how close the race is, it may still be too early to tell who will advance.  Things will improve over June as the counties send updates to the Secretary of State.  The counties, however, have until July 6 to finish their counts.  Depending upon how quickly updates are sent, we may not know the two finalists in some races for two or three weeks. Continue Reading...

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Primary Lessons from Missouri and Kansas

mo-sealThe primary votes in Missouri and Kansas reflect some realities of grass-roots campaigning and the current divisions in the Republican party.

On the Missouri side, “outsider” candidates won two of the three open Republican state-wide primaries.  In addition, several pro-labor Republican state representatives faced well-funded opponents after helping to defeat “right to work” legislation.  The results in these districts were mixed, but unless Democrats can win a couple more suburban seats, the risk of more anti-labor legislation remains.  In short, the Missouri Republican party (aided by the lack of any limit on donations making it easy for billionaires to run candidates that take extreme positions) is still sprinting toward the hard right.

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Delegate Math Week of June 6 — Part 2 (California)

As discussed in part 1, the math in both parties has been relentless.  After last night’s results in the U. S. Virgin Islands, the Greenpapers has Clinton only 85 votes short of clinching the nomination in its “soft” count.  Barring a large number of superdelegates endorsing Clinton over the next forty-eight hours, today’s primary in Puerto Rico does not have enough delegates at stake (60 total) to put Clinton over the top, but the states discussed in Part 1 (New Jersey, South Dakota, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Montana) have more than enough delegates to put Clinton over the top.  Sanders is urging the media to remember that superdelegates can change their minds and depart from past practice by not declaring Clinton the nominee unless she wins enough pledged delegates to put her over the top (almost impossible).

With so few contests left, it is all but certain that Clinton will win the pledged delegate count.   Even the attempt to win additional delegates in the later stages of caucus states is not going well.  While the Washington Democratic Party has only posted the names of the delegates elected by the Congressional Districts (not the candidates that they are supporting), they have announced the allocation for the state-wide delegates (which is based on the breakdown of the Congressional District delegates).  Based on that allocation, Clinton won between 17 and 19 delegates at the Congressional District level (post-precinct caucus estimates had her winning 18).    In the other states that have already held first-tier caucuses, there are only 48 delegates still at stake (with Sanders having a 28-20 advantage).    (6-2 in Idaho, 7-8 in Iowa, and 15-10 in Nebraska).  Gaining more than five delegates from these states is unlikely, and adding it to the potential gain of 1 in Washington, Clinton would still have a 261 delegate lead heading into Puerto Rico.  Since for reasons discussed previously, Sanders is probably going to have a net loss of delegates between Puerto Rico and the other states on Tuesday, Sander’s outside hope of significantly closing that gap come down to California.

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Delegate Math Week of June 6 (Part 1)

The week of June 6 marks the end of the Republican primary season and is the next to last week of primaries for the Democrats.  Given the sheer size of California, I will leave that state for its own post.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump is likely to go over 1,237 bound delegates this week.  (He is currently ninety-eight bound delegates short of that number.  Depending upon the site doing the count, he either currently has enough verbal commitments from unbound delegates or is just short of enough to reach that 1,237 number.  There was a time in early April when there appeared to be  a chance to keep Trump short of that number, but his opponents were never able to unite in a coherent strategy (and John Kasich never had enough funding) to target districts and states were Cruz or Kasich could win delegates.

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Delegate Math — Week of May 30th

The primary campaign enters the home stretch.  Depending upon which count you use, Donald Trump either has or is about to clinch the Republican nomination.  (The counts differ in their estimate of how many of the officially “uncommitted” delegates have pledged to support Trump.  Trump is 139 short by the “bound” delegate count.)  Because there are no Republican contests this week, the only thing that can change between now and the next (and final) Republican contests on June 7 will be additional pledges from uncommitted delegates.

This week the action is all on the Democratic side in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.  Between now and the Virgin Island’s contest, there will be some minor adjustments as results are certified from the April states and as superdelegates announce their support for one of the candidates.  However, barring a large number of superdelegates endorsing Clinton, the delegates up for stake this week should not be enough to clinch the nomination.  At the present time, Clinton is approximately 100 delegates short of clinching the nomination.

The Virgin Islands contest on June 4 is a little bit unusual.  At the territorial mass meeting, attendees from St. Croix will select three delegates.  Attendees from the other islands will select four delegates.  Assuming that both candidates meet the fifteen percent threshold, St. Croix will almost certainly split 2-1.  The other four delegates will either split 3-1 or 2-2.   As a result, the most likely outcomes are either a 5-2 or a 4-3 split (most likely in favor of Clinton).  At this stage of the race, the results in the Virgin Islands will not make much of a difference in the delegate count.  At most the Virgin Islands will play into any “momentum” argument that the Sanders campaign wants to make to the superdelegates.  (That argument is the same reason why Sanders is considering a recount in Kentucky even though such a recount would probably only change one delegate at most.) Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math — Weeks of May 16 and May 23

As this week’s primaries showed, with Kasich and Cruz out, it’s only a matter of time until Trump gets to 1,237 delegates.  There are still pitfalls ahead for Trump, but those pitfalls are about the convention going rogue on the platform and the vice-presidential pick.  Whether that happens depends upon how much Trump wants to alter the 2012 platform (which is hard to tell given how vague Trump’s actual positions are) and whether Trump can find an acceptable vice-presidential candidate.   Over the next two week’s the Republicans will have primaries in Oregon (May 17) and Washington (May 24).    Oregon allocates its twenty-eight delegates proportionally with no winner-take-all provision; so Cruz and Kasich should get some delegates, but Trump should take twenty or more delegates.  Washington allocates thirty delegates by congressional district and fourteen delegates state-wide.    Given that Washington has a twenty percent threshold for winning delegates, Trump is likely to get all forty-four.   Including the uncommitted delegates who have pledged to support Trump, Washington should put Trump unofficially over the top.

For the Democratic Party, the next two weeks consists of two primaries (Oregon and Kentucky on May 17), the Nebraska county conventions spread out over the two weeks, the Washington Congressional District conventions on May 21, and the Wyoming state convention on May 28.

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Delegate Math — Week of May 9

With Donald Trump being the last Republican standing, delegate math on the Republican side is almost meaningless.  (Of course with early voting, some segments of votes have already been cast and some segment of voters tend to vote against the presumptive nominee.)  On May 10, the Republicans will have primaries in Nebraska (thirty-six delegates on winner-take-all basis) and West Virginia (thirty-one directly elected delegates — three in each district and twenty-two state-wide.  There are some weird restrictions on the twenty-two state-wide delegates that could distort the results if voters do not understand the rules).  Trump still needs 223 more delegates to clinch the nomination.  As such, he will probably not officially clinch the nomination until June 7, but it would take some very bizarre results between now and June 7 to stop Trump from getting the nomination.  In the upcoming weeks, I am sure there will be several posts on this site on what the nomination of Trump means for this year’s elections and the future of the Republican Party.

On the Democratic side, counting superdelegates, Hillary Clinton is approximately 189 delegates short of clinching the nomination.  The main event this week is the West Virginia Primary on May 10.  The delegate breakdown in West Virginia is seven delegates in both the first and second districts, six delegates for both the third district and the at-large pool, and three pledged party leader delegates.  Given votes in similar states, Bernie Sanders has a shot at getting to five delegates (64.3%) in the first and the second and four delegates in the third and at-large.  With an almost certain 2-1 split for the pledged party leaders, that would give Sanders a 20-9 advantage.

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Trump’s GOP heads to Cleveland

With John Kasich suspending his campaign today, even NBC News will now have to call Donald Trump the presumptive nominee.

We’ll keep the sidebar GOP numbers updated, but will no longer be updating the state-by-state results for the GOP.

Of course, Clinton has been the presumptive nominee for the Democrats for 2 months, but no one is allowed to call her that yet,,,

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Will Indiana end the primary season for the GOP?

If Trump sweeps all the delegates, it could be over. Final polls close in the state at 7 PM EDT.

7:30: Trump sweeps. It’s over. On to November.

9:30: Sanders wins a small victory; Clinton remains the nominee. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math: Week of May 2

As a month, May is mostly about delegate selection rather than delegate allocation.  Even on the Democratic side (where some caucus allocations will be finalized), there will be over twenty delegate selection events in various states but fewer than ten delegate allocation events.

On the Republican side, there is just one delegate allocation event — Indiana.  After a good showing this past Tuesday (Trump even apparently got 31 supporters elected as unpledged district delegates in Pennsylvania), Trump looks to have a shot at getting enough delegates to win on the first ballot.  He still needs to win fifty percent of the remaining delegates though (approximately 250).  Indiana is another winner-take-most state  — three delegates to the winner in each of the nine congressional districts and thirty to the state-wide winner.  Indiana is the last best chance for Cruz to prevent Trump from getting the nomination.   After trying to arrange a deal with Kasich and (shades of Ronald Reagan) announcing his VP candidate, Cruz has few angles left to play.  Trump is up by 6% which would likely give him 45+ delegates.  If Cruz can make a comeback (with the help of Kasich supporters), Trump is probably looking at 15 or fewer delegates.  With only around 450 delegates left after Indiana, a thirty delegate swing is a big deal.

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