Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Delegate Math: Weeks of April 4 and April 11

The key contest for both sides during the week of April 4 is the Wisconsin Primary on April 5.  Additionally, Colorado Republicans will hold their congressional district conventions on April 8 and their state convention on April 9.  Democrats will hold county caucuses in Wyoming on April 9.  The Republicans will hold the second part of their delegate selection in Wyoming at the state convention on April 16 in the only contest scheduled for the week of April 11.

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Delegate Math — March 21 through April 3

After three weeks of multiple primaries in large and medium-large states, there is one last week of multiple events before the process takes a bit of a breather.  After this week, there is a half contest during the week of March 28; one and a half contests during the week of April 4; one quarter contest during the week of April 11; and one contest during the week of April 18 (albeit the very big New York primary).  The pace will only pick back up starting the week of April 25.   In practical terms that means that the candidates will be spending the next month concentrating on a very few states and determining if it is worth continuing with the campaign.

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Iowa-County Conventions

Saturday were the county conventions in Iowa.  On the Republican side,  the national convention delegates were allocated by the preference vote in the precinct delegates; so the county convention is merely about who will go to the state and congressional district conventions to choose the actual delegates (which might matter if the Republicans end up with a deadlocked convention).  On the Democratic side, the results of the precinct meetings (as reported to the media) are an estimate of what will happen at the county meeting, and the county meetings can change things.  While there appear to have been some changes at the county level, it appears that the bottom line has not changed.

Last week, I looked at the results of the precinct conventions and identified fourteen counties in which (primarily due to O’Malley and uncommitted delegates), the final delegate count was ambiguous.  Based on the results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party, in addition to these fourteen counties, there appear to have been nine other counties that gave a reminder on Saturday that delegates are technically free to change their preferences between each round of the process.  (By my original estimate, a total of eighteen projected delegates changed hands, but it is possible that my counts of the delegates to the county convention included some mathematical errors.)The most interesting of these nine counties was Mills County.

In Mills County, after the precinct meetings, Clinton had twenty-three delegates to the county convention and Bernie Sanders had twenty-two delegates.   With the county convention electing five delegates to the state convention, the projected split was three Clinton delegates to two Sanders delegates.  However, after the county convention, Clinton emerged with two delegates, Sanders with one, and Martin O’Malley and uncommitted also got one delegate each.  It would be interesting to hear news reports out of Mills County on how this happened.  Given that it takes seven delegates to be viable, it is theoretically possible that the Sanders delegates decided to split up 8-7-7 to “steal” a state convention delegate.  There is also the possibility that in some of the precincts, O’Malley or uncommitted voters “got” a county convention delegate in exchange for joining one of the other candidates when the O’Malley/uncommitted groups were too small to be viable. and reverted to their original preference (but it is hard seeing that many delegates having secret preferences). Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math — Week of March 14

Under current Republican rules, March 15 is the first day that a state or territory (other than the first four) can hold a winner-take-all or winner-take-most primary.   Four of the five primaries scheduled for this week have some kind of winner-take component (at least for the state-wide delegates).  This week also features the home states (and perhaps the last stand) of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor John Kasich of Ohio.

As discussed Friday night, Illinois is an unusual state — especially on the Republican side.  In all likelihood, the results will resemble a winner-take-most primary with three delegates going to the candidate who finishes first in each of the eighteen congressional districts and fifteen delegates going to the candidate who finishes first state-wide.    However, because in the congressional districts delegates are on the ballot and are directly elected, there is a chance that some delegates might be elected even if their presidential candidate loses the district.  Such an “upset” is most likely to happen in close districts.

Missouri is a pure winner-take-most state.  However, unlike most states, the winner of the congressional districts will get five delegates from each district (rather than the normal three) and the state-wide winner will only get twelve delegates. Continue Reading...

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The Law of Unintended Consequences

When the Republicans re-wrote the rules for 2016, they shortened the proportionality window — from a full month to two weeks.  That led to several states with Republican legislatures and Republican governors opting for a March 15 primary date — the first day on which Republican state parties can hold a primary that does not follow the proportionality rules.  In particular, the Florida Republican Party (listening to suggestions from the Bush and Rubio campaigns) opted for a winner-take-all primary.  What looked great in 2014 and early 2015, now looks quite differently after last night’s results.

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Delegate Math — Week of March 7

As votes are being counted this evening (with each party having one contest scheduled for Sunday), time to look at the week ahead.  As with the previous week, all of the contests in both parties use proportional allocation of delegates (except the Republicans in Wyoming).  However, for the Republicans, each state gets to pick their own threshold (including potentially setting a threshold for winner-take-all) and decide whether to allocate all of the delegates based on the statewide result or allocate some delegates by congressional district.  For the Democrats, the key issue is how many delegates in each pool of delegate (district-by-district, at-large, and pledged party leader).  This upcoming week, there will be fewer contests — 4 for the Democrats and five and a half for the Republicans.

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Iowa Round Two

The Iowa Caucuses were over a month ago and the media attention has now moved to other states and other contests.  However, the caucuses themselves were only the first step in a four-step process.   Next Saturday is the second step — the county conventions.  While waiting for result from the state’s that start today, let’s take a minute to look at what is at the county conventions next week.

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Super Tuesday Aftermath

As always, Super Tuesday — the first Tuesday after the end of the pre-primary window — has done a lot to at least outline the shape of the race for the White House.  Because at this point, the race becomes all about the delegates (and not about exceeding expectations), there are clear tasks for the candidates over the next two weeks.

On the Democratic side, through 16 contests, Hillary Clinton has exceeded her 2008 performance in 11 states.  More significantly, in several states — Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia from last night and South Carolina from Saturday, Secretary Clinton has far exceeded her 2008 performance turning losses into big wins.  In each of these five states, the swing in favor of Secretary Clinton was in excess of 30 delegates.  In the five states that swung away from Secretary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, the biggest swing was 16 votes (in Massachusetts which was much closer this time than in 2008).    The overall net change from 2008 so far is a swing of approximately 300 delegates.  Considering that Secretary Clinton only lost by 104 delegates in 2008, Senator Sanders needs to find some state to alter these numbers soon.

Over the next two weeks, three states are key to whether Senator Sanders can make it a competitive race or whether he will become a gadfly who stays in the race long after its over.  These three states are Michigan (March 8), Illinois (March 15), and Florida (March 15).  Michigan and Florida are key because of their size and because of the weird role that they played in 2008 that led to Secretary Clinton winning those states by large margins (18 and 26 delegates respectively).  If Senator Sanders is to win the race, needs to gain significant delegates in the large states that went to Secretary Clinton in 2008.  If he can’t put a dent in Secretary Clinton’s numbers in these two states, it is hard to figure out where he makes progress.  Additionally, at some point, Senator Sanders has to win some of the large states.  So far, the largest state that Senator Sanders has won in Minnesota with Secretary Clinton winning the four largest states. Continue Reading...

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Democrat Delegate Math-Week of February 29

Now that South Carolina is over, we can turn our attention to Super Tuesday and its immediate aftermath.  When compared to the Republican Party, the Democratic math is both simpler and more complex.  The simpler side is that the thresholds for qualifying for delegates is the same in every state and district — 15%.  Similarly, the only way for the winner to take all of the delegates is to keep the opponent beneath 15%.  There are two complexities on the Democratic side.  First, even in the same state, the number of delegates elected from each district is different.  Second, rather than pooling all state-wide delegates together, the Democrats have two pools (except in the territories) — 1) pledged party leaders and 2) at-large delegates.

There will be eleven states and one territory voting on Tuesday, followed by three states on Saturday, and one state on Sunday.  Democrats Abroad begin voting on Tuesday, but do not finish up until next week.  The easy way to gain delegates on an opponent is simply to win districts in which there are an odd-number of delegates.  A one-vote margin in those districts gives you that extra delegate (whether a 2-1, 3-3, 4-3, or 5-4 or larger split).  Beyond that original margin, getting an even larger split or avoiding an even split in delegates in the districts with even margins requires a somewhat large margin (with how large depending on the number of delegates at issue.  It can be done, as shown by the last three states, but it is not easy.  This part of the delegate math is what makes it difficult for candidates who fall behind early to catch-up later.   Now onto the state-by-state splits:

Continue Reading...

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Tentative Delegate Counts

Reporters like a good story.  In theory, they like a good story based on facts.  When an event happens, they like to be able to say what it means.  The rules of the nomination process, however, are inconsistent with the way  that reporters normally operate.  Particularly in caucus states, the event that reporters want to treat as the election is merely the first step in the process.  So the reporters make estimates and report those estimates as if they are fact.  In some cases, these estimates are good.  In others, the problem is readily apparent up front.

The problem used to be worse.  In previous cycles, while Republican caucuses reported a presidential preference poll, that preference poll was just a beauty contest and what really mattered was the unstated preferences of the individuals elected as delegates to the next round of the process.  So when the media treated those preference polls as an estimate of the delegates from the state that estimate had nothing to do with reality.  The Republicans have changed the rules for this cycle.  If a state has a preference poll, that poll binds the delegates (with three major exceptions — Pennsylvania, Illinois, and West Virginia — which elect, at least, congressional district delegates directly).   For the three states that directly elect delegates, the reporters are likely to get the story right and look at the pledges of the delegate candidates in Illinois and West Virginia.  They might screw up Pennsylvania in which none of the delegates are technically bound to any candidate (but might do the legwork to find out who the delegates actually support).   (On the Democrat side, the delegates are bound based on the presidential preference vote.)

Some states, however, are not having a preference poll which will make things harder for reporters.  In Colorado (March 1), Wyoming (March 1), Guam (March 12), American Samoa (March 22), North Dakota (April 1), there are no preference polls.   In Colorado and Wyoming, if a delegate candidate declares a preference, that delegate is bound by that preference if elected.   In American Samoa, the convention will choose whether to bind the delegation by resolution.  In North Dakota, the convention can decide on an apportionment formula. Continue Reading...

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