Welcome to the third issue of delegate math for the 2020 delegate selection process.
Nevada is the second caucus state of this cycle. Like in Iowa, a key part of the caucus process is the opportunity of participants to realign if their initial candidate is not viable. Generally speaking, in almost all precincts, it will take 15% for a candidate to become viable (except in precincts which elect three or fewer delegates). Like in Iowa, based on the results in each precinct, each precinct will elect a number of delegates to the county conventions, and it is the count of delegates won (not the raw votes) that will be used to allocate the national convention delegates.
Because of the tourist-heavy nature of the Las Vegas economy, Nevada has two types of precinct caucuses — regular precincts and special “strip caucuses.” The strip caucuses are held at several casinos for workers who have to work during the regular caucus hours. The precinct caucuses, on the other hand, basically cover voters living in the individual precinct. For the precinct caucuses, part of the vote will come from ranked choice-voting by individuals voting at early vote locations. Like in Iowa, if a presidential contender is viable after the first vote (based on the alignment of in-person voters and the first preference vote of early voters), the supporters of that candidate may not switch to a different candidate prior to the second vote. During realignment, the supporters of non-viable candidates may switch to a viable candidate or attempt to join with the supporters of other non-viable candidates to reach viability. As best as I can determine from the rules and guidance published by the Nevada Democratic Party, the first preference of early voters will be considered in determining if a group has become viable — both for the initial alignment and after realignment. If, after realignment, the first preference of early voters is not viable, those voters will be considered to have realigned to their highest viable preference, but those second preference will not help a non-viable group become viable.
Once all in-person participants have realigned and the votes from the early voters in a precinct have been assigned to the proper candidate, that precincts delegates are proportionally allocated to the viable candidates. As at all other stages of the delegate selection process, you award whole delegates first and then use the rounding rules (nominally rounding up above .5 delegates and rounding down below .5 delegates, but actually assigning to the largest remainder until all delegate slots are filled). Again, as at other stages of the process, all viable candidates will receive at least one delegate as long as the number of viable candidates do not exceed the total number of delegates.
As noted above, as in Iowa, each precinct has been assigned a set number of county convention delegates. Actual turnout has no impact on the number of delegates selected by the precinct. As in Iowa, it is the number of delegates won in the various caucuses that count — not the raw vote. (It appears that the Nevada Democratic Party may be releasing the raw vote totals in addition to the number of county convention delegates won.) Unlike in Iowa, all county convention delegates are equal so there is no convoluted formula assigning different weights to the county delegates in the different counties.
As was the case in Iowa, Nevada has four congressional districts. Under the Nevada Delegate Selection Plan, the First District has five delegates, and the Second District, Third District, and Fourth District has six delegates each. With five candidates having won delegates in earlier primaries, one potential complicating factor in delegate math is that all viable candidates in a district get at least one delegate (which could impact the First District). Additionally, things can get convoluted with fractional delegates.
In the First District, candidates will be assured of getting at least one national convention delegate if they get 17% or more of the county convention delegates. (Most likely, any candidate who exceeds 15% of the county convention delegates will win a national convention delegate, but there is an outside possibility that six candidates could reach 15%. If that happens, the sixth-placed candidate will not get a national convention delegate. If no candidate exceeds 40%, there is a chance that five candidates will reach 15% with each getting one delegate.) Any candidate who exceeds 40% will get a second delegate. Any candidate who exceeds 55% will get a third delegate (normally 50% would assure a third delegate but there would be the possibility of three other candidates reaching 15% if the leading candidate has less than 55%). If a candidate manages to get over 70%, that candidate will get four delegates. Finally, any candidate who gets over 85% of the vote will get all five delegates.
In the Second, Third, and Fourth District, any candidate who reaches 15% in the district will get one national convention delegates. Things get tricky for the second delegate because of the possibility that other candidates will also get fractional delegates and the requirement that all viable candidates get at least one delegate. My calculation is that it will take 28.34% to assure a candidate of the second delegate. (At that number, a candidate is either first with five viable candidates, first or second with four viable candidates, or in the top three with only three viable candidate and in a position to round up.) Similarly, it takes approximately 42.51% to be assured of a third delegate. It will take over 58.34% to get a fourth delegate. It will take 75% to get a fifth delegate. Finally, it will take 85% to get all six delegates.
Nevada has five pledged party leader delegates. So the allocation rules for that pack will follow the allocation rules for the First District (except using state-wide results instead of district-level results).
Nevada has eight at-large delegates. Again, it takes 15% of the county convention delegates to get one national convention delegate. Again with a large number of candidates still running, it should take approximately 21.26% to get a second delegate (a lower number would leave open the possibility of finishing fourth with five viable candidates). It will take 35% to get three delegates. It will take over 45% to get four delegates. It will take approximately 60% to get five delegates. It will take approximately 68.75% to get seven delegates. It will take 81.75% to get seven delegates and 85% to get all eight.
As with Iowa, the fact that the Nevada Democratic Party uses the count of county convention delegates to allocate national convention delegates will introduce two distortions from the raw vote totals. First, if voters support a candidate who does not reach 15% in a particular precinct, their support for that candidate does not show up in the final count. As the counts in Iowa showed, some candidates gained support and others lost support on the second count as the supporters of candidates who were not viable in particular precincts switched to viable candidates. Second, as discussed above, the actual turnout in the precinct does not matter. Again as the counts in Iowa showed, there were differences between the post-realignment popular vote and the state delegate equivalent count. Taking a very rough look at Iowa, if the first preference vote was what counted, Vice-President Biden would not have won any state-level delegates, and the two that he won would have gone to Senator Sanders. (Vice-President Biden also might have lost one congressional district delegate which also may have gone to Senator Sanders. As I do not have a first preference vote count by congressional district, this guesstimate is based on uniform swing. and the fact that Biden was barely viable in the Third District.)
We are still at the stage where the perception of who is doing well matters more than delegates won. Even after Nevada, a mere 101 delegates (out of just under 4,000 pledged) delegates will have been allocated. At this point, the leading candidate only has about one-third of the total number of delegates won to date. And it is unlikely that any candidate will emerge from Nevada with a total delegate count in excess of 50. But this stage is ending quickly with only Nevada and South Carolina to go from the early states. A mere three days after South Carolina, over 1300 delegates (approximately one-third of the total number of pledged delegates) will be allocated on March 3. If after March 3, the lead candidates are only wining about one-third of the delegates, the path to a clear win will gradually disappear for all candidates. Right now, for the leading candidates, they are only 8 or 10 delegates behind a majority of all delegates allocated, and that number is easy to overcome because the gap is small and the number of remaining delegates is large. By April 1, when two-thirds of all pledged delegates will have ben allocated, a candidate with 45% of the delegates (which is better than where Buttigieg and Sanders are today) would be 130 delegates short of a majority, and would need to win 60% of the remaining delegates to reach a majority of pledged delegates. (In the past, the difficulty to get to 50% of pledged delegates in a multi-candidate race was eased by the superdelegates unifying behind the candidate with the lead — regardless of whom they might have endorsed earlier. That solution is off-the-table this cycle as superdelegates are not allowed to vote until the second ballot and the goal is to avoid having the first multi-ballot convention in the past seventy-five years.)
Aside from the influence of a certain former Senate Majority Leader who assured that Nevada was the state that got the third slot in the “early” window, the reason for having a state like Nevada was to get a state that was more diverse into the mix — specifically a smaller state with a significant Latino population. While there were some Latinos and African-Americans participating in Iowa and New Hamsphire, minority groups are not a particularly large segment of the population or the Democratic votes in those states. On the other hand, minority voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition in many states that are key to a Democratic victory in November. Nevada will be the first real chance to see if any candidate has made a persuasive case to Latino voters. As Latino votes are also a key segment in states like California, Colorada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah that vote on March 3 as well as other states that vote later in March or in April, the results in Nevada will be the first real hint of who will get the support of this essential demographic group of voters. On the other hand, the number of candidates running may result in a very splintered verdict, but the entrance polls in Nevada will at least give us more of an idea of how this race may play out as this process heads from one race per week in a small state to a more national race.
