Monthly Archives: March 2016

Delegate Math — March 21 through April 3

By tmess2 | Published March 20, 2016

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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Rubio Math

By tmess2 | Published March 19, 2016

As Matt noted yesterday, Alaska has formally announced the reallocation of its delegates in light of Marco Rubio’s decision to suspend his campaign.  However, Alaska is not the only state in which Senator Rubio “won” delegates.  Additionally, in several of those states, Senator Rubio is not the only “former” candidate who won delegates.  Given that, at least, some elements of the Republican Party leadership are hoping for a contested convention what happens to these delegates could play a key role in how realistic that hope is.  As with anything else dealing with delegate selection, the answer is a mixture of current and future rules of the state parties (some established by state law) and the national party.

Posted in Delegate Count, Delegates, Primary and Caucus Results | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Judge Garland and the Election

By tmess2 | Published March 18, 2016

Following the example of every other President since George Washington, President Obama has nominated a candidate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  The Senate majority, in an unprecedented move, are declining to either schedule hearings (a relatively new part of the nomination process, only dating to the early part of the 20th Century) or allow the nomination to be brought up to the floor for a debate.  While there have been times that the Senate has voted down a nominee or the President has withdrawn a nominee based on objections to that individual that made it likely that the nomination would fail (or that there were not enough votes for cloture).  How this conflict plays out over the next six months depends, in part, on events outside of the control of the Senate and the White House.  In particular, it depends on whether it seems like the vacancy is becoming an election issue and the perceived likely outcome of the election (which is not the same thing as what will ultimately happen in November).

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Rubio’s 5 Alaska delegates go to Trump and Cruz

By Matt | Published March 18, 2016

And the odds of a contested convention go down a tiny bit:

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump will each have 14 delegates assigned to them, now that Sen. Marco Rubio has suspended his campaign.

According to Alaska Republican Party rules, (Article 5, Section 15, Paragraph 9) if a presidential candidate drops out before the state convention, the percentage of national delegates pledged to that candidate “shall be reapportioned among the Qualified Presidential Candidates.” The delegate count is recalculated according to a mathematical formula.
…
“The vote was close and while Sen. Cruz had the total vote overall, when it was recalibrated, Cruz got 14.39 and Trump got 13.61, and, by our historically used method, we round to the nearest whole number,” [Party chairman Peter] Goldberg said. Continue Reading...

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Watching the Republicans

By DocJess | Published March 17, 2016
Summary of research for the Republican Autopsy, 2012

Summary of research for the Republican Autopsy, 2012

Let’s review.  Back in 2012, the GOP decided to do an autopsy of what went wrong with Mitt Romney and the 2012 election. (For those of us keeping score, the highlight was watching the Karl Rove meltdown. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) Reince Priebus selected people with gravitas to undertake the study,  including Ari Fleischer and Haley Barbour, and the team interviewed over 52,000 Republicans. They reached conclusions related to being more inclusive, changing their messaging, and doing serious outreach. I’m not making this up, you can read it here.  Had they done any of those things, this would be a different March of 2016.

But they did the exact opposite, and then when the poster child for the absolute worst parts of the Republican Party started a campaign, they made fun of him, and wrote him off. And so today, their presumptive candidate is Donald Trump and they’re floundering for a way to cheat him out of the nomination.

The rhetoric yesterday was amazing. Utilizing, or potentially changing Rule 40, Currently, this rule says that unless a candidate has won eight states outright, his name cannot be entered in nomination. As of this writing, Trump has won 19 states, Cruz 7, Rubio 3 and Kasich 1. Cruz may well get his eighth (think Utah) but Rubio is out, and Kasich has a heavy lift. Notwithstanding the delegate count, which is a mixture of proportional, semi-proportional and winner-take-all, it’s basically down to two on the floor. This also precludes the floated Republican plan of Paul Ryan or someone else who wasn’t part of the primary elections. This rule was enacted to stop Ron Paul in 2012, after the shenanigans they used in 2008 to invalidate his delegates in Saint Paul. The GOP is infamous in its ability to move the goalposts so they’ll likely screw with the rule, but Trump is different. Really: take the quiz. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections, GOP | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Ides of Tuesday, or something like that

By Matt | Published March 15, 2016

This could be a deciding day in the 2016 race:

Update 12:20: Trump wins Northern Marianas, Florida, North Carolina and Illinois. Rubio Out. Kasich wins Ohio. Clinton wins Florida, NC, Ohio and Illinois. Early estimates showing her gaining 90 net delegates on Sanders.

On the Democratic side, if Clinton dominates in FL and NC, and battles to a draw in MO, IL and OH (even if she loses all 3 states), it will be clear to all that she will be the nominee, even if Sanders continues to the last primary, which he is certainly entitled to. If she sweeps all 5 states, Sanders will be under major pressure to lay off Clinton going forward, should he choose to continue in the race. Continue Reading...

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Delegate Count, Delegates, Hillary Clinton, Primary and Caucus Results | 1 Comment

Iowa-County Conventions

By tmess2 | Published March 14, 2016

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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Stopping Donald Trump

By DocJess | Published March 14, 2016

This post is about The Donald, but first, an anecdote to frame the discussion. My dad is a movie buff. He took me to my first film, the story goes, when I was 6 weeks old, all in bunting because “if there are going to be two women in my life, one of them will love musicals”. To this day, my mom, not so big on musicals. My dad took me to revival films, to remakes, to new movies all my life. When he took me to see the remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in the first scene, when Donald Sutherland is driving in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a man runs into the street, yelling “It’s happening again, I’ve seen it all before.” He is struck and killed by a car. My dad said “That’s Kevin McCarthy, he had the Donald Sutherland role in the original. He has seen it all before.”

I know about Germany in the 1930’s from people who saw it all. From my grandparents, to my childhood chiropractor and dentist who both had numbers on their arms, to the older people who used to explain what they meant by “Never Again.”

I live in suburban Philadelphia in 2016, not Berlin in 1933, and I am terrified. 
Last Friday in Chicago was the last straw for me. Back in the summer, when the MSM was making fun of Donald Trump, I assumed what every political junkie thought: Bush v Clinton. And then I saw a Trump rally. I understood immediately the type of people to whom he would appeal, and how broad and deep the appeal could go. Donald Trump, as many have said before me, is the embodiment of where the GOP has been going for years, but with a few twists. That fascism twist. That isolationist twist. That ability to blame innocents and spare the real source of problems twist. Continue Reading...

Posted in The Politics of Hate | Tagged | 1 Comment

Delegate Math — Week of March 14

By tmess2 | Published March 12, 2016

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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Saturday Delegate Results

By Matt | Published March 12, 2016

No primaries today, but we’ve got conventions and caucuses:

Update: 10: 15 pm

DC (R) Convention: 19 pledged delegates. Continue Reading...

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Delegate Count, Delegates, Hillary Clinton, Senate | 2 Comments