United Liberty
Why the GOP race is over — It’s the math, stupid
Fri, 03/16/2012 - 9:10am | posted by Doug Deal
Various people are debating whether having Gingrich in the race helps or hurts Romney’s chances of reaching 1,144 delegates and clinching the GOP nomination. Many of Santorum’s supporters think that Gingrich is robbing him of delegates that he needs to stop Romney, while Gingrich supporters are arguing that splitting the delegates makes it more difficult for Romney to win. The fact is, it does not matter, because barring finding Romney in bed with a dead girl or live boy, as Edwin Edwards once put it, he has clinched it mathematically.
Taking a look at the current standings, estimated by TheGreenPapers.com we have:
- Romney: 493 - 51%
- Santorum: 235 - 24%
- Gingrich: 157 - 16%
- Paul: 77 - 8%
That’s 962 decided delegates with 1,324 remaining.
With that many delegates remaining, how can it be over?
Well, there are two ways to allocate the delegates that remain. One is by a proportional system where each candidate gets some amount of delegates that are in proportion to each candidates share of the vote. So, if 30 delegates are at stake and three candidates split evenly, each would get 10. The other is winner take all, where the person securing the plurality (the most) of the vote gets all of the delegates.
The winner take all states that remain are: DC, MD, WI, DE, IN, CA, NJ, UT.
If a single candidate gets a majority in the following states, is it winner take all, but proportional otherwise: PR, CT, NY.
Let’s assume that Gingrich and Paul stay in and therefore PR, CT and NY will stay proportional. Of the WTA states, Romney is all but assured victory in DC, DE, CA, NJ, and UT. Together, those are 298 delegates. Being as generous as possible and giving Santorum the other 125 WTA delegates we have:
- Romney: 791 - 57%
- Santorum: 360 - 26%
- Gingrich: 157 - 11%
- Paul: 77 - 6%
1,385 allocated with 901 proportional delegates remaining. To look at the standings another way, these are the numbers of delegates that each candidate would need to reach 1,144: (in this case the percentage is the percentage of the remaining vote the candidate has to take to reach that total)
- Romney: 353 - 39%
- Santorum: 784 - 87%
- Gingrich: 987 - 110%
- Paul: 1,067 - 118%
That means, if Romney only wins the WTA states that he is virtually assured of winning, he only needs 40% of the remaining delegates to reach 1,144. So far, Romney has won about 51% of the delegates and 40% of the popular vote, and nothing has changed to think this trend will be broken.
With NY (which could give Romney all of its delegates if he gets a majority) and IL ready to give a large number of proportional delegates to Romney and his normal cut in TX (155), he will easily reach or come extremely close to the final 353 delegates to win. If the worst possible case happens and he is within 100-150, the convention will not deny him, as there are many more unpledged delegates that will switch to him to avoid a floor fight. For that to even happen, he would have to greatly underperform in the remaining contests.
That then brings up the question of what is best for the Anti-Roms, Newt staying or going? It is very clear that if Newt drops out, it only guarantees that Romney wins more quickly.
How could this be? Well, without Gingrich taking a percentage of the vote, there are more votes available to Santorum and Romney (and Paul). In the winner-take-all states that Romney will win, Gingrich’s absence will not help Santorum. They are not evangelical hotspots, they are the Northeast and the state of California.
In the other states, something else happens. Those Gingrich voters do one of three things, stay home, vote for an Anti-Rom, or vote for Romney. Voters are not monolithic, so they will do a combination of these things. But what does that do to a proportional delegate allocation? It means Romney wins a large proportion of the vote, which means he wins more delegates, which means he wins faster and more convincingly.
Also, in NY, it likely goes from a proportional finish to a winner take all state. That’s 92 Romney delegates.
So what is the best chance for the Anti-Roms to win? Newt staying in the race, but even then, it’s still over. The math is simple, (1 + 1 = Romney). One can only hope that the other candidates keep their dignity and not make fools of themselves or cripple Romney in the general election as they take their last breaths in this campaign season and fade into obscurity.
* Note: People might quibble about California, which many in the media have claimed to be proportional. It actually has similar rules to South Carolina in that the candidate with the most votes in every Congressional district gets the 3 delegates from that district and the winner of the state gets the state delegates. In SC, Newt won and got 92% of the delegates and the winner in California will likely get about the same. On the low end, you can use GA as an example. They only gave 2 delegates to the district winner unless there was a majority and then they got 3. Statewide, everything was proportional. Still, with those more proportional rules, Gingrich still got 71% of Georgia’s delegates. In the end, Romney may not get 100%, but he will still likely get about 85-90%, which would only mean a loss of 15-20 delegates, which he can easily pick up from one of the winner-take-all states that I awarded to Santorum for the sake of argument.
You’re assuming that the delegate count is accurate. In Maine, for example, the news reported that Ron Paul “got at least 7” delegates of the 24, while Gingrich and Santorum were “shut out.” According to the Paul camp, however, the caucuses produced a split of Paul got 16, Romney 5 and Santorum 3.
Or take Arizona. Your total probably includes Romney taking AZ’s 29 delegates, but our Presidential Preference Poll wasn’t really binding. The Arizona caucuses are coming up, to be followed by the state convention. Ron Paul’s people are prepared to actually show up. People outside of the camp are, from my interactions with people, largely oblivious to the fact that there will be a vote.
The same goes for Iowa, where initially it was reported that Romney, Santorum and Paul all had 7 delegates. Then it was reported by the AP that Santorum and Romney were to divide Paul’s delegates, with no explanation as to why or how.
We are seeing stories about how Ron Paul delegates are “causing a ruckus” at Illinois, Colorado and Iowa local caucuses and conventions. Usually very few details are given, so the story about the delegates being disruptive seems to be spin from the GOP leaders rather than an accurate characterization of events. Nevertheless, it shows that Ron Paul’s organization is picking up more delegates than the media would have you believe.
So, I’m very skeptical of Romney’s delegate count. His camp likes to point to delegate victories when it suits them — as in the all important Virgin Islands — but not when it blows the other ways, as in Maine.
As the previous poster said you’re assuming the delegate math is correct. That’s a poor assumption from where I’m sitting.
My source for all delegate counts are The Green Papers. According to them, AZ are pledges as follows:
“Each delegate to the national convention shall use his best efforts at the convention for the party’s presidential nominee candidate who received the greatest number of votes in the presidential preference election … until the candidate releases the delegate … withdraws from the race or until one convention nominating ballot …. [Arizona Revised Statutes 16-243]”
For Maine, the delegate breakdown is 10, 8, 4, 1 for Romney, Paul, Santorum and Gingrich, respectively.
IA is listed as a fairly even split between Santorum, Romney and Paul, with Romney getting one fewer at 6.
All of these are listed as “soft pledged” and taken as a whole seem accurate enough. Just looking at the “hard” delegates, Romney is still way out in front with 385 and only a slightly smaller lead on Santorum who has 167.
If anything, soft delegates make the math even easier for Romney, since they take away committed delegates to Santorum and create a “super delegate” mob that will back the perceived winner, as they always do. Counting soft pledged as uncommitted gives 262. In the end, there will be maybe as many as 400 of these or so. If Gingrich stayed in and Romney was only able to get to 1,150 by a soft count and lost 200 to the uncommitted pool and Santorum did exceptionally well (getting most of Gingrich’s vote and Ginrich keeping what would have gone to Romney) and was able to get to 750 but lost 150 to an uncommitted pool, that would mean the race would stand at:
Romney: 950 or 194 short
Santorum 600 or 544 short.
Paul and Gingrich (including soft) 386
Uncommitted: 350
Considering that delegates cannot be transfered at the whim of the candidate that they are pledged to, even if Gingrich, Paul and Santorum organizaed a deal, Romney would get some of the delegates of the candidates who released them. Romney would still only need a handful of the these delegates, from a convention that will do pretty much anything to prevent a brokered state.
In short, even if the wind was gusting into the face of Romney, soft pledged delegates did the unexpected and Romney underperformed here on out, he would still be in a position to win it.
His magic number might not be 0, but it’s certainly at 2 or 3 and there are 20 games left to play. I wouldn’t go betting on a team down 19 games in early August.
“…from a convention that will do pretty much anything to prevent a brokered state.”
Are you indirectly pointing out a rigged election?
I did not mean it in that way. Here’s an analogy:
If the convention was thought of as going to see the doctor and being diagnosed with an illness and you had three possible outcomes, die, follow the treatment and still die, and follow the treatment and live, even if the treatment was unpleasant, you would do whatever you could to follow it.
A brokered convention to satisfy the whims of fanatical Gingrich, Santorum and Paul delegates would be viewed as accepting that fate. Electing someone who wasn’t first or electing someone who didn’t run will not appeal to voters in the general election and will critical wound whoever would be chosen. In addition, selecting an unvetted candidate so late is like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic.
Not all delegates are willfully ignorant of the stakes involved. If Romney is anywhere in the ballpark and they are an unbound delegate, many will simply go along with whoever is close. If they are a bound delegate, they have no choice, except to violate their oath and possibly face sanctions for breaking the law.
So it is not that I think something illegal or against the rules will happen, just that the inertia and default glide path will be to elect the person who is on the verge of hitting the target as opposed to going out on a limb and overturning the elections of the various states with back room deals.
But, your mileage may vary.
“It’s the math, stupid” should apparently be read, “It’s stupid math”.
You have no clue as to the actual delegate allocation process — especially “bound” versus “unbound” delegates.
Go learn something, THEN write an article about it.
People who post insulting and irrational rants are way too convincing for me to ever hope to counter. Also, your courage in doing so anonymously should be a guiding light to us all. (And not that daytime melodrama kind of guiding light, but one of those that help navigate boats through narrow rocky channels.)
Romney wins all of PR’s delegates, which was not factored into my analysis. Thinks just got a lot worse for Santo and friends.
http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/state/pr
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.” - Source Unknown
Post new comment