Based on the way the vote was split tonight, don’t you think if Gingrich dropped out it would mostly help Santorum? Looking at the numbers in AL and MS I can’t see many of Newt’s votes going to anyone but Santorum. Wouldn’t that be likely to make things more difficult to wrap up before the convention?
ETA: I’m talking about in the South and Midwest. I realize the coasts are pretty well guaranteed to go to Romney.
The Republican Party should be commended for its sanity on this one issue: they have way, way fewer of these superdelegates than the Democrats do. There are something like 120 of them, and it’s a smaller chunk of the total delegate allotment. So that means we won’t have to listen to as much blather about what they are going to do. And this is probably a discussion for another time, but if the parties have agreed that it’s wrong for these superdelegates to overturn the voters’ decision, it doesn’t make sense to have them at all.
It would help Santorum more than it helps Romney, but Santorum really needs to make up a significant amount of ground here. That’s the problem. Around half the delegates have been assigned, and Romney has twice as many as Santorum does (around 480 to 240 depending on who counts).
Current delegate count:
Romney: 476
Santorum: 246
Gingrich: 131
Ron Paul: 47
http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results
If Romney ends up a few votes shy of 1144 or whatever the number needed to nominate, and he leads the 2nd place finisher by 200+, then presumably the superdelegates will have their say. Transforming an electoral plurality to a majority seems legit to me. Then again it would as I prefer smoke filled rooms during pre-election contests anyway.
Quite so. Primary turn out is lower and unrepresentative of a state’s demographic at large. There’s also a much greater media emphasis on individual states, or a handful at a time. Candidates exit the race partway through. There’s no meaningful way to draw a correlation.
I also don’t see how anyone can assign much significance to the primaries today. Romney barely fared any worse than the guy from the South (regional boost) and the socially conservative candidate (political boost). Romney does about as well as his competition in a region he’s not strong in anyway, and Santorum closes the 250 delegate gap by fewer than 20 delegates. Big whoop.
The most interesting thing will be seeing if the delegate allocation in IL, NY, and CA works out well enough for Romney to give him a majority of delegates before the convention.
I don’t have a problem with that either. But in a close race between two candidates like the Democrats had in 2008, you can have a situation where these people are the ones making the decision and possibly overruling a lot of people. If that possibility is so distasteful - and in 2008 it looked like people felt that way - there shouldn’t be superdelegates.
There are several hundred unbound state delgates as well. So there’s a considerable buffer zone if a candidate needs to make up a few hundred delegates to get a majority.
I just glanced at the calendar for the remain primaries though, and Santorum and Newt are doomed. Almost all the “winner take all” states are coastal and NE states. Unless Romney starts losing in places like California, NJ, DC, etc. I don’t see how he doesn’t coast to an easy majority of delegates, even without unpledged delegates lining up behind him.
I think we’re in uncharted waters with campaign funding this season. If Santorum can split the votes 50/50 like he did in MI and OH, then I think people will fund him. I’m not sure he can do that considering most of the remaining big states are blue states. He’d be silly to drop out now though. He’s getting tons of national press. If Obama wins re-election, Romney will be damaged goods and Santorum will be next in line.
As you mentioned, campaign organization could play a large roll. I read that Santorum isn’t on the ballot on some southern IL counties – places he would most likely do well. This is a big problem if it is a pattern in other states as well.
I do agree with this. My point was just that Santorum could keep this race going until the convention and only be a few hundred delegates behind.
I didn’t realize this. I thought the winner-take-all states were done.
I don’t think there is any question that Romney will be the leader in delegates at the end of the day; the only issue is whether he can get to the 50% mark. From that perspective, Gingrich hurts Romney in proportional states even if the majority of his voters would go to Santorum. In winner-take-all states however, Gingrich would help Romney if he drew off more Santorum votes. So if Gingrich hangs in for a while siphoning off some delegates from Romney and then withdraws before the winner-take-all states that would make it a bit more difficult for Romney to get 50%.
Does Santorum have any hope in the winner-take-all states if he is basically one-on-one against Romney? Perhaps not but for example I wouldn’t completely discount his chances in California without seeing the polls. California GOP primary voters are a lot more conservative than the state.
In any case Santorum is clearly in there for the long haul. He will get a decent amount of funding from social conservatives to keep him going. They will want him to come a strong second which will give him a great platform for 2016. While I am sure Santorum will support Romney if he wins the nomination, I don’t see him going out of his way to make life easy for Romney’s general election by withdrawing early. In terms of naked self-interest he will obviously be better off if Romney loses the general. And I think there is enough dissatisfaction at Romney among GOP primary voters, that I don’t foresee a serious move to force Santorum out of the race, while Romney is still short of the 50% mark.
So it looks like this race will limp along for a while. In 2008 Obama managed to use the long primary to build a winning message for the general. For reasons that are discussed in my thread, Romney doesn’t seem to be doing the same.
As I suspected, Romney actually gained delegates for the night. Santorum is +6 in Alabama and Mississippi, a paltry number for a guy trailing by 200+ delegates, and Romney made up for it by winning all of the delegates in American Samoa. The Santorum insurgency is a media fiction to get people to watch the news. “Romney can’t ‘close the deal’ with ‘Christian conservatives’.” As usual, they want to give way more voice to the extreme right, pat them on the head, make them feel important.
I’m not following the reference? 
Obviously a fake demon, not the real Bob Dole.
The real Bob Dole would say:
[Bob Dole]WHO DARES SUMMON BOB DOLE??!![/Bob Dole]
Just to make the math here explicit (and I’m sure Nate Silver or someone has already done this but whatevs), the remaining contests with winner-take-all primaries for the whole delegate count (not counting states where each congressional district is winner-takes-all) are
Puerto Rico 20
Washington, DC 16
Delaware 14
New Jersey 47
Utah 37
Additional delegates given on a winner-take-all basis to the winner of the states (all these states also have delegates allocated by congressional district):
Wisconsin 15
Maryland 10
California 10
All of those except Wisconsin seem to be very likely Romney wins (I thought Santorum might have a chance with the Catholics in Puerto Rico, but the news stories I looked at seem to be giving Romney a big edge for local political reasons). Assuming Santorum wins Wisconsin, that’s 154 for Romney and 15 for Santorum, putting the score at 630 to 261.
That leaves 1199 delegates not assigned to any candidate by a winner-takes-all state contest. To actually end up with more delegates than Romney, Santorum has to beat him by 470 among those delegates.
That would need to be 835-364; he’d need not only to beat Romney, he’d have to take more than 2/3 of the remaining delegates. So basically Santorum needs to start beating Romney in blue states to win this thing. So basically it’s not going to happen.
I agree there is no reason for Santorum to quit, and I am sure this race is going to last a few more months. I just don’t think he has much chance to win based on Romney’s lead, Romney’s much better campaign, and the remaining schedule.
No, he won’t. This is a terrible crop of candidates, and none of them will have a serious shot at the nomination in 2016 if Romney loses. The Democrats had a lousy group of candidates in 2004 (it wasn’t this bad, but it was weak) and Edwards was totally eclipsed by Obama and Clinton in 2008. I expect something similar from the Republicans. Santorum passed his sell-by date almost a decade ago, since he’s a Bush-era big government social conservative, and the fact that people gave him a look this year shows how bad things are.
I know it’s the case in DC. I don’t know if it’s true in other places, but it’s a significant giveaway.
There are actually more winner-take-all states as the process grind on, and there are more primaries and fewer caucuses. Santorum has been better at the caucuses.
Following up, if you give Santorum all Paul and Gingrich’s delegates (plausible in Gingrich’s case, not so much with Paul), he would have 439, needing to beat Romney by 192. 696 - 503 would do that. That’s 58%, which is vaguely plausible.
Split Paul’s 47 24-23 for Santorum and you have 653 Romney, 415 Santorum; Santorum needs to win by 238, or 719 - 480, or just under 60%, still vaguely plausible.
ETA: all the info above is from 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia except the current delegate count, which I took from M for M’s post.
Nevermind the fiction that they’d all go to Santorum - is that even possible? Can pledged delegates be released?
Dunno, but even if it would technically have to go to a second round of voting, if Gingrich publicly endorsed Santorum and the combined S + G delegate count was > 1144 or whatever (or even greater than whatever Romney ends up with), it’s pretty likely the convention would end up nominating Santorum.
That hypothetical includes several things that I don’t think are likely to happen.
One entertaining possibility – if Romney misses the delegate mark by just that much, he could make a deal with Ron Paul as a final thumb in the eye to Gingrich and Santorum. The fallout would be… interesting.
It had always been my sense that they can be released, but not directly to a specific candidate, only to their own devices.
I’m always happy to learn more, though.