This may be more of a GQ question, but what happens if throughout the primaries there is no consolidation among the Republican candidates and each of say 8 candidates each get somewhere between 10 and 20% of the vote in each caucus and each primary.
Are delegates assigned to the one who one the plurality, such that getting 20% of the popular vote in most of the primaries will be enough to win you a clear majority of delegates at the convention, or will there be 8 different minority factions fighting it out at the convention until they are blue in the face.
Also is there any chance that this will actually happen, or will consolidation inevitably occur with second tier candidates eventually dropping out?
The first three primaries/caucuses are critical. Any candidate who finishes lower than the top three places in one of the first three primaries (Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina) is going to be in serious trouble. Any candidate who hasn’t won in the first seven primaries is dead, even if he has a sugar daddy that makes fundraising unnecessary.
Given the wide time lag between the first primaries and the last, I have a hard time imagining a case where the vote remains fragmented all along. Someone will take an early lead, and that person will have an advantage in later primaries.
Also, the 2012 election cycle suggests that candidates have a gaffe half-life of about two months. Even with 16 candidates, you expect 15 of them to say something stupid enough to leave only one real contender after 10 months have elapsed.
What was the term called, broken caucus, divided caucus? There was some fear in 2012 that it was going to happen but it didn’t. I think this year, Bush is stronger than Mitt was in 2012, but Bush has stronger competition too. Either way, I don’t expect it to go that far, despite how hilarious that would be. Its Bush’s nomination to lose
Then they’d have a brokered convention. Historically that was the norm. Conventions used to be where they chose the candidate rather than announce the already chosen nominee.
Historically though, how long as it been since we had one of those? Its been a while hasn’t it? I don’t know, I’m really asking. In my lifetime, it seems a clear frontrunner has emerged by the time of the convention and that goes back to HW Bush
You’re right, I hadn’t realized it but this time 4 years ago Romney was only pulling 17%-27% depending on which candidates are on the ballot. I somehow thought he was the clear front runner earlier in the election.
Before your time, certainly. The last nomination that was in doubt before the convention was the 1976 Republican nomination, with Reagan challenging Ford. Even that one apparently only had one actual ballot, though Ford and Reagan were wooing undeclared delegates up until the last minute.
If the party is that fractured, it goes into “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic mode” where the candidates agree on a consensus choice, tell their delegates to vote for him, pretty much concede the White Hose to the Democrats, and concentrate on not losing control of the House and Senate.
Delegates can’t be “assigned” to anybody, other than the candidate for whom they are pledged, and even then, that usually only applies to the first ballot.
If there is an established “first tier,” then yes, second tier candidates will end up dropping out, mainly because they won’t have the money.
One possible major player: California, with its June “winner take all” (sort of - the winner in each congressional district gets 3 delegates, and the statewide winner gets 10) primary.
It’s useful to remember that the RNC change their rules since the last election. It can have some effects on what we see as the traditional pattern.
States holding their primaries between 1-14 March are required to assign delegates proportionally with stricter party rules defining proportionality. (If they try go in Feb and aren’t one of the 4 allowed they lose most of their delegates.) The total length of the primary season is also shortened by moving the convention earlier.
The changes have some interesting implications given the extremely wide field without much separation at this point. On the one hand the compressed time frame and early proportional allocation keeps one big early win from making a darkhorse into a major challenger. It can also make it hard for the front runners to pull away from the pack (thereby encouraging the rest to drop). 50% of the total delegates are currently in the March 8th or earlier window too. If a frontrunner or three can’t get some separation in that period it could get interesting all the way through the convention.
The primary schedule is still subject to change. That bit is really interesting now. Much of the more socially conservative southern base is still in early March making that chunk of the party more likely to split if that part of the field doesn’t narrow in Feb. Ohio recently moved their primary back by a week (8th to the 15th) and change their delegate rules to be more favorable to the winner The bill was signed by the popular Governor named Kasich. With just over 5% of the delegates needed for someone to secure the nomination that move alone was interesting for a potential brokered convention. Ohio Republicans fired a broadside at the candidate bus. We’ll see whether they hit their target next spring.
Conventions today are totally scripted infomercials. That’s all they are. They exist to provide a national coronation of the pre-determined candidate. A brokered convention would be a sign that the party has died. Literally died. Dead and gone, with a new party needing to form.
But boy the ratings a brokered convention would bring!
Won’t happen but not impossible (not “zero”, just damn close). After Super Tuesday the actively campaigning candidate list will narrow mightily (if not before) and well before the convention the conclusion will be foregone. But rest assured that along the way the media will have a variety of talking heads speculating about a brokered convention up until the moment it is impossible.
Some TV pundit…who’s name escapes me, swan’s neck, girlish giggle, mind like a steel trap…observed that Fox Gnaws is making a metric buttload of money on this.
See, they have shifted the focus from the “early” states which used to be in the enviable position to largely winnow that field of candidates with their votes. But now the crucial fact is not the opinions of those voters, but whether or not a candidate reaches an arbitrary threshold in national polls.
Well, how do you get local recognition? You gotta go there, make speeches, kiss the baby, press the flesh. Thats how you get the votes in those states, no other way to do it. But a national polling standing, that depends on national exposure! * Tres duh, mais non?* Coverage in the national media, either by purchase or by making some news. Purchase is, of course, more reliable and more controllable.
So the guys down there at the very limit of survival may very well depend on whether or not their financial backers have the money to buy enough advertising on whatever national media outlets have the most direct impact on Republican voters.
Give you three guesses and the first two don’t count…
Realistically this is true. But the point is that there is an existing process to produce a nominee at a convention if nobody has it sewed up by then. There’s only been one occasion (the 1860 Democratic convention) when the delegates were so divided they were unable to work out a deal and choose a nominee.
People keep talking as if modern conventions are subject to chance. They are not. The winner will be obvious months before and the RNC will work - quite properly - to ensure that no drama of any undesirable kind occurs at the convention.
This is a complete flip from the old days, when part of the point of a convention was to generate drama and focus attention on the outcome. Those were also days in which the campaign lasted two months.
Of course the media will gin up horse races and uncertainty and talk about various scenarios. Why not? People won’t listen if they repeat themselves for for the now two-year length of a campaign.
You are free to skip all of that you don’t find somehow fun to pay attention to. It is meaningless. The convention, going in, will have all the uncertainty of outcome of a WWE title match. If there is any doubt remaining by January 1, 2016, I will be very surprised.
YOu’d get a brokered convention but I have little doubt who would get the nomination in that scenario: Marco Rubio. He’s the most broadly acceptable candidate to all factions of the party.
