Category Archives: Primary Elections

Primary Day

By tmess2 | Published July 14, 2020

Today is primary day in three states.  In two of the three (Alabama and Texas), it is actually primary run-off day as the first round of voting occurred prior to COVID-19 becoming a household word.  In the other state (Maine). today is the actual primary day.  Maine uses ranked-choice voting in its primary which means that voters are casting votes for all rounds of the election today.   In all three states, there are senate primaries to choose challengers, and the results could matter in November.

In Alabama, you have former Senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions seeking to get his job back against former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville.  Besides his coaching experience, Coach Tuberville appears to have relocated to Florida until just recently and has some ties to some hedge fund fraud.  All of which makes him Trump’s type of candidate as Trump wants to stick it to Attorney General Sessions for only bending the law into a pretzel on some occasions and actually realizing that it would be unethical to head an investigation into a campaign in which he played a significant role.   Now, it’s going to be hard for Democrats to keep this seat in November, but I would rather be running against the former coach for Auburn (the “second” school in Alabama) in the hopes that some Alabama fans who would normally vote Republican might have trouble voting for somebody from Auburn.  Additionally, the scandal involving Coach Tuberville might just become a big deal by November allowing us to narrowly keep the seat over a flawed Republican candidate.  While Democrats rightly loathe the positions that Jeff Sessions took as Attorney General, Alabama is still a deep red state.  If Trump and Sessions decide that they have to make nice after the primary, I think it would be almost impossible to beat Sessions in November.

In Texas, you have almost a replay of the recent Kentucky primary.  The preferred candidate of the national party is a moderate, white, female, military veteran (MJ Hegar).  The other choice is a progressive, male, African-American, state legislator (Royce West).   And, like in Kentucky, you have an incumbent Republican member of the party leadership (John Conryn) who will be a favorite for re-election but could be beatable with the right candidate. Continue Reading...

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June 23rd Primaries

By DocJess | Published June 22, 2020

There are a number of primaries tomorrow, also some run-off elections and a Special Election. Some of them are Republican only, and I won’t be commenting on them because I honestly don’t care. For example, some Republican is going to win the runoff to get Mark Meadows seat. Whoever wins, he couldn’t be much worse than Meadows, and will lack his seniority.  (Thanks, I feel better now.) In the Virginia primary, Mark Warner is running unopposed and will keep his Senate seat in November.

The marquee events tomorrow are the Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky, the Special Election for convict (as of August, delayed due to pandemic) Chris Collins’ seat (NY-27) and some of the New York Democratic Congressional primaries: there are 10 of 12 incumbents seeking re-election who are being challenged.

Let’s start with the NY-27th: in 2018, WHILE UNDER INDICTMENT, Collins won over Nate McMurray, 49.1% to 48.8%. McMurray is running again, against state Sen. Chris Jacobs, who was hand-picked by the state Republican Party. Of note, Jacobs was almost tossed off the ballot for voter fraud, but last Friday night, the county DA decided to let bygones be bygones. If McMurray wins (which every well-regarded pollster and prognosticator says can’t possibly happen) in the reddest district in New York State, that would bide very well for a blue tsunami in November. Continue Reading...

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Kentucky Primary and Moscow Mitch

By tmess2 | Published June 21, 2020

Tuesday is the COVID-19-postponed primary in Kentucky, and a lot has changed since the originally-scheduled date.   And those changes put Democrats in a somewhat familiar position — do you vote for the candidate that most closely resembles your position or the candidate with the best chance to win.

For most of the year, Amy McGrath was the strong favorite to win the race.  She raised a significant amount of money who saw her background (including her veteran status) as potentially appealing to swing voters who will be necessary to beat Moscow Mitch in November.  While she does not have a record, she is perceived as a moderate — a necessity to win in a red state like Kentucky.

In recent weeks, the resurgence of issues surrounding racism have contributed to a surge of support for State Representative Charles Booker.  His status as a person of color and his positioning of himself as a progressive have contributed to this rise in support from Democrats who want to take a stand in the general election. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Wyoming

By tmess2 | Published April 8, 2020

While waiting for the end of voting and results out of Wisconsin and Alaska, the next state up is Wyoming.  Wyoming was originally supposed to be a caucus state (with the caucuses to be held on April 4 with absentee votes included).  In light of COVID 19, the Wyoming Democratic Party has cancelled the in-person county caucuses/conventions and will be using a mail-in ballot (transforming the caucus into a party-run primary).

Because a substantial number of votes have already been cast (similar to the situation in Ohio), this primary will only be partially impacted by the decision of Senator Sanders to suspend his campaign.  Depending on the results in Wyoming and Ohio (which was already covered in the post on the March 17 primaries), we may or may not have further posts about the May and June states.  (if Biden wins Wisconsin, Alaska, Wyoming, and Ohio comfortably, I will probably not be doing any further delegate math posts as the exact count from the remaining states will not have much significance.)

As with Alaska, Wyoming will be using ranked-choice voting.  Thus, the final count will only include viable candidates meaning that there is no difference between total votes and qualified votes.  The ballots must be received by April 17.  The Wyoming delegate selection plan is ambiguous as to whether ranked choice voting is done on the county level (with state convention delegates being used to allocate the national delegates) or on the state level (with the popular vote being used to allocate the national convention delegates).  And the Wyoming Democratic Party has not announced a time when they will release the results from the mail-in ballots. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Alaska (Updated)

By tmess2 | Published April 4, 2020

With things somewhat up in the air about Wisconsin, Alaska is the next state to complete its voting.  Alaska is one of the states that moved from a caucus to a party-run primary since the last cycle.  In response to Covid-19, the Alaska Democratic Party has moved to a vote-by-mail election.  Ballots are supposed to be received by April 10, and the state party will release the results on April 11.

Alaska is using a ranked-choice ballot with candidates being eliminated (starting with the candidate with the least votes) until all of the remaining candidates are viable.  With only two candidates still running, even if some small segment of voters who voted early have another candidate as their first choice, the final count after preferences are distributed should leave only Senator Sanders and Vice-President Biden with votes on the final count.  Under the rules for the primary, because only viable candidates will be left in the final count, there is no difference between the final total votes and qualified votes.

What makes delegate math unusual in Alaska is the fact that it is a single-district state.  Under the rules, the allocation of delegates is calculated separately for each of the three pools, but the state-wide results are used to allocate all three pools.  The fact that the pools are calculated separately gives a different result than if all the delegates were allocated as one pool. Continue Reading...

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The Tentative Remaining Primary Schedule

By tmess2 | Published March 29, 2020

Less than three weeks ago, we had Echo Tuesday with six states holding primary contests.  At that point in time, COVID 19 was a growing concern.  In short order, the party moved the debate between Vice-President Biden and Senator Sanders from Arizona with a full audience to D.C. and no audience and states began to move their primaries to minimize the impact of COVID 19.  Now, we have an entirely new schedule for the last three months of the primary season.

Before going into the details of the current schedule, as Matt noted yesterday, there are real issues with holding the Democratic convention in mid-July.  Aside from the health issues, there are also issues caused by the revisions to the primary calendar.

First, while the media pays a lot of attention to the initial results on election night, those results are merely the initial results.  There are still some absentee ballots and provisional ballots to count (and in the case of vote-by-mail states that number can be very significant).   So it can take two weeks or more for the local election authority to finalize their counts.  Those counts then have to be sent to the state election authority which has to add all of those results together to get the final official result.  In part for this reason, the current rules require that primaries be held no later than June 9.    However, some of the primaries are now scheduled for June 23 (and more may join them if the current shutdown is extended).  It is almost impossible that those states will have a final result before a July 13 convention. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — The COVID 19 Break

By tmess2 | Published March 22, 2020

Barring a statutory change at the federal level, federal law requires that states choose electors for President on the First Tuesday after the First Monday in November.  While there are other provisions governing the possibility that states are unable to choose electors on that day and the states are free to change the way that they select the electors, it is unlikely that those laws will change — either at the state or federal level.  Likewise, federal law requires that elections for the House and Senate will take place on the First Tuesday after the First Monday in November.    And the Constitution and federal law makes clear when the existing terms of office expire.

There are a lot of questions about what would happen if for some reason elections are postponed in some states.  Do the governors get to appoint temporary Senators in the states for which the term has expired until the elections can be held?  Are the elections merely postponed or must the governor’s call for special elections?  However, for President, what happens is governed by the Presidential Successor Act until somebody is chosen to fill the remainder of the term.  Of course as the Presidential Successor Act would put the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate into the White House, the question is whether the House and Senate will be able to convene as normal in early January to choose the people who will be in those positions if such a vacancy occurs.  If they can’t, do the old officers continue over until the House and Senate can convene (allowing one of them to become President)?

In short, while things still need to be worked out, it is more likely than not that some way will be found to hold elections this fall.  In the states that currently rely heavily on voting-by-mail, it is almost certain that the elections will proceed as planned.  And some of the remaining states may try to transition to a vote-by-mail system.  And if there is going to be an election for President, both parties need to continue with the process for choosing a nominee.  As others have noted for this site, there are questions about how the national convention will be restructured to deal with the current crisis and how the states will alter the delegate selection process in light of the current goal to minimize person-to-person crisis.  (I know that, in my state, the delegate selection process has been postponed by almost eight weeks.) Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — March 17

By tmess2 | Published March 15, 2020

After the sprint of twenty-four contests in fifteen days, this week’s four primaries represents a slowing of the pace.  After the March 17 contests, there will be only seven contests over the next three weeks concluding with the Wisconsin primary before there is a three-week break between Wisconsin and the Mid-Atlantic primary on April 28.  (EDIT:  Now six contests, with Georgia’s primary being postponed until May.)

In the last two weeks, in the states that vote by mail, we have seen the early results showing significant number of votes for candidates that are no longer in the race.  As counting has continued, however, the later arriving ballots have swung away from the candidates who have suspended their campaigns and toward Senator Sanders and Vice-President Biden.  There will have been some early voting in the states that are voting on March 17.  As such, the initial release of numbers will probably include some votes for these candidates, but that number should decline over the evening as election day returns are added in.

With the narrowing of the field, delegate math is now a state-by-state struggle.  And this state-by-state battle is different for the Democratic primaries than it is on the Republican side.  The media likes to focus on who wins a state.  And, in the general election (and in many states on the Republican side), the winner-take-all rule makes winning a state very important.  On the Democratic side, the proportional allocation of delegates means that it matters more whether somebody wins a state by a large margin than who wins the state.  As we have seen over the past seven days, a narrow in by Vice-President Biden is currently netting him around seven delegates in a large state, but his big win in Mississippi (less than half the size of Washington) is netting him over thirty delegates. Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Math — Northern Marianas

By tmess2 | Published March 12, 2020

While most states hold elections on Tuesdays, Saturdays have also been a traditional election date as we have already seen this year with the Nevada Caucuses and South Carolina primary.  In past years, the first two Saturdays after the windows open have been somewhat busy.  In 2016, three states held primaries or caucuses on the first Saturday in March (with one contest being held on the first Sunday in March and one contest being held on the second Saturday in March).  While the first Saturday in March was not an available date in 2012, the Republicans had four caucuses on the second Saturday in March.  On the first available weekend in February 2008, four caucuses and one primary took place.

This year, the weekend after Super Tuesday had no contests, and only one contest is scheduled for the second weekend in March.  That contest is the Northern Marianas which will hold its convention on March 14.  The Northern Marianas is an “unincorporated territory” consisting of the islands in the Marianas Archipelego (excluding Guam).  The contest in the Northern Marianas is a territory-wide convention.  In 2016, less than 200 people attended the convention.

This is only the second time that the people in Northern Marianas will be electing delegates to the national convention.  My hunch is that, even though every delegate counts, the major candidates are unlikely to put much effort into this contest, and the vote will be based on what news media and social media coverage Democrats in that territory have seen.  In other words, name recognition and success in the earlier contests will count for a lot. Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Math — March 10

By tmess2 | Published March 6, 2020

There is just a little bit of room between Super Tuesday and March 10 for everyone to catch their breath.  Over the past seven days, over half of the candidates have dropped out, and we are left with three candidates (Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, and Bernie Sanders.)

While we are down to three candidates, one word of warning is appropriate.  As we saw on Super Tuesday, some states have no excuse early voting or mail-in ballots.  On Super Tuesday, we saw some significant differences between the early vote count and the “election day” count.  Simply put, people who voted early may have voted for a candidate who was no longer actively running.  It is unclear if any of these candidates will ultimately win a delegate, but some of these candidates did get a significant number of votes in some states.  The extra seven days should lessen this effect, but there could be — depending on the state — a significant number of voters who voted before February 28th, and some of these voters went with one of the five candidates who are no longer running.

There are seven contests which will conclude on March 10.  (I use the term conclude because one of them — Democrats Abroad — is a party-run primary in which the polls are open for almost one week and others allow early voting.)  Besides Democrats Abroad, the other six contests are Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Washington.  While nominally styled as a caucus, North Dakota is a party-run primary.  Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, and Washington are state-run primaries.  (Washington like California relies heavily on mail-in ballots which can cause a delay in getting final results.)  Under the rules of the Democratic Party, all of these contests are binding and delegates will be allocated based on the votes cast for each candidate. Continue Reading...

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