Monthly Archives: March 2020

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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State conventions will be affected by COVID-19 before DNC in Milwaukee

By Matt | Published March 3, 2020

While the questions of how COVID-19 will affect the conventions in Milwaukee and Charlotte this summer are being asked, and the answer is, it’s way too early to tell, the state conventions where many delegates are picked will be affected first:

On Monday, state party chairs raised concerns on a conference call with DNC officials that party functions, including the election of delegates to the national convention, could be disrupted or delayed because of coronavirus fears.

“It is serious. The question for state chairs is, look, we all have to put on conventions coming up. Most of the delegates to the national convention are elected at [state] conventions. What happens if state parties have to cancel these events where delegates are elected?” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee. “If things continue to evolve, It could dramatically alter the contest and severely hamper Democrats as we try to unify our party.” Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 4 — California and Texas)

By tmess2 | Published March 3, 2020

Texas and California as the two largest states in the country are the big prizes on Super Tuesday.  They also have several unusual features that will impact the process.

For Texas, early voting is a significant percentage of the vote.    By definition, people who vote early are locked in regardless of developments that occur between when they vote and the election.  In Nevada, we saw a solid majority of the vote coming from people who voted before the Nevada debate.  In Texas, we could easily have a majority of the vote coming from people who voted before the South Carolina debate (or the results from South Carolina).  The other big thing that makes Texas different is how it splits the district-level delegates.  The national rules only require that states with multiple congressional districts elect delegates from the individual congressional district or some smaller district.  For over thirty years, Texas has used its state senate districts rather than congressional districts in its delegate selection process.  Texas has 31 state senate districts.  Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Texas had fewer than 31 seats in Congress.  Since 2000, Texas has had more than 31 representatives in Congress.  Even though state senate districts are now larger than congressional districts, Texas still uses state senate districts to allocate district-level delegates.

What makes California somewhat unique (some other Pacific Coast states have similar rules) is its liberal rules on voting by mail.  A mail ballot can be dropped off at a ballot drop-off location up until the time that polls close.  In addition, a mail ballot counts if it is mailed on or before election day and received within three days of the election.  Approximately two-thirds of the vote in California is by mail-in or other early vote.  Counting the mail-in vote typically takes several weeks.  Often there is a significant difference between in-person votes on election day and mail-in ballots.  Given how little it takes to change the delegate count in California, any initial estimate of the delegates won in California are just an estimate and the final results could see a change of a delegate in a congressional district or three or four state-wide delegates. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 3 — Late States)

By tmess2 | Published March 2, 2020

Aside from the big two states (California and Texas), there are three states that will close their polls after 7:00 p.m. CST — Arkansas, Colorado, Utah.   Arkansas and Utah are small red states.  Colorado is a medium-size purple-blue state.  Between these three states, there are fifteen congressional districts with between two and nine delegates each.

A basic reminder, the rules of the Democratic Party requires each state to have district level delegates (roughly 65% of the state’s total), at-large delegates (roughly 22% of the state’s total), and party leader delegates (roughly 12% of the state’s total).  The district level delegates are split between the districts (usually congressional districts) in the state typically based on votes in past elections.  Each of the pools of delegate (each district is a separate pool) is based on the results in the area covered by the pool (the individual district for a district-level delegates and the state-wide results for the at-large and party-leader pools).  It usually takes 15% of the vote for a candidate to be viable.  And the delegates are allocated proportionately based on the percentage of the qualified vote (the total vote for all viable candidates) that each candidate receives.  The percentages below assume that only viable candidates receive votes,  As the early states have shown, with this many candidates, a significant portion of the vote will go to non-viable candidates.  As such, it is likely that candidates will earn additional delegates despite not reaching the target numbers described below.  Covering all possible situations (number of viable candidates, percentage of vote that goes to the viable candidates, etc.) would, however, lengthen these posts by a significant amount.  As long as we still have seven candidates qualifying for the debate stage and potentially qualifying for delegates in a district, we will have to go with this oversimplified calculation.

With Mayor Pete Buttigieg deciding on Sunday to join Tom Steyer on the sidelines, we are down to six major candidates, four of whom have won delegates in prior contests and two of whom have not.  One of those two, however, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg who is almost certain to win delegates.  So in most districts, we are probably looking at somewhere between two and five viable candidates. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 2 — Early Prime Time States)

By tmess2 | Published March 1, 2020

On any election day, 8:00 p.m. EST/7:00 p.m. CST, is a key time when polls close in a significant number of states in the Eastern and Central time zones.  (For the general election, the polls close in seventeen states at that time, the largest single batch of states.)  On Super Tuesday, six states will close their polls at that time:  Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.  As with the states closing earlier that evening, poll closing is not an exact end to the voting.  Instead, all voters still in line at a precinct still get to vote.  Additionally, election workers have to get the ballots from the precinct to a centralized vote counting location.  So there is a lag between the polls closing and the results being reported.  However, this time is when the news media can release exit polls and make projections and counties can report the totals from early votes.

Before going much further into the details, one significant change from earlier reports.  Maine law currently allow parties to opt to use ranked-choice voting for their primaries.  Early drafts of the Maine delegate selection plan indicated that the Maine Democrats would use ranked-choice voting.  Ultimately, the party decided against using ranked-choice voting.  (Apparently, Maine’s law required a party using ranked-choice to continue the process until one candidate got a majority of the vote and did not give the option of using it to determine who met a party’s threshold for delegates).

While Tom Steyer has ended his campaign, we still have five candidates in the race who have won delegates in at least one state.  We also have Michael Bloomberg who has put a lot of money into these states.  So far, we have not had any district (or state-wide) result in which more than four candidates reached 15%, but every one of these six candidates has at least one state or district in which they expect to be viable.  How many are viable in each district will impact the math for the distribution.  (And with early voting/absentee ballots and his ad spending, Tom Steyer could still get a significant number of votes in some locations even if he is not viable.) Continue Reading...

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An Open Letter to Joe Biden

By DocJess | Published March 1, 2020

Dear Uncle Joe –

First, congratulations on winning South Carolina.

Sadly, HOW you won exposes the inherent weakness of your candidacy and how you can lose in November. Then again, knowledge is power and if you pay attention, you may yet be able to win in November, which is all any of us non-cult people care about. Continue Reading...

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