Tag Archives: 2020 Democratic Primaries

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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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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A Warning to California Voters

By DocJess | Published July 5, 2019

Hey Californians….do you know you might miss the opportunity to vote your presidential choice in the 2020 primary? Read on, my friends.

California has what’s called a “jungle primary” system. That means that, in most cases, all the candidates from all the parties appear on all the ballots. The two highest vote-getters progress to the General, even if they are members of the same party. There is one exception: President of the United States.

The State passed the Voter’s Choice Act in 2016, to make voting easier. Each county sends every registered voter a ballot ahead of each election. Voters can mail in their ballot, drop it off, early vote or vote on Election Day. Good so far, right? We love ballot access! But the issue is who will be on your ballot? Continue Reading...

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