Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Delegate Math: Week of April 25

By tmess2 | Published April 22, 2016

New York this past week was huge for the front runners in both parties.  For both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the results in New York essentially offset everything that has happened over the past several weeks.  On the Republican side, the race stands essentially where it stood on April 1 except for 223 more delegates allocated.  On the Democratic side, the race stands essentially where it stood on March 14 except for 1197 more delegates allocated.  In other words, the New York reset basically gave Trump a glimmer of hope that he can win enough delegates to get the nomination while it put Clinton back in control of the Democratic race.  This week’s primaries feature five states that comprise the rest of the Mid-Atlantic (Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania) and the last two New England states (Connecticut and Rhode Island).  For both Trump and Clinton, the hope is that this week will be mostly a repeat of New York.  For Trump that hope is a necessity because he still is behind where he needs to be on the delegate count and May is a little less friendly than this week.  Clinton also faces a potentially weaker performance in May, but she is fast approaching the point where it is mathematically impossible for Sanders to catchup on the pledged delegate count (much less the popular vote count).

Starting with the Republicans, the simplest state is Delaware — 16 delegates — winner-take-all.  There has not been much (if any polling) In Delaware.  Given the polls in neighboring states, Trump looks like the favorite to win in Delaware unless the supporters of Cruz and Kasich can unite to block him.

Maryland is only a little more complex — a winner-take-most state.  Maryland has eight congressional districts and the winner in each of those districts will take three delegates while the state-wide winner will take fourteen delegates.  Polling puts Trump near 40% with Cruz and Kasich tied for second.  There are potentially some districts that Cruz or Kasich could take.  Strategic voting would probably keep Trump from getting 12 or 15 delegates. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math: New York

By tmess2 | Published April 13, 2016

For the first time since February, there is only one state holding a primary during a week.  It’s also one of the biggest states in the country — New York.  It also comes at a surprisingly crucial time during the campaign.  By mid-April, the norm is that the race is over.   The lack of money for trailing candidates has typically forced them to suspend their campaign and party leaders are pressing for unity behind the likely nominee.  This year, the race is different.  Bernie Sanders has enough money to keep running through the convention.  Republican leaders are definitely not pushing for unity behind Donald Trump.

On the Republican side, we have seen the rules that New York is using in earlier states.  Delegates are awarded “proportionately” by congressional district (three in each of the twenty-seven districts or eighty-one total) and statewide (fourteen delegates).  As in many states, it takes twenty percent to become eligible for delegates, and a district (or the statewide results) becomes winner-take-all at fifty percent.  As in many states, the congressional district is a 2-1 split between first and second place if two or more candidates qualify.  At the state level, the party rounds delegates to the nearest whole number.   If there are any delegates remaining, they go to the winner.  If there are too many delegates allocated, the additional delegates will be taken from the last-placed candidate.  (At most, the math should lead to one or two delegates being added or subtracted.)

Heading into the primary, Donald Trump seems to be flirting with fifty percent state-wide.  By mathematical necessity, if he gets over fifty percent state-wide, he will get over fifty percent in some districts.  Additionally, Ted Cruz has the small problem of having attacked “New York” values while he was running in other states.  He can probably convince upstate voters (and how you define upstate depends upon where in the state you live — for New York City, upstate includes Westchester and Rockland County, but for Albany and Syracuse voters, Westchester and Rockland County are part of the New York City area as is Long Island) that he meant New York City, not New York State.  But only nine districts are wholly upstate (by the narrow definition).  Perhaps, he can convince some New York City Republicans that he meant the values espoused by Democratic politicians, but Cruz is not likely to be competitive in the New York City districts. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math: Weeks of April 4 and April 11

By tmess2 | Published March 31, 2016

The key contest for both sides during the week of April 4 is the Wisconsin Primary on April 5.  Additionally, Colorado Republicans will hold their congressional district conventions on April 8 and their state convention on April 9.  Democrats will hold county caucuses in Wyoming on April 9.  The Republicans will hold the second part of their delegate selection in Wyoming at the state convention on April 16 in the only contest scheduled for the week of April 11.

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Delegate Math — March 21 through April 3

By tmess2 | Published March 20, 2016

After three weeks of multiple primaries in large and medium-large states, there is one last week of multiple events before the process takes a bit of a breather.  After this week, there is a half contest during the week of March 28; one and a half contests during the week of April 4; one quarter contest during the week of April 11; and one contest during the week of April 18 (albeit the very big New York primary).  The pace will only pick back up starting the week of April 25.   In practical terms that means that the candidates will be spending the next month concentrating on a very few states and determining if it is worth continuing with the campaign.

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Iowa-County Conventions

By tmess2 | Published March 14, 2016

Saturday were the county conventions in Iowa.  On the Republican side,  the national convention delegates were allocated by the preference vote in the precinct delegates; so the county convention is merely about who will go to the state and congressional district conventions to choose the actual delegates (which might matter if the Republicans end up with a deadlocked convention).  On the Democratic side, the results of the precinct meetings (as reported to the media) are an estimate of what will happen at the county meeting, and the county meetings can change things.  While there appear to have been some changes at the county level, it appears that the bottom line has not changed.

Last week, I looked at the results of the precinct conventions and identified fourteen counties in which (primarily due to O’Malley and uncommitted delegates), the final delegate count was ambiguous.  Based on the results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party, in addition to these fourteen counties, there appear to have been nine other counties that gave a reminder on Saturday that delegates are technically free to change their preferences between each round of the process.  (By my original estimate, a total of eighteen projected delegates changed hands, but it is possible that my counts of the delegates to the county convention included some mathematical errors.)The most interesting of these nine counties was Mills County.

In Mills County, after the precinct meetings, Clinton had twenty-three delegates to the county convention and Bernie Sanders had twenty-two delegates.   With the county convention electing five delegates to the state convention, the projected split was three Clinton delegates to two Sanders delegates.  However, after the county convention, Clinton emerged with two delegates, Sanders with one, and Martin O’Malley and uncommitted also got one delegate each.  It would be interesting to hear news reports out of Mills County on how this happened.  Given that it takes seven delegates to be viable, it is theoretically possible that the Sanders delegates decided to split up 8-7-7 to “steal” a state convention delegate.  There is also the possibility that in some of the precincts, O’Malley or uncommitted voters “got” a county convention delegate in exchange for joining one of the other candidates when the O’Malley/uncommitted groups were too small to be viable. and reverted to their original preference (but it is hard seeing that many delegates having secret preferences). Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math — Week of March 14

By tmess2 | Published March 12, 2016

Under current Republican rules, March 15 is the first day that a state or territory (other than the first four) can hold a winner-take-all or winner-take-most primary.   Four of the five primaries scheduled for this week have some kind of winner-take component (at least for the state-wide delegates).  This week also features the home states (and perhaps the last stand) of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor John Kasich of Ohio.

As discussed Friday night, Illinois is an unusual state — especially on the Republican side.  In all likelihood, the results will resemble a winner-take-most primary with three delegates going to the candidate who finishes first in each of the eighteen congressional districts and fifteen delegates going to the candidate who finishes first state-wide.    However, because in the congressional districts delegates are on the ballot and are directly elected, there is a chance that some delegates might be elected even if their presidential candidate loses the district.  Such an “upset” is most likely to happen in close districts.

Missouri is a pure winner-take-most state.  However, unlike most states, the winner of the congressional districts will get five delegates from each district (rather than the normal three) and the state-wide winner will only get twelve delegates. Continue Reading...

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The Law of Unintended Consequences

By tmess2 | Published March 9, 2016

When the Republicans re-wrote the rules for 2016, they shortened the proportionality window — from a full month to two weeks.  That led to several states with Republican legislatures and Republican governors opting for a March 15 primary date — the first day on which Republican state parties can hold a primary that does not follow the proportionality rules.  In particular, the Florida Republican Party (listening to suggestions from the Bush and Rubio campaigns) opted for a winner-take-all primary.  What looked great in 2014 and early 2015, now looks quite differently after last night’s results.

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Delegate Math — Week of March 7

By tmess2 | Published March 5, 2016

As votes are being counted this evening (with each party having one contest scheduled for Sunday), time to look at the week ahead.  As with the previous week, all of the contests in both parties use proportional allocation of delegates (except the Republicans in Wyoming).  However, for the Republicans, each state gets to pick their own threshold (including potentially setting a threshold for winner-take-all) and decide whether to allocate all of the delegates based on the statewide result or allocate some delegates by congressional district.  For the Democrats, the key issue is how many delegates in each pool of delegate (district-by-district, at-large, and pledged party leader).  This upcoming week, there will be fewer contests — 4 for the Democrats and five and a half for the Republicans.

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Iowa Round Two

By tmess2 | Published March 5, 2016

The Iowa Caucuses were over a month ago and the media attention has now moved to other states and other contests.  However, the caucuses themselves were only the first step in a four-step process.   Next Saturday is the second step — the county conventions.  While waiting for result from the state’s that start today, let’s take a minute to look at what is at the county conventions next week.

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Super Tuesday Aftermath

By tmess2 | Published March 2, 2016

As always, Super Tuesday — the first Tuesday after the end of the pre-primary window — has done a lot to at least outline the shape of the race for the White House.  Because at this point, the race becomes all about the delegates (and not about exceeding expectations), there are clear tasks for the candidates over the next two weeks.

On the Democratic side, through 16 contests, Hillary Clinton has exceeded her 2008 performance in 11 states.  More significantly, in several states — Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia from last night and South Carolina from Saturday, Secretary Clinton has far exceeded her 2008 performance turning losses into big wins.  In each of these five states, the swing in favor of Secretary Clinton was in excess of 30 delegates.  In the five states that swung away from Secretary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, the biggest swing was 16 votes (in Massachusetts which was much closer this time than in 2008).    The overall net change from 2008 so far is a swing of approximately 300 delegates.  Considering that Secretary Clinton only lost by 104 delegates in 2008, Senator Sanders needs to find some state to alter these numbers soon.

Over the next two weeks, three states are key to whether Senator Sanders can make it a competitive race or whether he will become a gadfly who stays in the race long after its over.  These three states are Michigan (March 8), Illinois (March 15), and Florida (March 15).  Michigan and Florida are key because of their size and because of the weird role that they played in 2008 that led to Secretary Clinton winning those states by large margins (18 and 26 delegates respectively).  If Senator Sanders is to win the race, needs to gain significant delegates in the large states that went to Secretary Clinton in 2008.  If he can’t put a dent in Secretary Clinton’s numbers in these two states, it is hard to figure out where he makes progress.  Additionally, at some point, Senator Sanders has to win some of the large states.  So far, the largest state that Senator Sanders has won in Minnesota with Secretary Clinton winning the four largest states. Continue Reading...

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