This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Useful Thing

This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam is joined by guest host Bruce. Sam and Bruce go lightning round format and hit a lot of different topics including the “uberization” of all sorts of things, a couple movies Sam watched, preliminary thoughts on the 2020 Presidential election, whether Trump is being bashed for the wrong things, jury nullification… and more!

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Show Details:

Recorded 2018-08-30
Length this week – 1:27:39

  • (0:00:20-0:40:25) Lightning One
    • Bruce: Sam’s shifting politics
    • Bruce: Bashing Trump for the wrong things?
    • Sam: Movie: The Incredibles (2004)
    • Sam: Movie: The Incredibles 2 (2018)
    • Bruce: Manafort trial and jury nullification
    • Sam: John McCain
  • (0:41:04-1:27:19) Lightning Two
    • Bruce: Uberization of everything
    • Sam: Democratic superdelegate rules
    • Sam: Democratic caucus and primary rules
    • Bruce: Smoke detector batteries
    • Sam: Bruce and local politics
    • Sam: Election 2020

 

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: The Pentagon is not in Cleveland

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner Ivan and Sam spend most of the show on Election 2016 again. On the Democratic side they talk about how after a short moment when it looked like he was embracing the inevitable, Sanders is once again fighting on against the odds. On the Republican side they discuss Trump’s victory, how we got to this point, how the Republican establishment will react, and what it all means for the general election. In addition to all that, there is also talk of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, a county Democratic convention, Ivan’s travel… oh, and Sam’s 6 year old son Alex has some questions for the listeners.

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

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Recorded 2016-05-04

Length this week – 1:42:04

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Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-0:12:20) But First
    • Ivan’s Flights
    • Alex’s Questions
    • Agenda
    • Delegate Confusion
  • (0:13:00-0:27:15) Election 2016: Democrats
    • Indiana Results
    • Sanders still fighting!
    • Annoying the superdelegates
    • Ways Clinton is Winning
    • Contested Convention?
    • Over Over Over
  • (0:28:35-1:03:29) Election 2016: Republicans
    • Indiana Results
    • Trump Ascendant
    • Cruz Drops Out
    • No Rules Changes
    • Last Trump/Cruz attacks
    • Trump is the Nominee
    • How did it happen?
    • How will elected Republicans respond?
    • Predicting November
    • Trump Win Scenarios
    • How big a Clinton win?
  • (1:04:32-1:18:55) White House Correspondents Dinner
    • Obama’s Routine
    • Boehner and House Divisions
    • Differences in Trump/Clinton surrogates
    • Potential Trump VPs
    • Wilmore’s Routine
  • (1:20:10-1:41:44) Snohomish County Democratic Convention
    • Reaction to Senator Murray and Rep Larson
    • Platform Nonsense
    • Reaction to Rep DelBene
    • Resolutions
    • Motion to Reject
    • How not to convince a superdelegate
    • iTunes Reviews

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Weird Things Happening

This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about Election 2016 of course. But first some bits about Mike the headless chicken, the comments on Sam’s Election Graphs site, stamp prices, Hey Siri, and a movie Sam watched. When they do get to the election they cover Trump’s shutout in Colorado, Trump’s general malpractice in delegate wrangling, the odds of a contested convention, the accusations of cheating in both parties, and much more!

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

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Recorded 2016-04-14

Length this week – 1:20:15

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:

  • (0:00:41-0:22:29) But First
    • Ivan in his Car
    • Mike the Headless Chicken
    • Election Graphs Comments
    • Stamp Prices
    • Facebook Bots
    • Hey Siri
    • Movie: Mississippi Burning (1988)
  • (0:23:08-1:00:14) Election 2016
    • Trump shutout in Colorado
    • Delegate wrangling malpractice
    • Contested Convention Scenarios
    • Ryan saying no… Again
    • Odds of Trump getting majority
    • Trump Trends
    • Cruz wooing delegates
  • (1:00:53-1:19:55) Election 2016 Continued
    • Cheating? Stealing? Unfair? Rigged?
    • Sanders “contesting” the convention
    • Sanders attempts to woo superdelegates
    • Edit wars on Wikipedia Superdelegate list
    • Denial from Trump and Sanders people
    • What Sanders and Trump didn’t do
    • When is New York again?
    • Thoughtful Trump people wanted

Democrats: Sanders ties in Wyoming and gets a bunch of superdelegates… still not enough

Clinton and Sanders left the Wyoming caucuses with a 7 to 7 delegate tie.

In the mean time, since Wisconsin Sanders has been winning the superdelegate race. The net change over that time has been Sanders +7, Clinton +2. This actually includes one delegate that actually did indeed switch from Clinton to Sanders (with a couple days as uncommitted in between). So far, that has been a very rare event. Perhaps it is the beginning of a trend? If so, I will of course note it here.

Adding up the changes since Wisconsin, we get Sanders +14, Clinton +9. This means Sanders has gotten an impressive 60.87% of recent delegates…

…which is not enough. Sanders needed to get better than 67.76% of the delegates to be on pace to catch up and win.

chart-101

The percentage of the remaining delegates Sanders needs to win is now 67.84%. There have been some ups and downs, but basically Sanders had been able to keep things at 67.xx% since March 17th. This represents Sanders’ string of wins. Those wins have prevented Sanders’ situation from getting much worse, but critically he has not succeeded in actually bending his line downward to start heading to an actual win.

Clinton only needs 32.27% of the remaining delegates (including superdelegates) in order to win. This is not a high bar. To be absolutely clear here, this means Sanders could win every remaining contest by an absolutely stunning margin… and Clinton would still win the nomination because it wouldn’t be enough to catch up.

Of course, the Sanders argument is that if he did indeed continue winning almost every contest, the superdelegates would finally start coming to his side in large numbers, and would change those dynamics. Maybe. He has to actually do that first. And make sure that his efforts to sway the superdelegates don’t backfire and make them even more strongly committed to Clinton than they were before.

New York is up next of course. Clinton is currently leading the RCP poll average there by 14%. There are 247 delegates at stake. If the delegates in New York split according to current polls, then as a rough estimate Clinton will get 142 delegates and Sanders will get 105. That would leave Sanders needing 71.76% of the remaining delegates to catch up, and Clinton only needing 28.37% to get to the magic number and wrap things up.

The Sanders folks are tenacious, but actually winning the nomination would still take something catastrophic happening to Clinton’s campaign. The reason for Sanders to continue at this point is primarily to influence Clinton and pull her toward Sanders’ positions presumably. Unless the Sanders camp really is just hoping that Clinton will indeed implode at some point.

We will see.

[Update 2016-04-13 15:08 UTC – Superdelegate scan nets Clinton +4, Sanders +1. In addition an adjustment from Colorado yields Sanders +1, Clinton -1. Net for today’s changes, Clinton +3, Sanders +2.]

[Update 2016-04-17 02:20 UTC – Update from Colorado Democratic State Convention today. Net change: Sanders +2, Clinton -2.]

[Update 2016-04-17 14:19 UTC – Superdelegate scan nets Sanders +1, Clinton -1.]

[Update 2016-04-20 01:20 UTC – Superdelegate scan net: Clinton -2.]

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.

Democrats: Superdelegates are real, and here are 42 more for Clinton

Since the New Hampshire primary, I have seen a flurry of Facebook posts and numerous articles all over the place, first by people suddenly shocked to learn of the existence of superdelegates, then folks complaining about the DNC “screwing over” Sanders, and then folks claiming superdelegates should be ignored because they don’t matter. All this in response to places, like my site electiongraphs.com, that point out Clinton’s huge lead due to superdelegate counts.

My current chart of raw delegate totals looks like this:

chart-40

That is Clinton 461 to Sanders 50 including the latest updates that prompt this post.

The claim is that the Clinton lead here is a complete illusion. That counts that look like this are simply anti-Sanders propaganda meant to discourage Sanders voters, that looking at numbers like this is meaningless, and one should only look at “pledged” delegates, where the total right now would be Sanders 36, Clinton 32. That would indeed show a very different picture of the race. Sanders would actually be winning!

But really? Would that tell us where the race really is?

First of all, there isn’t any secret or underhanded manipulation. There are 32 delegates in New Hampshire. 24 of them were to be determined by the primary. Of these Sanders won 15 and Clinton won 9. Some of those are determined proportionately in each congressional district, some proportionately by the statewide results. Those numbers come straight from the votes. Just math.

Then there were also 8 “super delegates”. That is one Senator, one Representative, one Governor, and five members of the DNC. These are eight people who have names and have been known for ages. Six of those eight had declared they supported Clinton long before the primary. The other two haven’t publicly stated a preference yet. That means the delegate total in New Hampshire is now 15 to 15 with 2 not yet determined.

The Sanders folks might not like that, or like the existence of super delegates at all, but none of this is new or an unexpected manipulation or anything, it is simply how the race is structured. A lot of people are expressing shock because they are just now realizing this, but it is no surprise to anyone familiar with the Democratic primary process, and certainly Sanders’ campaign staff is quite familiar with it.

As we’ve chronicled here, Clinton started out with nearly 8% of the national convention delegates already in her column before the first votes were even cast in Iowa and New Hampshire. She has been working on cultivating those people since at least 2013, probably earlier. Sanders managed to get a handful of these folks, but not many. So he started out way behind, and had to get over 54% of the remaining delegates to be on a pace to catch up and win. A majority wasn’t good enough.

It isn’t a good spot to be in for him, and you might argue that super delegates shouldn’t exist. Yes, superdelegates were originally created and exist to give the party apparatus some buffer against a popularly supported insurgency, and that sounds like Sanders. But the superdelegates have existed for decades and they are a known part of the process.

So complaining about them at this point is along the same lines as complaining about the electoral college. The person complaining might be right that in some ways a straight popular vote would be more “fair”, but these were the rules of the game and anybody running knew the rules when they chose to play.

It wasn’t superdelegates specifically that made the difference, but remember that in 2008, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the Democratic primary process.* It was only the structure of the delegate race that won Obama the nomination. Because those were the rules of the game. That is still the case today. And that includes superdelegates.

OK, fine, but what about the fact that super-delegates can change their minds? Their votes aren’t locked in stone, and they certainly wouldn’t want to overturn the results if a candidate was winning all the contests and had a majority of the non-super delegates, right? So since they can change their minds and will probably support “the winner” we should ignore them, right?

Indeed, it is important to note that the super-delegates are real people and complete free agents. They can and do change their minds. And yes, superdelegates may be reluctant to be the deciding factor in a close race, but you can’t really say “the super delegates would do X”. It is 712 individual humans, who will each decide on their own what they want to do.

Many superdelegates have yet to express a preference at all and can probably be fairly easily swayed. They have not expressed an opinion for a reason, and may well go either way. Others have publicly supported Clinton, but it could be weak support and maybe they could be flipped if they were actually courted. Many others are actually actively working on the Clinton campaign in prominent state level roles. People in this last category are unlikely to change their votes unless or until Clinton herself drops out and asks them to. At the very extreme, Bill Clinton is a superdelegate. Is he going to vote for Sanders?

You really do have 712 different people, with 712 different reasons for their preferences, and 712 different degrees of how strongly they support their candidate.

If Sanders was serious about the superdelegates, he and his surrogates wouldn’t be pushing talking points about how superdelegates don’t matter and will vote for the popular winner so they should be ignored. Instead he would be heavily lobbying the currently uncommitted superdelegates to start backing him. They are a constituency to be courted. They are an IMPORTANT constituency to be courted.

If you were to see such movement, the first place you would detect it would probably be a higher percentage of currently uncommitted superdelegates raising their hands for Sanders when they do come out and reveal a preference.

Superdelegates who have already publicly stated they are supporting Clinton will probably not start actually flipping back to uncommitted or to Sanders until or unless things are actually looking very dire for Clinton.

If you do end up seeing Sanders winning more contests than he loses and building up a big lead in the regular non-super delegates, you may start to see both kinds of movement. After all, people like backing a winner. But if it happens, you will actually see that change happening in the delegate counts if you watch this site or one of the other places that include superdelegates in the totals. It will not be invisible.

There is no sign of any such movement yet.

Can Sanders win without flipping any Clinton superdelegates over to his side? Yes, of course he can. It is a high bar, but it is within the realm of possibility. He just needs to get about 55% of the remaining delegates.

Can Sanders win with even a smaller portion of the remaining delegates? Why yes, of course he can, if he starts convincing Clinton delegates to change their minds. But if that is going to happen, they have to actually be convinced to do so. Here is a list. Go start lobbying them. Try to change their minds. But nobody should be assuming that is automatic.

Yes, if Sanders ends up leading the non-superdelegate count at the end of the primary season and superdelegates are the only thing putting Clinton over the edge, there will be extreme pressure on the superdelegates to flip. But they still have to actually do so. And most likely, when they start waffling on their positions, they will actually say so, and we will know.

The delegate counts including superdelegates are NOT misleading. You just have to interpret them correctly… meaning that you know superdelegates are actual human beings that can change their minds, and you think about what situations might lead that to happen. But ignoring that they exist and just assuming that of course they will change their minds is extreme folly. It is sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality. It is willfully blinding yourself in order to believe in an illusion instead. If and when the superdelegates start changing their minds, we will see it. Until or unless that happens, Clinton really does have a huge delegate lead that Sanders would have to overcome in order to win.

Meanwhile, as the Sanders camp has been complaining about superdelegates and how they don’t matter, superdelegate movement to Clinton has continued. Since the New Hampshire Primary results, I’ve added 44 additional superdelegates to Clinton’s column. Not all of these actually announced their support this last week, some did so months ago, but I just found the references more recently. Their support gets backdated in the charts and graphs to the date of the public source documenting their support. I also removed 2 Clinton superdelegates that had been accidentlly double counted. Net gain, Clinton +42.

There were no new Sanders superdelegates.

So where does that put us on “% of remaining delegates needed to win”?

chart-41

Clinton now needs only 45.18% of the remaining delegates to win.

Sanders needs 54.84%. Right before the Iowa caucuses, my best estimates were that sanders needed 54.22%. (Including pre-Iowa superdelegate preferences I know about now that weren’t included at the time, it would have been 54.65%.) So despite his close second in Iowa, and his win in New Hampshire, Sanders is worse off in the delegate race than he was before Iowa. But not by much… he has ALMOST been holding things steady. He needs to do better to catch up and win, but Iowa and New Hampshire are only a small portion of the overall delegates, so there is still a lot of room to maneuver.

The next delegate race is Nevada.

There are 35 delegates up for grabs in Nevada that will be determined by the caucuses there. Plus 8 superdelegates. Of these, 3 have already said they are for Clinton, and 1 has said they are for Sanders. So don’t be surprised when you see those added in at places showing the state delegate count. They aren’t part of the 35 determined by the caucus though.

Of the 35, Sanders needs to get 20 in order to be on a pace to catch up with Clinton. (Again, assuming no superdelegates change their minds, if a lot do, this number becomes lower.) The RCP average has Nevada at Clinton 47.5%, Sanders 36.0%. That certainly wouldn’t get Sanders the 20 delegates he needs, but that average only includes one post-New Hampshire poll, and that new poll shows the race tied. The Pollster average discounts the pre-New Hampshire results entirely and shows the race at 45% to 45%… a tie.

Delegate rules are tricky. In Nevada some delegates are determined at the congressional district level, others at the state level, there is rounding involved, etc, etc. It is also a multi-stage caucus process, not a primary, so the “real” delegate totals won’t be known until May. But we will have estimates.

Remember though that it is not that Sanders needs 54.84% of the popular vote. It is that he needs 20 of the 35 delegates. That is the number to watch.

And superdelegates of course. :-)

A final thought: It is very possible to catch up from a deficit. But catching up is much harder if you pretend you aren’t actually behind.

* It has been pointed out to me that this would likely not have been the case if Obama had, like Clinton, chosen to compete in Michigan despite DNC sanctions… Clinton essentially ran unopposed in Michigan and this margin was enough to put her in the lead in the national popular vote. If you do not include Michigan, Obama lead the popular vote in 2008. This does not however change the point, which was that there are many ways that the delegate rules can lead to results that differ from the popular vote, of which the superdelegates are only one.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added.

[Edit 18:06 to add link to Wikipedia superdelegate list.]

[Edit 18:48 to add final thought.]

[Edit 2016-02-16 06:50 UTC to add asterisk note about Michigan.]

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Perfectly in Character

Iowa is coming. Did everyone know the Iowa Caucuses are coming very soon? This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan discuss the state of the presidential race in the lead up to the Iowa Caucuses. On the Republican side, they discuss attacks on Trump finally starting, while the rest of the candidates attack each other, as well as details of delegate allocation in Iowa, and some talk about Trump supporters commenting on Sam’s election site. On the Democratic side, it is delegate allocations again, and just how hard a path it would be for Sanders to catch up and win given Clinton’s superdelegate lead and other factors. Oh yeah, and at the start, Sam complains a bit about company annual reviews.

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

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Recorded 2016-01-29

Length this week – 1:13:26

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-0:10:22) But First
    • Agenda
    • Annual Reviews
  • (0:11:42-0:54:20) Election 2016 – Republicans
    • Finally Iowa
    • Attacking Trump
    • Last Week Shifts
    • Circular Firing Squad
    • Conservatism vs Trumpism
    • Trump skipping debate
    • Trump shooting people
    • Trump commenters on Election Graphs
    • Republican Delegates in Iowa
    • Trump Insults
    • Iowa predictions
  • (0:55:04-1:13:06) Election 2016 – Democrats
    • Clinton will win in the end
    • Democratic Delegates in Iowa
    • ElectionGraphs.com Delegate Tracker
    • Clinton’s big superdelegate lead
    • What Sanders needs to “really” win
    • Feedback – Palin Poetry
    • Wrap Up

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Texas pushes Romney over the Top

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

This is what we have been waiting for seemingly forever. By the beginning of March it was clear that no other candidate than Romney had the ability to get to 1144 absent a miracle. By the beginning of April it was clear that the non-Romney’s also were not going to be able to collectively block Romney absent a miracle. But Romney still needed to actually get to 1144. Slowly but surely he did so through April and May. Today he finally goes over the top. (At least with the count I use, which uses the Green Papers soft count plus the DCW Superdelegate Count. Other counts may differ.)

Since this is “the end” lets include a couple of additional graphs with two other views of the race:

All of these charts show how Romney completely dominated this race from the very beginning. There was NEVER a point in the entire campaign where Romney was not ahead in delegates. It was only even close for a few days after Gingrich won South Carolina. The rest of the time, this whole campaign has just been a story of Romney slowly but surely pulling further and further ahead.

Now lets look specifically at today’s results from Texas.

Prior to today, none of Texas’s 155 delegates had been allocated. As of this update we have Romney 105, Paul 18, Santorum 13, Gingrich 7, Bachmann 2, TBD 10. Yes, that is right, at this late state, Michelle Bachmann mounts a comeback it seems. In any case, an overwhelming Romney win.

Romney also picked up two super delegates from Colorado today.

So net for the day: Romney +107, Paul +18, Santorum +13, Gingrich +7, Bachmann +2. Romney gets 72.8% of the delegates awarded today. This is way more than the 12.9% of the remaining delegates he needed to be on track to get to 1144 before “the end”. This was actually enough to push him over the edge.

My count now has the totals as: Romney 1159, Santorum 268, Gingrich 150, Paul 143, Bachmann 2

Now, by the Green Papers “hard count” that only counts delegates that are officially bound to Romney and theoretically have no discretion or ability to change their mind, we have Romney 1012, Santorum 245, Gingrich 143, Paul 93, Bachman 2, Huntsman 2… so by that count Romney still has a little bit further to go. The soft count also includes estimates for how delegates with discretion will vote and for how the remaining processes that are not yet final will play out. I also add in the super delegates who have publicly stated a preference. This is all reasonable. So I feel confident having using the count we have used all along, and considering Romney to have gotten to the 1144 magic number as of today.

Since we are hitting this major milestone today, I’ll take advantage of this time to highlight the comparisons with the 2008 races. More comparisons with 2008 can be found here.

First, to make comparisons easier, the 2012 race on a full 0%-100% scale:

Then what the equivalent graph looked like in 2008:

Looking at these two, in 2008 McCain had two non-trivial opponents compared to the 3 Romney had this time. In 2008, McCain pulled away from the other candidates starting around the 10% mark. In 2012 Romney was ahead from the very beginning. By the the 5% of delegates awarded mark (after Florida), Romney opened up the gap and none of the others ever came close again. Both Romney and McCain got to the “40% of remaining needed to win” mark at almost exactly the point where 50% of the delegates had been awarded. These two years look pretty similar.

Another view comparing Romney 2012 to McCain 2008 looks at % of total delegates earned by the eventual winner vs % of total delegates allocated. This was originally prompted by a post at Enik Rising. Looking at both candidates on the same chart we see this:

Despite all the talk at various points in time about Romney having problems closing the deal by comparison to 2008, this shows clearly that no such thing was happening. Any perception to that effect was due only to the fact that the calendar was more spread out this year than in 2008. Comparing the two curves, sometimes Romney was ahead, sometimes McCain was ahead, but for the most part these two lines tracked each other closely.

Finally, just for completeness, here is what an actually close race looks like on the “% of remaining delegates needed to win” chart… specifically, the Democrats in 2008:

With that, we wrap up the regular coverage of the Republican delegate race for 2012. There may be additional updates for specific milestones… if Paul manages to pass Gingrich in the delegate count… the final totals once all the state delegate selection processes are actually over… or the final roll call count at the convention… but as for regular updates this is it.

Thanks for everybody who has been reading and enjoying these updates over the last five months.

From here on out, it is all about the Electoral College

Edit 2012 Jun 5 12:49 UTC: Fixed affect/effect typo.

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Nevada Update and Some Supers

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

You may have heard reports of a big Ron Paul win in Nevada this weekend. Ron Paul supporters win 22 of the 25 delegate spots in Nevada and all that. Well, yes. True. However, in Nevada the delegates are still bound on the first ballot at the convention to vote proportionately to the caucus results, and the delegates can be removed and replaced if they attempt to do something different. So the slate of delegates elected in Nevada doesn’t actually change the delegate counts. Something else does however. According to Green Papers the delegates will be awarded proportionally between the candidates still actively in the race, so by suspending their campaigns Santorum and Gingrich lose their delegates and those delegates get reallocated. So the previous estimated allocation in Nevada had been: Romney 14, Gingrich 6, Paul 5, Santorum 3. This now becomes: Romney 20, Paul 8. So net from Nevada for today: Romney +6, Paul +3, Santorum -3, Gingrich -6.

Meanwhile, Romney picks up two more supers, one from Alabama and one from Arkansas.

So for the day: Romney +8, Paul +3, Santorum -3, Gingrich -6. So of course Romney continues to walk toward the nomination, despite some delegate gains for Paul as well.

Wait, but what about Maine? Paul won there over the weekend too, right? Yes. It looks that way. But Green Papers hasn’t updated their “soft count” for Maine yet. I’m sure they will soon. When they do, we’ll update here too.

In any case, for now, in terms of “% of remaining needed to win”:

  • Romney: 29.6% -> 28.8%
  • Santorum: 96.5% -> 97.1%

Despite winning some delegates, Paul’s “% of remaining needed to win” remains significantly higher than 100% at 114.4%. The delegates he is accumulating right now are not anywhere near enough to catch up and win… or even to block Romney in combination with Santorum and Gingrich delegates. Sorry. They may let him cause the convention not to go quite the way the Romney folks would like due to some unscripted deviations from the plan, but it won’t be anywhere near what would be needed to actually derail Romney.

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Five Supers for Romney

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

On Friday Romney had a meeting with the RNC, all of whom are automatic delegates to the convention and most of whom are superdelegates. (Some are not because their votes are bound by the primary or caucus results in their states.) If they wanted a picture with Romney, they had to sign a form saying they promise to support Romney at the convention. There are reports that over 100 of those present signed the form. Some of them checked a box asking that this fact not be made public because of elections they are running in, etc. Others said this could be made public. The Romney campaign hasn’t released those names yet. Maybe next week. So potentially there will be a big jump in Romney’s superdelegate numbers sometime very soon. In the mean time, DCW was able to verify five more superdelegates publicly endorsing Romney.

In terms of “% of remaining delegates needed to win”:

  • Romney: 40.4% -> 40.1%
  • Santorum: 78.0% -> 78.4%
  • Gingrich: 87.5% -> 87.9%
  • Paul: 94.7% -> 95.1%

And the march to 1144 continues. Romney now has 688. We still have a decent way to go.

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Alabama Update and Another Super

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

A couple minor updates today as we continue through the slow period before we have NY/PA/CT/RI/DE next week.

The totals for Alabama get updated from Santorum 23, Gingrich 14, Romney 11, 2 TBD to Santorum 23, Gingrich 13, Romney 12, 2 TBD. This apparently after resolving a dispute on the results in the 7th congressional district. So Romney +1, Gingrich -1.

Also, a superdelegate from Rhode Island endorsed Romney.

So for the day, Romney +2, Gingrich -1.

In terms of “% of remaining needed to win”:

  • Romney: 40.59% -> 40.46%
  • Santorum: 77.95% -> 78.02%
  • Gingrich: 87.23% -> 87.39%
  • Paul: 94.58% -> 94.66%

I know. Yawn. But we will track this to the bitter end. Look for much bigger moves next week.