This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have cinched the nomination. If they get up past 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. Note that these numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.
Some minor updates today as results get finalized in the last round of states. In Alabama 3 of the 9 non-super delegates that Green Papers still had as TBD have been determined… 2 for Santorum, 1 for Romney. Meanwhile, in Hawaii the Green Papers estimate gets revised from 9 Romney, 5 Santorum, 3 Paul to 10 Romney, 5 Santorum, 2 Paul. So in Hawaii +1 for Romney, -1 for Paul.
Net for the day: +2 Romney, +2 Santorum, -1 Paul
There are still 6 non-super delegates in Alabama in the TBD category, so we haven’t heard the last from Alabama.
Since this is only a very small number of delegates, the effects are very small. In terms of “% of remaining needed to win”:
- Romney: 49.21% -> 49.17%
- Santorum: 68.65% -> 68.66%
- Gingrich: 74.38% -> 74.55%
- Paul: 80.33% -> 80.59%
Obviously this changes nothing at all about the analysis of the state of the race that was presented yesterday.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have cinched the nomination. If they get up past 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. Rather than the date on the x-axis, we show the “% of Delegates Already Allocated” as this better represents the progress through the race. Note that these numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.
OK, bottom line here… this is not the big win for Santorum that many people are crowing about this morning. He didn’t come close to the numbers he would need to be able to catch up and get to 1144. He didn’t even get the most delegates today. Romney did. But this was also not a win for Romney. As many anticipated, he did not get the percentages of delegates he needed to stay on pace for 1144 and fell back a bit, keeping the possibility of the non-Romney’s preventing Romney from getting to 1144 alive.
OK, now lets hit the details. The states with updates today:
- Alabama: +16 Santorum, +12 Gingrich, +10 Romney (9 regular delegates and 2 super delegates still TBD)
- Mississippi: +13 Santorum, +12 Romney, +12 Gingrich (2 super delegates still TBD)
- Hawaii: +9 Romney, +5 Santorum, +3 Paul (3 super delegates still TBD)
- American Samoa: +9 Romney
- Georgia: +2 Gingrich, -2 Romney (Revision to Georgia results based on updated computations)
So, total for the day: Romney +38, Santorum +34, Gingrich+26, Paul +3
Before anything else, lets just point out again… Romney got the most delegates today. Romney was ahead when this started. So Romney increased his lead today. How is this a win for Santorum? (The answer of course is the spin that gets put on things… which could in turn affect what happens in the next few states… but in the end it will come down to the cold hard numbers… )
So, for Romney going into today, to maintain his pace toward 1144, he needed to get 48.4% of the delegates. Did he manage that? 38/101 = 37.6%. No. He fell short by a significant margin. This WAS a bad day for Romney, no way to disguise it. His “% of remaining needed to win” rises to 49.2%. So far he has 51.2% of the delegates according to the count we use (GreenPapers Soft Count), so if he just continues at that pace he WILL get to 1144… eventually. But this remains in the zone where Romney is vulnerable to be stopped. So far the collective non-Romney’s have managed to get 48.8% of the delegates. They only have to up their game a little bit… such that collectively they are managing 50.8%… to be able to block Romney. This is obviously NOT where Romney would like to be. He wants to be at the point where his “% needed to win” keeps dropping toward zero. But that just isn’t happening yet, and if Santorum gains “momentum” out of his Alabama and Mississippi wins, then it may yet be awhile. If Romney slips under the mark of “50% of the delegates awarded so far” in the next few contests, expect the talk of brokered conventions to accelerate rapidly.
How about Santorum? Well, despite the positive headlines, in terms of actually winning the nomination, despite his wins in two states, today was not good for him. Coming into this round, he needed to be getting 66.2% of the delegates to be on a pace to catch up and win. He got 34/101=33.7% which is nowhere even close. As a result, his “% needed to win” rises dramatically to 68.7%. This is essentially an impossible number as long as all four candidates continue to get support. Even if Gingrich and Paul drop out, this would be an insane winning margin in a two man race. Not going to happen. The only scenarios where Santorum starts to get close are ones where Gingrich and Paul not only drop out, but their delegates en masse and unanimously jump over to Santorum. This would drop Santorum’s “% needed to win” to the 50.8% needed for the non-Romney’s mentioned above. That isn’t going to happen either though.
The situation is of course even worse for Gingrich and Paul. All three of these guys are racing toward mathematical elimination. So the only interesting scenario remains if the three of them collectively can get enough delegates to stop Romney from getting to 1144. The three candidates at this point have all but admitted this. As we have mentioned before, this scenario relies on the three of them being able to continue getting delegates… and getting them at a higher rate than they have so far… even though it is impossible for any of them to individually win. This is still in the realm of the possible though. They have to win the spin war by winning states, even if not by enough delegates to catch up, pushing things explicitly as “Stop Romney”, etc. By all reports the rest of March is still marginal for Romney. If Santorum gains some momentum from states like Alabama and Mississippi and can push hard on the “We must stop Romney” angle, wins some more states in March and then starts driving down Romney support in post-March states, then this remains very much on the table. And then of course the idea is, if it actually goes to the convention undecided, then anything can happen.
Fundamentally the basic analysis of where we are remains the same as it has been since Super Tuesday, and arguably since Florida… or even since Iowa… namely, the non-Romney’s get further away from the nomination with almost every contest (the only exceptions so far being South Carolina and Kansas). Meanwhile Romney continues to hover in the zone where if he continues exactly how he has been going he will win EVENTUALLY, but it will take a long time, and if his opponents collectively improve their performance just a LITTLE BIT, they could block him and force some convention drama.
Edit 2012 Mar 13 18:11 UTC to correct one place where I had incorrectly said Romney when I actually meant Gingrich. Thanks Paolo for pointing it out.
As of the moment this posts, at 19:11 UTC (12:11 PM Pacific, 3:11 PM Eastern) Alex will be exactly 2.5 years old. I haven’t posted one of the “things Alex is doing now” kind of posts since he turned two, so here is another one of them, with just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. It is of course nowhere near complete.
- TRAINS! He liked trains before, and would play with them when there were sets in bookstores or toy stores or whatever, but he got a set of wooden trains and tracks for his birthday. Then he discovered he didn’t have to be limited to the table, and could build out his tracks on the floor. The track setups became more and more elaborate and sprawling. At the moment we essentially have a whole room where the floor is nothing but a train track set up, and he spends hours playing with the trains. Which lead to train videos of course. Which in turn led to…
- YouTube! In the last couple months he has become a major fan of YouTube. It started with the trains, but expands from there. If you give him the iPhone YouTube app, he is completely and totally proficient in navigating around, going from video to video to video, following his interests. (Where he ends up can be interesting sometimes.) He has even been known to save videos he likes as favorites. The only thing he can’t do is spell and type, so he’ll tell you what he wants to search for as a starting point. On a laptop, he hasn’t mastered the trackpad yet, so he points at what he wants to watch next. Of course there are trains. Then there is a whole genre of people using toy trains and cars and such to act out stories. Then there are adults reviewing children’s toys. Then there are a wide variety of children’s videos from kids songs to full episodes of TV shows… in many languages! And all sorts of other things. Very entertaining!
- He loves walking Roscoe! He will bring the leash and say he wants to walk the dog. I attach a second leash for safety, but he holds his leash and runs with the dog and loves it. In general, he and Roscoe play and chase and have a great time. Roscoe usually tires of it and wants to be left alone before Alex is done, so then we have to separate them, but until then Alex has fun. :-)
- He has friends at school! He now has friends at school that he plays with regularly and calls by name when he arrives or leaves. “Bye Zoe! Bye Zoe!” And they call “Alex!” when he arrives as well. They run around and play and talk to each other. They are definitely little kids now, not babies any more for sure, and barely “toddler”. Hitting that “Preschool” phase instead now.
- I mentioned YouTube, but in general he is a master of the iPhone. He navigates effortlessly from game to game. Within games he quickly figures out what you are supposed to do and can navigate through multiple levels of menus to get to things if needed (although he prefers the ones where that isn’t needed). He can also open up his movies on there and choose which he wants to watch, etc.
- He will talk to various people on video conference over Skype and the like. We’ve done this with him since he was a newborn, but now he actually actively interacts with the people on the other end, talking to them, showing them things, etc. To quote my mother’s Facebook post after one of these sessions: “Two year old grandson was on Skype with me quite awhile tonight – I was on a phone picture and he lay me on the floor in the middle of his wooden train set to show me cars so it was like I was lying on my back looking up at him doing things! But when the dog came and sat on the phone he was all upset – and had to be reassured that ‘grandma’s okay see here she is!’ Very interactive tonight but imagine! He is worried about the disappearance of my talking and watching head and carried me around to play with him – and sees that as ME! and cried that I was saying goodbye when I did! As if I were really there! Sigh!”
- He likes the karaoke machine and will turn it on and start making noises into it himself. More recently he realized it can actually play songs he knows (like Old MacDonald) and he can sing along.
- When he plays with his cars or trains, they actually play out stories. Sometimes he reenacts scenes from the movies or TV shows the toys come from, sometimes he makes up his own. But they have conversations and have adventures. They aren’t just being pushed around. We’ll hear him talking thinking he is calling us, but then realize that it is actually two of his cars having a conversation.
- He can open the refrigerator and freezer on his own, and does so almost every day to get popsicles. But he can’t open the popsicle by himself yet, so he’s no sneaking anything past us… yet.
- He is very good at articulating what he wants most of the time, and uses words to describe it. This includes things like saying what he wants for dinner, what drinks he wants, what toy he is looking for, etc, etc, etc. We don’t ALWAYS get exactly what he wants, but more often than not, he is pretty clear. He will sometimes even order his own meal when we are out at a restaurant. What do you want? FRIES! CHEESESTICK!!!
- When we tell him it is time for bed, he protests and asks for more time. But when time is up, he’ll come to one of us and go to sleep. He still wants to be near us to go to sleep, not just left in his bed or whatnot, but when it is bedtime, he knows, and he may not like it, but he stops what he is doing and goes to sleep.
- He will follow complex sets of instructions, like “Alex, would you please take this upstairs, knock on your sister’s door and give it to her, then come back?”.
- He’ll also fill in the gaps on his own and take the needed action. For instance, if he indicates he wants to go outside, and we say “Sure, but you need your shoes and coat” he’ll go off and find them and bring them back to get ready to go out.
- Most of the time when we are out at a restaurant and sit at a booth, he sits with me on the regular booth seat, rather than using a high chair. (He still needs a high chair when it isn’t a booth though.)
- He says his own name! He won’t answer “What is your name?” when asked yet (at least I haven’t seen it), but when he sees himself in a mirror or on video or whatnot, he will say “Alex!”.
- Most of the time he isn’t crying when we drop him off at school any more, although he still usually lets us know he really would rather stay with us and is unhappy with being dropped off. Except when everybody is playing on the playground. Then sometimes it is OK if we leave.
- He tells stories about us. At school the teachers tell us he tells them about how Mommy and Daddy are at work. When I am driving him home after school he talks about what Mommy and Amy are doing.
- He is very deliberate about his art, drawing very frequently, and telling us what it is that he is drawing (“train!”) and who it is for “Grandma!”.
- We have “parent/tot” swim lessons every week and have had them for more than a year, but in the last couple months he is really getting comfortable and having more and more fun, participating with all the activities and getting more adventurous and brave every week. He had been starting to get that way last summer, but between the move and and people being sick and such over the winter, we had missed a bunch of classes and we switched to a new pool because of the move, so he had regressed a bit over the winter, but he’s completely come out of that now and is back to being super excited and enthusiastic about swim each week.
- He tries to share things he is really excited about with the dog, but the dog doesn’t always appreciate it, and that makes him sad. “Look Dog, train videos!!!” (Dog looks blankly). “Look Dog, train videos!!!” (Waves iPhone around, holds it to Roscoe’s face to show him. Dog looks unimpressed. Alex gets sad.)
- He likes to ride on my back, and will insist on climbing up and being carried that way from room to room.
- He loves to wrestle and roughhouse.
- He is still working on catching, but he is now pretty good at throwing a ball right to me for me to catch!
- Alphabet! He is very excited about letters and numbers and learning to identify them. His favorite games right now are all games that involve letters and numbers. He doesn’t know them all yet, but he knows some of them, and is eager to learn the rest.
Well, there is probably a bunch more. There is definitely a lot more. Every day there are awesome moments and new things. But it is impossible to capture them all. Those are just a few that came to mind with a few moments of thinking. This is a great age. Lots of fun. But also exhausting. :-)
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In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner…
Sam and Ivan talk about:
- Daylight Savings Time / Election 2012
- New iPad / Apple Competition / HD Downloads
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[wpaudio url=”http://www.abulsme.com/CurmudgeonsCorner/cc20120311.mp3″ text=”Recorded 11 Mar 2012″]
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Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have cinched the nomination. If they get up past 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. Rather than the date on the x-axis, we show the “% of Delegates Already Allocated” as this better represents the progress through the race. Note that these numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.
For the first time since Gingrich won South Carolina, someone other than Romney ends up improving their overall position after a day with results from major contests. Yes, Santorum actually pulled one out!
In Kansas Santorum won 33 delegates to Romney’s 7. In the Virgin Islands, Romney won 4 delegates, Paul won 1. Romney also picked up one additional superdelegate from the Virgin Islands. This makes the totals for the day: Santorum 33, Romney 12, Paul 1.
In order to be on a pace to catch up and get to 1144, Santorum needed 66.4% of the delegates. With 33/46 he manages 71.7% of today’s delegates. This means his “% of remaining needed to win” drops to 66.2% for the next set of contests on Tuesday.
So not only does Santorum win the day, he wins the day by a big enough margin to be on pace to win! Well, we would be if he did this every single time there was a contest, which won’t happen, but hey, today, he did it today! (Note: If you counted the two Pacific Island contests that I gave the results of yesterday as if they were all on the same day as Kansas and the Virgin Islands, Santorum would no longer be up for the day.)
Meanwhile, all of the other candidates of course moved backwards, including Romney. Romney moves from needing 47.7% of the remaining delegates to needing 48.4% of the remaining delegates. He will be hard pressed to make this margin in Tuesday’s deep South contests, so expect that he may move backwards some more before moving toward the nomination again, but he is still in the commanding position in this race. Nobody else is even close. He is the only one with a path to 1144. (Prospects for the non-Romney’s to block remain possible however, although the non-Romney’s have to pick up the collective delegate getting pace to make that happen, rather than fading as their chances of winning individually rapidly go to zero.)
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