2012 Republican Delegate Count: Paul Passes Gingrich for 3rd Place

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. The first chart is the % of delegates the candidate has collected, the second is the number of delegates. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

Not that it matters at this point, but as the final results from Iowa came in this weekend, the results for Ron Paul were more favorable than the original estimates, so he gained delegates in my count, and the others lost delegates. The result is that Ron Paul has now passed Newt Gingrich for third place. (I use the Green Papers Soft Count, plus the DCW super delegate count in places where Green Papers hasn’t included them).

This of course doesn’t change the end results here at all. Romney is the nominee. It does however show once again how the final results in caucus states can be dramatically different from the “estimated” results based on the popular vote in caucus states. In the case of Iowa, the initial estimate was Romney 6, Santorum 6, Paul 6, Gingrich 4. As of right now we have Paul 21, TBD 7. Quite a bit different.

There are a lot of people who argue that because of these sorts of things, one should only look at the “hard” count of delegates actually already fully allocated and bound rather than trying to estimate caucus states at all in the early stages or the way some officially uncommitted delegates will go. I still think there is some value in doing those estimates, but one must be very aware of the limits of those estimates.

For reference, my current overall count is this:

Romney 1459, Santorum 257, Paul 152, Gingrich 142, Bachmann 1, TBD 275

Green Papers “Hard” Count has the following:

Romney 1329, Santorum 251, Gingrich 143, Paul 98, Huntsman 2, Bachmann 1, TBD 462

A little different. Either way though, Romney wins. :-)

Update 2012 Jun 17 23:36 UTC: Made my format for delegate counts consistant.

Update 2012 Jun 18 18:38 UTC: Minor wording fix.