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.
Santorum won three states last night! Of course one of them (Missouri) has no relation whatsoever with how delegates are actually selected, so isn’t REALLY relevant (although of course it affects the narrative and “momentum”.) The other two states didn’t actually determine delegates either, but like Iowa, elected delegates to the next stage of the process… which eventually will elect real delegates, so that is good enough that we can use the results to estimate what the eventual delegates will be (although it WILL change). But never the less, Santorum won three states! Santorum is surging, Romney is in trouble, etc, etc, etc!
OK. Time to wake up from the hype here. What is actually going on when we look at the delegate race. First, lets look specifically at Santorum.
As of yesterday’s update, in order to be on a pace to actually catch up and win the nomination before the convention, Santorum would need to be getting 53.3% of all the remaining delegates. What did he actually get? According to our estimates (as usual using The Green Papers and DCW as our sources) 71 new delegates were determined since our last update… 37 from Minnesota, 33 from Colorado, and 1 super delegate. Of these, Santorum got 30. 30/71 = 42.3%. Much better than Santorum had been doing previously… he’s only had 6.4% of delegates before today… but a long way from the pace he would need to actually be on track to catch up and win. So, big night in terms of “momentum”. But in terms of the actual race, he is not gaining on Romney at the pace he would need to actually win. He did actually pass Ron Paul in delegates though, so he’s in 3rd place instead of 4th now, and he came close to catching up to Gingrich to pull into 2nd. So there is that. But he is not on track to actually challenge Romney. At least to win.
Which brings us to Romney. Santorum and the others may not be on a pace to win the nomination, but they ARE hurting Romney. To keep on a pace to win the nomination, as of yesterday’s update Romney needed to be winning 49.2% of the remaining delegates. He actually got 19/71 = 26.8%. Well below what he needed. So he too now has a harder road to the nomination than he did yesterday, even though he is still way ahead. He is still over 50% of the delegates determined so far but just barely (50.9%). We have a lot of proportional contests coming up. Including results from Maine coming soon. He may well drop below 50% again.
What does this all mean? We may have a situation where NONE of the four candidates are tracking toward having a majority of delegates by the time we get to the convention. Wouldn’t that be fun? That hasn’t happened in forever. But for that to happen, we need to continue to have at least three candidates actively collecting delegates, where the non-Romney candidates collectively were getting enough to keep Romney off pace to win (currently the three of them need to get over 50.05% of the remaining delegates for that), but with none of the non-Romneys on pace to catch up and win either. This could happen if Gingrich, Santorum and Paul all stay in it until the end and don’t run out of money or support. If any of these drop out (or their support collapses so Romney starts getting enough to be on pace to win) it will change the dynamics of the race. How it changes depends on who drops out.
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.
Today’s update is just Romney picking up another superdelegate. This of course slightly improves his situation, and slightly hurts everybody else.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
So, we now have the rest of the results from Nevada. Compared to the update yesterday… everybody gains 2 more delegates… splitting the 8 that were remaining after yesterdays update evenly. That brings us for a total in Nevada of 14 for Romney, 6 for Gingrich, 5 for Paul and 3 for Santorum.
On our nifty “% of delegates remaining needed to win” we actually have the situation between yesterday and today of EVERYBODY moving a bit further away from the nomination than they were yesterday. This is because with the even split in delegates, given where everybody started, nobody actually exceeded the percentages they needed to stay on track for cinching. But if you consider Nevada as a whole, not just today’s update, you see that the overall picture is that Romney’s holding just about steady (very slight improvement) in how close he is to the nomination… this really didn’t help him all that much by that metric… but everybody else falls further and further behind…
We still have the situation that so far Romney has 61.5% of the delegates… but he only needs 49.2% of the remaining delegates to win, so he can actually do slightly worse than he has been doing so far and still win…. while Gingrich, his nearest competitor, has only managed 23.1% of the delegates so far, but would need to get 52.0%… more than DOUBLE what he has been getting so far, in order to catch up and win.
Now, that might still be possible… if some of the other candidates drop out… but while improving by a few percent is easy to see as possible, more than doubling how you have been doing so far is getting to be a really far stretch. Again, candidates dropping out could change dynamics. But as long as we have the four we have right now, the views forward for any of the non-Romneys involve them suddenly starting to do massively better than they have so far, so something dramatic would need to change. (Some would argue that some of the states coming up are dramatically different by their nature and this is the chance that these guys need. We shall see I guess… But it is seeming unlikely.)
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
So, Nevada is being very slow in providing results for their caucuses. I waited and waited, but as of 22:00 UTC, I decided it was time to go ahead and post today’s update even though the final delegate counts for Nevada are not yet fully determined. As of an update posted around 14 UTC, The Green Papers gives 12 delegates to Romney, 4 to Gingrich, 3 to Paul and 1 for Santorum… with 8 yet to be determined. These are estimates pending the final vote counts. I imagine I’ll be posting an update tomorrow with the disposition of at least some of those 8 delegates.
Based on the results so far though, despite actually getting some delegates this time since it was a proportional contest, only Romney actually did well enough to improve their overall position in the race. Romney needs a slightly smaller percentage of the remaining delegates to cinch the nomination that he did yesterday. For everybody else, even though they got some delegates, they did not get enough delegates to actually be catching up with Romney. They are only falling further behind.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
This is not a repeat from yesterday. DCW reports yet another superdelegate coming out for Gingrich. If he continues to pick up a superdelegate every day he’ll, uh, still be way behind.
In any case, the Nevada caucuses are happening today, so we’ll see bigger changes in the charts soon… by all reports though, Romney’s lead in Nevada is pretty large though. But it is proportional rather than winner take all, so just how each of the four do will matter to the delegate race… but Romney will still be ahead.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
No big change today, but DCW brings news that Gingrich has picked up another super delegate. Woo!
This of course slightly improves Gingrich’s position, slightly worsens everybody else’s, but in the end leaves things pretty much where they were.
The next major batch of delegates is still the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
So Florida has played out exactly as it looked like it will for the last week or so. Gingrich’s brief spike in the polls after South Carolina subsided rapidly, and Romney won Florida handily. As a winner take all state (absent any contesting of the rules changing that in the future) the margin doesn’t matter though, Romney gets all 50 delegates from the state.
By our count this now gives Romney 82 delegates, or 65.1% of the delegates that have been determined so far. Gingrich is still in second, but way behind with 28 delegates, or 22.2% of the delegates.
From our preferred view above, you can see that this of course is very good for Romney, very bad for everybody else. He is now in a much better position than everybody else, and in the best position he has been in so far. He now only needs about 49.2% of the remaining delegates… compared to his record so far of 65.1% of the delegates. So he can actually do worse than he has been doing so far and still grab the nomination.
Every other candidate must significantly improve on their existing performances to catch up and win. For instance, Gingrich must win 51.7% of remaining delegates, which would be more than double his track record so far of 22.2%. Of course, winner take all states like Florida massively distort this sort of thing, but that is what we have with Florida, and this still shows the size of the mountain the other candidates would need to climb to get back into contention. Winning is not enough, they must start winning by very significant margins (not in popular vote, in delegates) in order to catch up. As we go on, this will get harder and harder.
Next up, the Nevada caucuses on Saturday… 28 delegates, proportional.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
After a detailed examination of the rules, DCW determined that the super delegates from five states weren’t really as super as once thought, in that they will actually be bound by the elections in those states… so the declared opinions of those supers don’t matter any more. Net effect… 2 delegates that had previously been listed for Romney go away.
This of course is bad for Romney, good for everybody else (because at least in theory, those two delegates are now up for grabs). But really, it is a relatively small number of delegates, and doesn’t change the overall picture of the race on the eve of the Florida primary.
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
Just a minor update today, DCW adds another superdelegate for Romney. This of course puts Romney in a slightly better position, and everybody else in a slightly worse position.
All in all though, everything is just waiting for Florida…
Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
Pulling ahead in just the last few days before the South Carolina Primary, Gingrich won a commanding victory in South Carolina. Although the congressional district level results won’t be final for awhile now, it looks like Gingrich will end up with 23 of South Carolina’s 25 delegates. Romney gets the remaining 2 delegates, plus he picked up another superdelegate since our last update.
Fundamentally, looking at our “% of Remaining Delegates needed to win” chart gives the same story that is the big narrative tonight. This was a very bad day for Romney. Romney is still in the best position to win. He is still ahead in delegates. (33 Romney delegates to Gingrich’s 28 by our count which uses data from both The Green Papers and Democratic Convention Watch.) But now instead of being way off on his own, with a much better position than all of his competitors, who were getting worse off by the day, he is now joined by Gingrich, who has broken out of the pack of “not-Romneys” and is now nipping at Romney’s heels. Meanwhile, Paul and Santorum fall even further behind since they got no delegates at all out of South Carolina.
The next big contest is Florida of course, with 50 delegates at stake. Florida is a winner take all state. If Romney wins Florida, he pulls WAY ahead again, and pushes Gingrich back into the background. If Gingrich wins, then he suddenly will take a fairly significant lead himself, and we will need to start taking a much closer look at the rest of the calendar…
Since this was a big day, two other views as well… first the race as % of delegates captured so far…
Romney had been over 50% for a little while. No longer.
And finally, the plain old “Total Delegates” chart…
Gingrich’s good night is particularly striking in this last one, but I think it actually makes it look like a better night than it really was.
I think the first of these three charts is the most indicative of where the race really stands, but the other two are interesting views as well. But looking at % needed to win really gives you a sense of how close we are (or not) to wrapping things up. Numbers close to 50 as we have today still indicate a lot is possible. As we get candidates starting to head rapidly toward 100 (where they are mathematically eliminated) or starting to dive down toward zero (where they cinch the nomination) we will see very clearly the state of the race.
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