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.
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.
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.
For the second time this election season we have delegate updates. This time of course from New Hampshire. As before, I am going to concentrate here on the graph above, which is the percent of the outstanding delegates the candidate needs to get in order to wrap up the nomination. For more common charts, like total delegates and the like, go to my full 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
For this chart, remember that DOWN is better. When a candidate gets down to zero, they have wrapped up the nomination. If they go up past 100 then they have been mathematically eliminated from winning absent delegates changing their votes. Basically, you can look at this as measuring how close they are to winning. The lower the line, the closer they are to winning.
Bottom line here is that only one candidate actually improved their overall position based on the results in New Hampshire. That candidate is of course Romney. As you can see above, his percentage needed dropped slightly. This means the bar he needs to pass in all future contests was just LOWERED a bit, so his road to the nomination is easier. Everybody else in the race, even some others who increased the percentage of delegates they have, didn’t get ENOUGH… so their road to the nomination gets harder after this, not easier.
Of course this lines up nicely with the dominant narrative at this point. This was a big success for Romney, everybody else muddles along. The standard narrative is moving rapidly toward inevitability though. This is of course based on momentum and how spin following each contest effects the next elections, etc. From a pure delegate count point of view though, we just are not there yet. Only 1.6% of the available delegates have been awarded at this point… and that is only if you count provisional estimates of delegates from Iowa (they haven’t REALLY been allocated yet). The candidates are still close enough together in delegate count, and there are still so many delegates yet to allocate, that *if* the kind of volatility in support that happened during the pre-primary season were to continue, with either Romney collapsing, or another candidate having a “surge”, or if the dynamics start to shift as candidates drop out, there is still plenty of room for non-Romneys to make a move here.
Having said that, honestly, it does still look like Romney is going to quickly run away with this unless something happens to change the dynamics of the race VERY SOON. We just can’t actually say that from the numbers yet. Right now (estimates via The Green Papers) we have Romney with 13 delegates, followed by Paul 9, Santorum 6, Gingrich 4, Perry 3 and Huntsman 2. With 2249 more delegates yet to be determined. So a long way to go yet.
Given however that as of today for the first time, we actually have a delegate leader in the Republican campaign, I’ve started to put together my General Election Electoral College models based on state by state polling assuming we are going to end up with Obama vs Romney. Look for those to debut here before the end of the month.
It is annoying that the coverage is all concentrating on the raw initial preference vote in Iowa. Yes, there are no actual delegates to the national convention allocated tonight. But after the initial straw poll vote that is being reported on, the small number of people that actually stick around get to start voting for the delegates to the County conventions, which in turn will elect the delegates to the State convention, which will THEN elect the representatives to the national convention. This process won’t be complete in Iowa until June. But in other caucuses in other races, they try to use the selection of the county delegates to predict what the final mix of delegates will be that are eventually sent to the national convention. I’m really kind of annoyed that is not happening.
Because this initial vote DOES NOT MATTER in the delegate selection process. The voting for the delegates to the county convention is what actually matters for delegates, and IS NOT TIED to the initial straw poll vote. And most of the people leave after that first part it seems, so the actual delegates are determined by the really ardent and involved people who stay.
I’ve been picking up Alex and driving home, so I’ve been listening to streaming audio from CNN, not checking all the usual internet sources, so I don’t know what is being covered there, but in the parts I have heard, CNN hasn’t even mentioned the delegate process at all, and that just annoys me.
Of course, Iowa has 28 delegates out of 2286… 1.2%… Iowa really doesn’t matter very much at all in terms of delegates. And in previous cycles, by the time Iowa ACTUALLY gets around to allocating delegates in the summer, the winner is known, and the final delegate selections end up reflecting that reality rather than the results from January… (since none of the delegates to the county convention that are selected today are actuallY BOUND to continue to vote based on their preferences today).
So what ends up mattering out of Iowa is just the spin. Not who gets elected to the county conventions. Not even who wins the non-binding straw poll that decides no delegates. Just how people spin the results in terms of how the candidates did versus “expectations”.
All of which is very frustrating, because the only thing that SHOULD matter here is how the choice of delegates to the county conventions affects the chances of the candidates toward conventions to the national convention. Based on the preferences of the people selected for the county conventions you CAN do some projections of actual delegate counts. It is just nobody is even bothering to look at that part of the process. ARGH!
Things are rarely how they should be though, so we’re talking about the results of a non-binding straw poll instead of the process that actually allocates delegates instead. Sigh!
Oh well. Delegates will start coming in soon enough… :-)
In the mean time, with 88% reporting we have Santorum, Romney, Paul in that order, but very very close to each other. Which I guess is quite exciting in terms of being close and all…. But in the end, anything with Romney near the top ends up being good for Romney because nobody believes Paul can expand his support much beyond his core, and Santorum isn’t set up to compete much beyond Iowa… although a top 3 placement (let alone a win!) here may lead to a spike in fundraising and a bump elsewhere for Santorum… but…
Well, we will see I guess. I’ll stop fretting about the fact nobody is even trying to project national delegates based on county delegates and go with the flow and have fun with the tight three way battle in the non-binding straw poll. :-)
Edited 04:19 UTC to reflect 28 delegates for Iowa instead of 40.
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