1236* - A Junkie's Guide To The Republican Nomination For President

I always inquire for the Sierra Club's choice

I hope Trump gets it so lash will have someone to vote for.

Thanks for the thread rjb.

(bookmark to follow the upcoming process)

Isn't there a Bush to root for? We need another Bush. I also need a hole in my head.

Fivethirtyeight usually does a great job with state by state predictions and tracking the nomination.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has established that there will be 2470* delegates to their convention divided amongst the states. In order to win the nomination, a candidate must get 50% plus 1, which is where the 1236* comes from.

Why the asterisk? Because the RNC can change the total. They might decide to have more "super delegates" who have served the party well. They may give particular states additional delegates if the state performed well in a recent election.

(Louisiana held an election this past weekend for governor. A Democrat won for the first time in years and some prominent R's abandoned their candidate.
It is unlikely LA will get additional delegates).

Really? The RNC can change the rules in the middle of the process?

Here is the latest state by state delegate count from the GOP

https://gop.com/2016-gophq/event_schedule/?schedule_type=primary

Here is the wiki version of the Democratic party delegate counts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

The blurbs on the candidates are hilarious.

I like the Bush family, but I don't trust this particular Bush on either guns or Israel policy.

I like Kasich.

Robert Reich has this to say about John Kasich:

"During his governorship he moved Ohio from 48th in job creation to eighth (second in the Midwest), halved unemployment to 5.2 percent and increased income by 9.8 percent. Poverty fell three times faster than the national rate, helped by a Kasich initiative to adopt a version of the earned income tax credit, which makes work worthwhile for fast-food employees and hotel maids."

"I dealt with Kasich when he was a congressman from Ohio and headed the Budget Committee, and found him to be honest, forthright, and willing to listen and change his mind if the arguments were against him. Although a social conservative, against abortion and for the death penalty, Kasich has accused his party of waging a war on the poor, and has spoken up for immigrants. He has argued against repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and has taken Medicaid expansion dollars. According to Bloomberg, when Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and wife of the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, objected to Kasich's moral defense of aid to the poor, Kasich fired back, 'I don't know about you, lady, but when I get to the pearly gates, I'm going to have an answer for what I've done for the poor.' He hasn't been invited to a Koch brothers meet-and-greet since."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/robert-reich-kasich-best-bad-lot_996264.html

Anyway, right now the RNP has settled on having 2470 delegates at the convention. That may increase slightly.

So each state will award delegates based upon who wins in that state's primary?
NO.
Some states, including Iowa, give its delegates in proportion to how well the candidate does.
If Trump gets 29% of the vote and Carson receives 20% and Rubio 15% etc., the headline will be Trump Wins Iowa. But he only racks up 29% of the delegates. The remainder are divvied up to the others.
This process is called Proportional Allocation of Delegates.

The second contest of the season after Iowa is in New Hampshire. They have a Modified Allocation of Delegates which is like Iowa except that any candidate who gets less than 10% of the votes gets no delegates.
In addition there are 3 Super Delegates who are not bound by the primary results.

They do indeed and I have cribbed some stuff from them along with RealClearPolitics and Time magazine.
538 can be a little daunting for some folks to wade through.

The Iowa caucus will be on 2/1/16 followed by New Hampshire primary on 2/9. Only 50 bound delegate will are up for grabs and they will be awarded proportionally. But the momentum in those two earliest states will be huge for the winner(s).
South Carolina is up next on 2/20. There will be 50 delegates selected and they will be awarded to whichever candidate gets the most votes.
I expect that most all of the candidates will stay in the race until after SC as long as the cash holds out in hopes that, even though they will get no delegates there, they can demonstrate that there is some level of support.
Nevada is next on 2/23 with 30 delegates selected proportionally.

And then, on 3/1, we have SuperDuper Tuesday. Thirteen states will select a total of 565 bound delegates.

RealClearPolitics (RCP) has an interactive thingee going where players can estimate the delegate tally for each candidate as things progress through the primaries/caucuses.
My understanding is that, as a sufficient number of polls come out, RCP will use those as the "default" for allocating delegates but players can alter the estimates to arrive at their own totals.

I am still trying to learn how to navigate around the site. Right now, through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, I have Trump with 73 delegates.

One interesting note: several of the states in the SuperDuper primaries on 3/1 will award delegates proportionally with the proviso that no candidate receiving less than 15% or 20% of the vote will receive any delegates. The thinking was that there would be only two or three viable candidates left in the race. I don't know if those states can change the rules.

Thank you anything unfortunate

There isn't a general election thread yet so I thought I would post this here.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/

It's an interesting exercise in changing turnout of different demographics to see how it affects the Presidential outcome.

Good find. Unfortunately it doesn't look like he has any kind of chance in his primary.