No Runny Eggs

CNN has it, and I have the beer. Let’s drunk-blog. As usual, I’ll be paraphrasing a lot (I’m not that fast a typist), the questions will be in italics, the answers in plain-text, and my comments in-line with a question or answer will be in parentheses. Also, the courtesy lamp is out, so expect a lot of bombs.

Somewhere below, I asked what Mike Huckabee was still doing in the race. The answer I came up with was that he was pushing to pass Mitt Romney’s vote total to become the “next in line” for the 2012 campaign. According to CNN, after the “Potomac primaries”, he trailed Romney 4.17 million to 2.74 million in the primary votes (or by 1.43 million votes). Since we had a pair of primaries with only John McCain and Huckabee actively campaigning since then, I can do some very sketchy back-of-the-envelope math. Washington State hasn’t finished counting yet according to CNN, so I’ll have to start assuming early. Huckabee was ahead of Romney approximately 82,000 to 76,000 with 57% reporting, and AP still had no results from 4 of Washington’s 9 Congressional districts. I’ll assume that the remaining vote actually breaks a bit more in Huckabee’s favor and give him 150,000 to Romney’s 100,000. Coming out of those states, the spread should be about 1.24 million.

Do bear in mind that I’m doing some serious assumptions here, from what the vote total in Washington State will look like when they’re done counting to not taking any regional or political party bias into account. I’ll also assume for the ease of math that Romney picks up nothing; .

Over the course of the campaign so far, the states that have held primaries have had approximately 44,200 votes cast per electoral vote. There are 16 states with primaries left, with 2 of them nothing more than beauty contests: Ohio (20), Rhode Island (4), Texas (34), Vermont (3), Mississippi (6), Pennsylvania (21), Indiana (11), North Carolina (15), Nebraska (5; meaningless primary), West Virginia (5), Oregon (7), Kentucky (8), Idaho (4), South Dakota (3), Montana (3; meaningless primary), and New Mexico (5). Those states have 154 electoral votes between them, and if the math holds, there’s approximately 6.81 million votes left to be picked up if the fight goes all the way to New Mexico. If that holds true, Huckabee would need just over 18.2% of the remaining vote (plus a number equal to whatever Romney gets) to pass Romney.

That’s easily doable. The trickier question is, when will that happen? Ignoring any votes that Romney may get in future primaries, if that is to happen on March 4, when Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont vote, Huckabee would need to get just under 46% of the total vote in those states. To avoid this dragging on to Pennsylvania and April 22, he’d have to get just under 42% of the total vote from those 4 states and Mississippi. If one adds in the sole April primary of Pennsylvania to keep the quest out of May, Huckabee would have to get just under 32% of the total vote from those 6 states.

The follow-up question is whether that’s going to happen before John McCain hits 1,191 delegates. Depending on how one slices and dices the delegate count, McCain is anywhere between roughly 160 and 280 short right now (less any ex-Romney or “uncommitted Party” delegates that have announced support for McCain that I don’t know about). By the time the March 4 primaries finish up, 288 delegates will be selected (including 20 from Puerto Rico, 6 from the Northern Marianas and 6 from American Samoa), with another 36 from Mississippi and 6 from Guam, as well as the final selection of 26 from Alaska at their state convention, in March. My best guess is that both will happen on April 22.

In short, we’re in for another 2 months of the remains of the Huck-a-boom being a leech on John McCain’s not-exactly-full bank account. Just wonderful </sarcasm>.