Revisions/extensions part 2 (8:00 am 2/15/2008) – With Romney officially endorsing John McCain and releasing his delegates with instructions to vote for McCain, I guess I should update the numbers some, which I will do at the top. A quick look through the primaries, which I had assumed were all “bound” candidates, shows that several states, like Michigan, unbound them when Romney suspended his campaign or otherwise had them unbound. Fox News had estimated that the actual number of “bound” delegates at the time of Romney’s announcements yesterday was about 110 (give or take a couple; I had most of my attention on the race). Morever, there is a question of whether those 110 could be instructed to vote for McCain.
Assuming not, the calculus does not change at all. However, if those 110 can be bound to McCain, that would be 110 of the roughly 355 delegates (backing out the caucuses again, putting in some delegates that CNN had not allocated from Super-Duper Tuesday, especially from California) he needs. Further, if my caucus estimates are right, that would make McCain’s magic number approximately 125, and that’s without the 5-6 I expect him to get from the FUBAR’ed Washington State caucuses.
One more housekeeping item; I did finally run the vote totals (using CNN’s numbers), and Romney has a 4.30 million to 2.82 million vote lead on Huckabee. Guess Huck isn’t going anywhere for a while.
The talk has been flying around the right side of the blogosphere over why Mike Huckabee is still in this race, when just about everybody agrees that it is only a matter of time before John McCain gets to 1,191 delegates. To put it simply, he’s trying to become the “next in line”. Since 1956, Republicans have chosen from only four categories: the sitting President, the sitting or ex-Vice President, the person who had the second-most delegates in the previous hotly-contested primary, or a blood relative of an ex-President.
By remaining in the race, Huckabee is damaging his chances to become the Vice Presidential nominee. His continued campaigning is causing McCain to spend money he doesn’t really have to make sure the inevitable does become inevitable. However, I don’t believe that becoming the VP nominee is Huckabee’s goal. Take another look at those 4 categories; you will not find “unsuccessful Vice Presidential nominee” among them. It certainly appears that Huckabee has calculated that there is no hope for the Republican ticket this year, and to be honest, I can’t really disagree with that assessment.
Rather, he’s attempting to overtake Mitt Romney for that “next in line” spot. Remember, Romney used the word “suspend” to describe the end his campaign; that means he still controls the delegates he had won to that point. That, however, does not include delegates from caucus states like Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, and Nevada; the actual binding of delegates to candidates have not yet occurred. Even though the CNN delegate count currently has Romney up 286-217, the only adjustments they have made to Romney’s and Huckabee’s counts was to take away the “unpledged RNC” delegates away from Romney; CNN still assumes that the eventual binding of delegates to candidates will follow the results of the precinct caucuses. It is safe to say that, for example, almost no representative to Minnesota’s district or state convention at the end of May will vote for a national delegate that will vote for Romney in the national convention.
Therefore, let’s strip away all of those delegates. Romney would lose 141 from CNN’s calculations, while Huckabee would lose only 25. If my math is right, Huckabee has more actual pledged delegates than Romney, 192-145. However, the last time Flip ran his Republican scorecard, Romney held a rather substantial popular vote lead over Huckabee. I don’t have the time at this point to re-evaluate that, but I suspect that still holds true as there was a sizable “protest” vote for Romney last night.
Just for grins, let’s apply the same math to John McCain. CNN has him with 812 delegates, with most of Maryland’s still to be officially allocated to him (The Green Papers suggests that McCain has indeed swept all the districts in Maryland, which would give him another 24). Do note that the delegate CNN awarded him in Maine is not tied to the caucus, but to the “unpledged” party delegates. Therefore, I can only take away 11 10 from the caucus states listed above. After I take away the 10 and add the 24 that CNN had not, he has 826 delegates in his pocket.
Now, let’s do some back-of-the-envelope projections of where those 193 delegates from the caucus states listed above (R&E; I should have been a bit clearer on this point; sorry about that) are going to go, assuming Huckabee remains in the race to the point the national delegates are selected (and in Iowa’s case, bound to the candidates). For simplicity’s sake, I’ll assume that Ron Paul will keep his 11 delegates, even though he’s more likely to lose them as the party insiders decide things than he is to gain any further support within the party. I’ve assumed that 3/4ths of the support for the various candidates that dropped out will go to the endorsed candidate, with the other 1/4th going to the other major candidate. I’ll toss in some extra-secret sauce, blend it through a spreadsheet, and conservatively say that McCain will pick up 120 of those 182, with Huckabee picking up the other 62.
Add that back into the numbers above, and McCain effectively enjoys a 946-254 lead with 1,019 delegates left to go, plus Romney’s 145 “pledged” delegates. McCain needs to pick up about 245 delegates, or about 24% of the remaining delegates, to lock up the nomination, while Huckabee and Paul together would need to pick up 774 delegates (76% of the remaining delegates) just to potentially send it to a brokered convention, and that assumes McCain does not pick up any of Romney’s “pledged” delegates.
Revisions/extensions (1:14 pm 2/13/2008) – Welcome, Campaign Spot readers. I hope my server is stout enough to handle this. To answer Jim’s question, did anybody not named McCain nor on his campaign, between March 2000 and November 2007, think McCain would be the nominee after George W. Bush?
