Take a look at the Republican primary schedule and the polls in upcoming contests. Right now, Nate Silver predicts the following winners on Super Tuesday (with degree of confidence):
Georgia (76 delegates): Gingrich (86% chance of win)
Ohio (66 delegates): Santorum (78% chance of win)
Oklahoma (43 delegates): Santorum (96% chance of win)
Tennessee (58 delegates): Santorum (93% chance of win)
Virginia (49 delegates): Romney (94% chance of win)
Also voting on Super Tuesday are: Alaska (27 delegates), Idaho (32 delegates), Massachusetts (41 delegates), North Dakota (28 delegates), Vermont (17 delegates), Wyoming (29 delegates).
I think we can safely put Massachusetts and Vermont in Romney’s column. Romney should do well in Idaho and Wyoming (big Mormon populations). I’m not sure how he will fare in North Dakota or Alaska. As for Silver’s degree of confidence, that will change when he gets new data in post-Michigan/Arizona polling. If Mitt gets a little bump in the polls, those 90-plus percent chances of losing will come down.
Looking at the present situation, though, it doesn’t look very good for Romney. Of the five biggest prizes on Super Tuesday, Romney stands to win just one of them, in a state (Virginia) where his two main rivals are not even on the ballot. He will enjoy the delegates he gains in New England, but he’ll get no credit for them. And he’ll probably come in third place in Georgia, which is the biggest prize of all. I can’t predict how the delegates were be distributed without investigating each state’s rules and doing more analysis, but if the states were based on winner take all, and Romney were to win all the small states, he’d win the night by about 223-167-76. That might seem good, but he has no guarantee of winning all the small states and he won’t benefit from winner-take-all in all of them. It’s more likely to be closer to a tie when the allocations are made. And then there is that calendar.
On March 10, Kansas votes, along with Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands. If results so far in Colorado and Missouri are any indication, Santorum will win Kansas. I don’t know that anyone really cares who wins the rest of these contests.
On March 13, Alabama, Mississippi, Hawai’i, and American Samoa vote. If results in South Carolina and the Florida panhandle, and polls in Georgia are any indication, Gingrich will win Alabama and Mississippi. Romney will probably win the pacific islands because nothing is less Polynesian than Rick Santorum’s attitude. But, still, the big prizes will go to Gingrich.
On March 17, Missouri has a vote that counts, unlike the primary they held a few weeks ago. But, remember, Santorum trounced Romney in that primary. Expect him to trounce Romney again.
On March 18, Puerto Rico votes. I have no idea how that will go. Seriously.
Then we get to the next really important contest. On March 20, Illinois votes. They have 69 delegates. Can Romney do what he failed to do in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and (most likely) Ohio? Can he win a big midwestern state where the trees aren’t just the right height?
I think this will be his last chance to win a majority of the delegates. Because failure in Illinois will likely be followed by failure in Louisiana, followed by failure in Texas, followed by failure in Wisconsin, and so on.
If Romney can stagger on long enough, if he can get all the way to April 24th, he will have the privilege of losing to Santorum in Pennsylvania. But he can expect to win New York, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Then he can go right back to losing in West Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana.
The best way for Romney to avoid this future is to vastly exceed current expectations on Super Tuesday. His number one goal should be to defeat Santorum in Ohio and Tennessee. If he can do that, the bleak picture I’ve produced here may not come to pass.
I hate to say this, but until you or anybody else bothers to figure out which states are winner-take-all (like Arizona last night) and which are proportional, this is meaningless forecasting.
Because the winner-take-alls are where it’s at. Figure those out, and you figure out if Romney can get his 50%+1.
Personally, I don’t see how anybody can credibly predict delegate counts in this race. We likely have another Newt resurgence coming on the southern swing, and then probably another Santorum resurgence, and then another and another and another…
very few are truly winner-take-all. Near the end, New Jersey, California, and Utah are winner-take-all.
A lot are winner-take-all by Congressional District, which results often in what he saw last night where the loser winds up tied or ahead in delegates.
Most are simply proportional/threshold.
California, New Jersey and Utah, hmm. Doesn’t get more Romney than those three.
So in other words, Romneybot can’t possibly finish anywhere but first in delegates by June, it’s just a matter of whether he can the 1000+ he needs for the nomination. Do you happen to know what the current delegate count is?
I just don’t see how it’s a “bleak future” as long as Gingrich stays in the race. Unless Santorum can win a southern state or two, he and Gingrich don’t overlap any. They crowd each other out and hurt each other region vs. region as much as they hurt Romney. Every state that Newt wins that Santorum doesn’t is good news for Romney’s ugly months-long survival plan. Newt’s become the right wing, neo-Confederate spoiler.
Romney is in no real danger of failing to win a plurality of the delegates. But he’s in very real danger of failing to win a majority. For example, even if all the races on Super Tuesday were winner-take-all (none of them actually are), and even if Romney won all the small states, he’d win just about half of the delegates. In reality, most of the states are proportional, which means that he has to share delegates and a failure to reach roughly 50% of the vote means he’s failing to win a majority of the delegates. If can dominate in WTA-by-CD state like Virginia, he can help himself. Ohio is WTA-by-CD, which means it’s only valuable if you can dominate it in every region. Otherwise, you wind up like Michigan where you spend millions and come out netting maybe one delegate. Ohio is only important for perceptions.
Here’s the delegate counter. Romney has about 1/10 of what he needs.
I think it’s worth pointing out that a few of the winner-take-all states (like Arizona and Florida) are holding winner-take-all contests in spite of RNC rules. The Romney campaign is trying to use these contests to its advantage just as the Clinton campaign tried to do in 2008 with the Florida and Michigan contests which also violated the party rules. In 2008, the DNC did not let these violations go unpunished. The RNC may prove more willing to put its thumb on the scales on behalf of Romney, given his near monopoly on establishment support. But then again, it may not. And if it doesn’t, Romney’s position gets a lot more complicated.
Romney and his super PAC are going to pick the state or states that it would be the biggest embarrassment to lose, pour a zillion dollars in, and reverse the current projections — that’s definitely going to happen in Ohio, and I bet it’s also the plan in Tennessee and Oklahoma, since saturation advertising in those states can probably be picked up for what Mitt’s Bain Capital buddies would regard as pocket change.
I’d be astonished if Oklahoma is anywhere near within Romney’s grasp. Mormon is not a popular flavor there–and in that place, that makes a huge difference.
Agreed. How will Gingrich do? Santorum wins of course, but I’m thinking even Gingrich does better than Romney.
I would have put Romney in third, too. I wouldn’t say there are a lot, but there are some Catholics in Oklahoma–and if Gingrich were still a Baptist, he’d have won running away: he has a mean-spirited sort of dickishness that plays very well there.
But Mormons? I even knew some Jehova’s Witnesses there, but never Mormons. If there’s one state that votes according to religion, that has to be it.
It’ll be interesting to see which way the self interests at Fox pick up the cause in the next month. Will they sideline themselves? Will they go for Santorum’s throat or try to recreate Romney as someone the Rep could care for.
Even Rush is struggling to find any value.
How are the numbers of delegates for each state decided? Virginia has much more than twice Alaska’s population.
it’s a complicated formula that involves how the state has voted in the recent past. If it voted for McCain, it gets more. If it recently elected a governor or senator, it gets more. The makeup of its congressional delegation is considered. Virginia voted for Obama, and that is why it is getting shortchanged on delegates.
The Dems have a different formula. I think their’s just looks at the presidential vote.
For Super Tuesday, there is a summary here but it doesn’t provide the excruciating detail to nail down the delegate math:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/29/1069362/-What-Will-Super-Tuesday-Decide-?via=siderecent
The Green Papers provided details on each state’s process for allocating delegates. Click on some of the Super Tuesday events here to study further:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/events.phtml?s=c
What do people think of Santorum encouraging Michican Democrats to come out and vote for him against Romney
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/exclusive-full-audio-of-santorum-robocall-help-d
efeat-mitt-romney/253759/
The fact that Rick Santorum’s campaign has been robocalling Michigan Democrats, first reported by Talking Points Memo’s Evan McMorris-Santoro on Monday, has become a source of controversy, with Mitt Romney accusing Santorum of dirty tricks. Santorum, for his part, has claimed it’s “a very positive robocall” that talks about his jobs plan.
Courtesy of a Michigan Democrat, here’s a recording of the full call — previously, only the partial call had been made public, truncating the beginning. The Election Day version of the call has been modified a little from that reported Monday; it’s now a pitch to “Democrats, Republicans, and independents.” But it couldn’t be more clear, from the very beginning, that the purpose of the call isn’t to tout Santorum and his plans — it’s to oppose Romney.
The first sentence of the call: “Hello, I’m calling fellow Democrats, Republicans, and independents to encourage them to vote in today’s Republican primary and help defeat Mitt Romney by voting for Rick Santorum.”
You can hear the call below:
The LA Times put it nicely: “Romney did not so much win Michigan as escape with his life.” Seems to me he, and the GOP in general has to be feeling very low to see that their leading candidate can’t get above 40% in his “home state”, even after spending millions to buy it. I wonder if this “win” might actually damage his momentum in the upcoming primaries, because it, if anything, highlights his loser ID.
I think Romney and Santorum are each going to win around 170 delegates. After all the delegates to be won on Super Tuesday are awarded it is going to be close to a tie. Romney makes up for losses elsewhere because of VA. Gingrich will take about 60 delegates out of play from the 2 leaders by winning Georgia and doing better in some other southern states (OK, TN). Paul will grab 20 or so from caucuses and maybe MA.
I might have to vote in the North Dakota Republican primary. No registration in this state. I’ll have to check on the rules for this.