A Winner-Take-All Primary in New Hampshire?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• FHQ will say it: Nevada Republicans did not "jump" South Carolina on the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Well, they did not in the sense that close observers of the calendar might talk about the jockeying in this cycle's early calendar. It is different this time. Here is why: All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Emerson had a new survey out yesterday checking the pulse of voters in the Granite state on the Republican presidential nomination race among other things. The consensus take away from the results at the presidential level was that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had surpassed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

And while that is true, it also was not what caught FHQ's eye. Here is what did:

1. I have spent a fair amount of time over the course of 2023 charting the positioning of DeSantis in the various polls that have been released both nationally and on the state level. And it is not a mystery that the Florida governor's fortunes have followed a particularly downward trajectory. That has implications for winning delegates in primaries and caucuses next year. First DeSantis flirted with 20 percent in some polling on the race. Then it hovered around 15 percent. If a candidate is going to have any prolonged success in taking delegates in 2024, he or she will have to hit 15 if not 20 percent to stick around. Otherwise, such a candidate is very likely to be shown the door. Actually, failing to hit those marks will be  the manifestation of being shown the door. 

But now DeSantis has dipped below 10 percent in New Hampshire. Yes, it is just one poll. Yes, his average standing in the race there is marginally higher than that: 14 percent. But it tracks with the pattern of slipping support that has dogged DeSantis since the spring. 

2. By why does 10 percent matter? It matters because 10 percent is the threshold candidates have to hit statewide to qualify for delegates in the New Hampshire presidential primary. No, candidates are not necessarily contesting New Hampshire in order to win delegates. There are not that many to find in the Granite state after all. Instead, most are chasing a win or at the very least positioning to avoid having increased winnowing pressure heaped on them. Third probably gets DeSantis through, but it does not exactly speak to future success in winning subsequent contests much less winning delegates in big numbers once the calendar flips to March and the focus shifts to the delegate game. 

But the biggest footnote lurking in this particular Emerson survey is that even though Christie leapfrogged DeSantis, he did not break in to the delegates either. That means that Trump -- at 49 percent -- would hypothetically win 11 of the 22 delegates at stake in New Hampshire, leaving 11 unallocated delegates in the proportional method Republicans in the Granite state use. 

What happens to unallocated delegates in this scenario? They do not become unbound. No, under state law, any and all unallocated delegates in New Hampshire are awarded to the statewide winner. Mitt Romney tacked on an extra two delegates in New Hampshire that way in 2012. Donald Trump added three unallocated delegates to his total in the state in 2016. But in this hypothetical case, there are a lot more unallocated delegates. And they would all go to Donald Trump. 

Even in a state that uses proportional delegate allocation rules. 

Even in a state where the former president would have received less than a majority of the vote statewide. 

Incidentally, this is exactly what happened in the 2020 New Hampshire Republican primary. Trump won a considerably higher share of the vote (as compared to above), but Bill Weld just missed the 10 percent threshold and the remaining unallocated delegates all went to Trump. 

3. Folks, this is one poll. FHQ does not want to read too much into it. Plus, it is worth pointing out that both Christie and DeSantis are close to the 10 percent threshold in the Emerson survey and there are 13 percent of respondents who were undecided. Some of those may come off the fence and support Trump, but there is a good argument that if one does not already support the former president, then it is unlikely that he would gain their support in the primary. Would that 13 percent automatically go to Christie and/or DeSantis? Maybe, maybe not. But enough would likely jump into their columns to push them north of 10 percent. 

Hypothetically. 

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Over at Tusk, Seth Masket argues that the pivot (away from Trump) is not coming and it is all about the ebbs and flows of factional power within the broader Republican Party. Good piece.

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From around the invisible primary...

• Indiana Senator Todd Young has already unendorsed Donald Trump for 2024. And like other Republicans, he doubled down in the wake of the latest indictment against the former president. Only, Young reiterated that the party needs to move on from Trump. Obviously, the opposition to Trump stands out, but at some point leaders within the Republican Party who want to chart a different path in 2024 are going to have to line up behind some alternative (or alternatives). But Young is keeping his powder dry for the time being. 
• Also in the midwest, former Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin says that the "Trump fever needs to be broken." [See Masket above] He is not alone in Illinois. Other Republicans in the Land of Lincoln stand against Trump and some have even endorsed other candidates. Also from the Sun Times piece: "Last month, I reported on the call from Illinois National Committeeman Richard Porter to move on from Trump. State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris — the deputy Republican leader in the state Senate — like Porter, backs GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. Ron Gidwitz was the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Belgium and the acting envoy to the European Union. In 2016, Gidwitz was the Illinois finance chair for the Trump Victory fund. He’s supporting Christie." But the state party remains firmly behind the former president. And Durkin, like Young in Indiana, has not thrown his support behind a non-Trump candidate yet. Those un- and non-endorsements matter. And they matter a lot in this race when they are not expressly affiliated with a Trump alternative. 

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Recent posts:

Effectively Winnowed

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

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Effectively Winnowed

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• It still is not clear where on the primary calendar the Pennsylvania presidential primary will land for 2024. However, there could be a pot of technically unbound delegates coming out of the contest regardless of where it is scheduled. For a deeper dive on that possibility in the Keystone state and a look at the overall picture of unbound delegates in the Republican presidential nomination race: All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Last week, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made some attempt to lay down a marker in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. As he told Fox News:

"If you don’t make the debate stage, you should leave the field. I think it’s that simple. That’s the first winnowing process."

None of that is right or wrong. And it aligns with an argument Christie has been making all along about narrowing the field and taking on former President Trump head on. But it is worth pointing out that the invisible primary has been going on for some time now and the winnowing process has too. Several candidates who were looked on as potential candidates passed on running. These are the Ted Cruzes and Larry Hogans and Brian Kemps and Kristi Noems and Glenn Youngkins. [Although some are trying to keep the hopes of a 2024 Youngkin bid alive.] All surveyed the landscape in various unofficial ways since 2020 and opted out. All have already been winnowed from the field. 

So there is an argument that winnowing has already begun. And obviously it will continue regardless of whether that is before or after the upcoming first Republican primary debate, some time before the end of 2023 or during the primaries next year. But whether candidates who do not make the debate stage on August 23 and drop out is kind of immaterial. Not making the debate stage is a line of demarcation in this race whether Asa Hutchinson or Perry Johnson or Larry Elder call it a day or not. Arguably, not making the stage effectively winnows those candidates. 

That is to say that they would be effectively out of the race whether each continues on as a zombie candidate, unlikely to take any significant support or vote share away from the candidates still in the running.

And the last two competitive, big-field presidential nomination races speak to that. Neither the 2016 Republican race nor the 2020 Democratic race was overly populated with candidates who did not make the debate stage at one point and subsequently made an appearance later on. Chris Christie dipped to the secondary debate at one point only to return to the main stage after a one debate absence. Jim Gilmore managed to squeeze into one and only one secondary debate. And Rand Paul decided to skip a secondary debate in his one relegation before briefly coming back to the main debate stage and then dropping out. The same was largely true on the Democratic side in 2020. Once candidates were off the debate stage, they were mostly out for good. A few came back, but only for one debate. 

In other words, whether the 2024 Republicans do or do not suspend their campaigns after not making the first debate really does not matter. Those candidates are on borrowed time anyway. They will have been effectively winnowed.

...if they have not been already. 

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The DeSantis campaign seems to be all in on the Iowa caucuses. FHQ briefly noted the shake up at the top last week, but under the campaign manager, the campaign brought in David Polyansky from Never Back Down to be a strategist more closely in the Florida governor's orbit. Polyansky brings with him some Iowa knowhow that may serve the campaign well. In addition, DeSantis nabbed the endorsement of influential Iowa radio host, Steve Deace and continues to court Bob Vander Plaats. And that does not count the presence Never Back Down, the super PAC affiliated with DeSantis, has on the county level across all 99 counties in the Hawkeye state. Yes, there are the optics of the various candidates' appearances at the Iowa State Fair, but underneath all of that, Team DeSantis is signaling just how important the lead-off caucuses will be to any long haul operation. 

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This letter that the Trump campaign legal team distributed to all of the state Republican parties is an interesting maneuver. It may or may not have any legal basis -- this notion of a state party working with super PACs associated with any of the Republican candidates -- but the letter may have the effect of freezing the state parties, forcing decision makers within those entities to think twice about their actions. 

The whole episode speaks to the often precarious position state parties are in. And that is mainly in a financial sense. Allow FHQ a quick diversion. At the July meeting of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, the use of ranked choice voting in primaries (and especially state party-run primaries) was on the agenda. Some of those state parties have taken money from Fair Vote, an advocate of ranked choice voting, to help implement the practice in a number of states. Again, those with state party-run contests. Some RBC members frowned on the exchange. Others called for clearer disclosure. But it was clear from those members on the committee closely involved in state parties that money like that can be vital to the those state organizations. 

And that is kind of the crux of all of this back on the Republican side. State Republican parties are probably all too happy to take any money from any super PAC willing to give it if it means helping to build out the party, not just the party coffers but the party itself. But Team Trump has interjected in that, basically saying, "We see you." And it is not as if Trump is not a moneymaker for the state parties on his own. 

That is the interaction here. Toss the legal questions to the side. This is about a not-so-quiet but indirect threat to the state parties: Trump can help your state party raise funds, but only if you knock it off with those other super PACs. That is a tough spot for state parties to be in, and likely has some impact on how just how streamlined decision making is within them. 

 

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the money primary, DeSantis has lined up a fundraising trip to Dallas for next month. 
• It is signing season in the Republican race. Most candidates -- Burgum, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Scott -- have signed the Republican National Committee's loyalty pledge to appear on the debate stage and others have signaled they will sign it (Christie). One candidate refuses to sign. 
• Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips has not had any luck yet in coaxing big name Democrats into entering the primary race against President Biden and if that means he will fill the void, he cannot count on much backup from elected officials back home in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. They are behind the president. 
• In the endorsement primary, President Joe Biden recently received the backing of major guns groups.
• Best of America PAC, the super PAC aligned with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, has made a nearly $4 million ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire in an attempt to raise the governor's profile in the first two states to vote next year.  

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Recent posts:

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• Folks may sleep on the tightening Alabama Republicans did to their 2024 delegate selection over the weekend, but they will miss an important story. Last week in this space, FHQ discussed how the Trump campaign is "smoothing over any rough edges" in the delegate allocation/selection rules it missed last time around. The Alabama change illustrates that well and show the minute details Team Trump is nailing down for 2024. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Tim Miller had an interesting piece up at The Triad yesterday picking up on a line of thought within DeSantis World that parallels FHQ's thinking on the Republican presidential race in some ways:

But now at least one of Trump’s opponents is wondering if the frontrunner’s legal troubles could change the calculus and require candidates to stay in for the long haul in order to try and amass delegates in case there is a convention battle because the former president is . . . otherwise indisposed. 

This not the first mention of long-haul strategies from with the super PAC branch of the DeSantis campaign network. There is some delegate rules savvy there. But the broader point here, I think, is something Miller picks at but does not fully dig in on. And that broader point is that Trump's legal situation presents a level of uncertainty in a presidential nomination race that may, in turn, create incentives for candidates to stick around longer than they otherwise would, sans frontrunner legal trouble. 

But the game -- call it the self-fulfilling contested convention theory -- is about more than theoretically sticking around longer to gain as many delegates as possible to take into a convention that may be more open with a convicted leading candidate (or one under threat of such in the midst of a trial or trials). First of all, Miller notes that candidates may tough it out and win delegates in late proportional states. Well, that dog probably won't hunt. There just are not that many proportional states late in the process (depending on how one defines "late"). And honestly, there are not that many delegates late in the process. The 2024 calendar on the Republican side is one that will likely have allocated 80 percent of its delegates by the first week in April. 

And none of that considers funding for such an operation. The goal in theory may be to hold on, but candidates will need donors (or to convince donors) to fund that effort and delegate candidates to enthusiastically put themselves forward to fill any delegate slots that are allocated to any non-Trumps. If Trump is winning contest after contest next winter/spring, the well of support in both those areas is likely to be tapped out or at least less interested in expending the money, time and/or effort in a losing cause. 

In other words, the winnowing pressure will still be there despite the uncertainty Trump brings to the race. The calculus may be slightly different, but that pressure will still be there if other candidates are not winning. But that assumes Trump is still winning contests. He may not once the voting phase commences. 

But as of now there appears to be a bit of a deficit for others to overcome....

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It's not a national primary, but...

 

The latest Morning Consult tracking poll of the Republican presidential nomination race has Trump with a commanding lead and DeSantis flirting with another, even lower threshold in the delegate game. Most states with proportional rules have a qualifying threshold. Of them, the vast majority of those states have a threshold set to 15 percent or higher. A 20 percent threshold to qualify for delegates continues to be the modal threshold. Where does DeSantis sit in the tracker? 16 percent.

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And the outlook may not be any better for non-Trumps on the state level. 

No, the former president's share of support in the Granite state in a new co/efficient survey is lower than in national polling, but no one else even clears the 10 percent barrier to be allocated any delegate slots under New Hampshire rules. 13 percent were undecided and those candidates who placed second through fourth in the poll were all within the margin of error of the Republican delegate threshold in the Granite state.

Three of those top four -- Trump, DeSantis and Nikki Haley (in addition to Asa Hutchinson) -- will all descend on New Hampshire today. 

 

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From around the invisible primary...

• Generra Peck is out as campaign manager for the DeSantis campaign and James Uthmeier, the governor's chief of staff in Tallahassee is in. 
• Former Vice President Mike Pence had already hit the polling threshold to make the stage for the first Republican presidential debate later this month, but had been struggling to get to 40,000 unique donors for that threshold. That struggle is now over (for the first debate anyway).
• In the endorsement primary, Vivek Ramaswamy will gain the backing of Wisconsin state Rep. Nate Gustafson today.
• Ahead of his weekend visit to South Carolina, Trump picked up the endorsement of Palmetto state Speaker of the House Murrell Smith. There are not a lot of big name South Carolinians who have either not endorsed Trump or launched a bid themselves, so another second tier endorsement coming off the board -- and siding with Trump -- merits a mention.
• The Erie Times-News has a nice rundown of endorsements thus far on both sides in the presidential race in Pennsylvania.
• FHQ is late to this, but in the money primary, there are several candidates who are spending money at a potentially unsustainable rate according to Axios.
• There are four early states on the Republican primary calendar and all have Republican governors. One has made an endorsement. Henry McMaster (R-SC) has again lined up behind Donal Trump. But the remaining three are on the sidelines, and a second of those -- Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo -- has pledged to remind neutral in the race, joining Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.

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Recent posts:

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription newsletter. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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From Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits:

But the plan is a gamble for Trump and the state party for different reasons:

Did FHQ not just discuss California delegate allocation rules?

Yup. 

But the California Republican Party executive committee jettisoned that widely circulated (and panned) plan in favor of an alternate version, a version that seemingly balances the party’s desire to draw candidates into the Golden state and the Trump campaign’s push to maximize its delegates in the contest next year. Those benefits are clear enough on the surface, but neither is guaranteed. 

And that means the revised delegate allocation scheme for 2024 is a gamble of sorts. For California Republicans and for Trump. Delegate allocation rules can be a zero sum game and the friction that developed in and around the Executive Committee meeting on Saturday, July 29 from multiple sides was evidence of the high stakes involved. 

What changes did the California Republican Party make? And what does that mean for the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination?

The adopted changes

The initially proposed changes offered by the California Republican Party set up a plan with a few notable features:

• A proportional allocation of the 13 at-large (and automatic/party) delegates based on the statewide vote with no qualifying threshold and no winner-take-all trigger (should one candidate win a majority of the vote statewide). 

• A proportional allocation of the 3 delegates in each of the 52 congressional districts based on the results within each congressional district. The top finisher in a congressional district vote would receive two delegates and the runner-up would receive the remaining delegate. Like the allocation of the at-large delegates described above, there would be no winner-take-all trigger should one candidate win a majority of the vote within the district. 

That method differs from the system the state party utilized in 2020 and it is also different than the plan adopted on Saturday. The newly adopted plan — the allocation plan California Republicans will use in 2024 — shed the separate allocation scheme for at-large and congressional district delegates and returned to a system that resembles the 2020 plan with one big exception: there is no qualifying threshold. But exactly like the 2020 delegate allocation among Golden state Republicans, the 2024 system will have the following provisions:

• All 169 delegates, including at-large, automatic/party and congressional district delegates, will be pooled (meaning they will all be allocated as one bloc). Again, that is just as it was for 2020.

• All 169 delegates will be allocated proportionally based on the statewide results. That, too, is just the same as under the 2020 rules. 

• If any candidate wins the California primary with more than 50 percent of the vote, then all 169 delegates will be allocated to that candidate. Just like the 2020 plan, California Republicans have included in their 2024 rules a winner-take-all trigger or winner-take-all threshold. 

However, unlike 2020, more candidates will likely be eligible for some share of the 169 delegates available because there will no longer be a 20 percent qualifying threshold, the highest bar allowed under Republican National Committee rules. That is a big difference. 

How big? 

The impact of 2020 versus 2024 rules

Pretty big.

Using the results from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary with the 2020 and 2024 California Republican Party allocation rules highlights the scale of the change.¹

With no qualifying threshold, as under the 2024 rules, five additional candidates would have been allocated delegates as compared to the 2020 rules. And candidates with as little as two percent support would have claimed at least some share of the pool of 169 delegates.² But importantly, the top two candidates — the only two who would have cleared the 20 percent threshold to qualify for delegates under the 2020 rules — would have lost a significant chunk of delegates in the transition from 2020 to 2024 rules. Sanders would have lost 34 and Biden, 26. 

Now, imagine that Sanders pulled in closer to half of the voters in the last California primary. Pretend Elizabeth Warren was not in the race and that the 13.2 percent the Massachusetts senator won went to Sanders instead. Under the 2020 California Republican allocation rules, Sanders would have won 108 delegates compared to 84 delegates according to the 2024 plan. What is clear is that Sanders would pay a price in delegates won without a qualifying threshold. 

FHQ raises the second scenario because Trump is currently hovering around the 50 percent mark in polling both nationally and in California. The penalty for not hitting the winner-take-all threshold, which is in the 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules, would be significant, but it will be greater in the absence of a qualifying threshold. It makes strategic sense to secure the former threshold, but it is a gamble. 

If Trump does not hit it, then the price is steep and the net delegate advantage coming out of the California primary would likely differ very little from the original 2024 rules proposal that Republicans in the Golden state floated. However, if Trump does eclipse the 50 percent barrier and trips the winner-take-all trigger, then it is clearly close to a death knell for his opposition. A +169 is tough to overcome even if Super Tuesday’s results are mixed and states with truly winner-take-all rules lie ahead on the calendar. 

It is not that there are not advantages for Trump in this change (either relative to 2020 or the alternate 2024 proposal), but the new rules do place a great deal of pressure on the campaign to make it happen.

 

But why is there not a qualifying threshold?

That is the gamble the state party is making. 

If more candidates are eligible for delegates, then that may be enough of a carrot to lure candidates of all stripes into the state to campaign and spend money. In theory that makes sense. But in practice, the cost/benefit analysis may not work in the favor of California Republicans who are championing this revised plan. 

The candidates will go to California. They always do to raise money. But turning around and spending that money (in a variety of ways) in the Golden state may not offer as much bang for the candidates’ buck as it might in other states. Yes, California is the most delegate-rich state out there — and promises 169 delegates to anyone who can clear 50 percent in the primary — but it is also prohibitively expensive to reach voters and in turn win votes/delegates. And as long as Trump is threatening to hit the winner-take-all trigger, it may be enough to ward off concerted investment in the state. 

But where this plan is clever is in the fact that it potentially motivates all of the candidates. It draws the Trump campaign in to expend resources in the state to win all of the delegates. Yet, it potentially entices other candidates to take a risk to keep Trump under the majority mark and minimize the former president’s net delegate advantage coming out of California and Super Tuesday. 

And that is just it. Much of the above discusses California in isolation. But the California primary is not an isolated event. It falls on Super Tuesday when roughly a third of the total number of delegates will be allocated. Few may be able to run a truly national campaign leading up to March 5. And few may choose to incorporate California directly into their investments for Super Tuesday.³ The options may be better (and cheaper) elsewhere. 

Still, the Trump campaign is calling the change in California a win for them. And it may be. But only if the former president can win a majority. And that is not a sure thing.

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¹ FHQ is using the 2020 Democratic results because the California Democratic primary was both early (as the 2024 primary is) and competitive. The 2020 Republican primary in California was also on Super Tuesday but uncompetitive, and the 2016 Republican primary in the Golden state was later and fell after Donald Trump’s viable opposition had withdrawn from the race. 

² That allocation outcome depends to some degree on how California Republicans choose to round. All fractional delegates are rounded up starting with the top vote-getter and progressing from there in descending order of vote share. Under different (and more conventional) rounding rules, even more candidates would have qualified for delegates (and with less than one percent support).

³ Candidates may choose to indirectly hit California through national ad buys instead.

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Recent posts:

Is Trump rewriting the delegate rules or defending them?

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Is Trump rewriting the delegate rules or defending them?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• Alabama Republicans are set to vote on and adopt delegate allocation rules for the Super Tuesday presidential primary. But where is the state party taking them? Making it easier to win delegates? Harder? Maintaining the status quo. One thing is clear: the party does not have much room to make them harder. All the details at FHQ Plus.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.

In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

...

Politico makes a contribution to the Trump and the 2024 delegate rules storyline that has periodically been touched on by most major national news outlets in 2023. And there is some nice color to Rachael Bade's story, but FHQ does not know how much it is actually adding to what is already known. Generally, candidates seek to influence the state level delegate selection rules, and Trump, in particular, is making some attempt at creating even more frontrunner-friendly rules in the Republican process this cycle. That was established at least as early as February.

And in some respects the Trump campaign has been very active in the process to craft rules at the state level that play to the former president's advantage. But the scope of that activity has been less rewriting -- the headline writer's word, not Bade's -- than it has been playing defense. Because as Bade describes in the piece...

The wonky-yet-important effort underscores just how politically savvy the Trump operation — once caught flat-footed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s attempted delegate mutiny at the 2016 Republican National Convention — has become. And it exposes how Trump’s aides have been running circles around his rivals, with only one of them — Ron DeSantis and his allies at the Never Back Down super PAC — even putting up a fight.

Again, that is consistent with what has been reported thus far in 2023. Yet, in context, this maneuvering is an extension of what the equally savvy, yet, far less opposed Team Trump did in 2019. Like this cycle, the RNC rules for the 2020 cycle carried over, largely unchanged. That confined any effort at massaging the rules -- within those national party guidelines -- to those on the state level. And the Trump campaign set out to do just that, pushing the bar so high for also-ran candidates in the 2020 cycle that it was nearly impossible for them to win any delegates. 

That was the baseline that Team Trump established for 2024. And honestly, the campaign then gave the campaign now very little additional room to maneuver. It is not that they cannot make any further changes to make delegate allocation harder for other candidates, but that there just are not that many places where they can lobby to turn the knob up even higher (within RNC rules). 

Consequently, most of what the Trump campaign has done in 2023 is play defense. They did so in California, warding off an alternate plan that would have eroded the gains there from four years ago. The same seems true of Alabama. At the end of June, there was talk of DeSantis World having some potential success in nudging the qualifying threshold for delegates there lower. But again, Trump has been playing defense in the Yellowhammer state. The Massachusetts Republican Party chair recently suggested that the party was considering dropping its winner-take-all threshold altogether. Bade seems to indicate that Trump is playing defense there as well. 

And then there are Colorado and Louisiana, sites of Cruz success in the behind-the-scenes delegate battle against Trump in 2016. Both are pretty much maxxed out in terms of delegate allocation barriers allowed under RNC rules, but Team Trump has been fixated on completely ending any thought of a possibility of unbound delegates in either. Proposals in each would have delegates bound through two ballots at the national convention. That might be overkill, but it also fits the pattern of the former president's campaign playing defense with the rules established for 2020, not allowing them to ebb much if at all. 

This will continue. It will continue all the way up to October 1, the deadline by which state Republican parties are to submit their delegate selection plans to the Republican National Committee. And as October 1 approaches, it is important to consider these efforts in this context. Trump is mostly defending the high water mark created in 2019 and smoothing over any other rough edges that they missed then for this cycle. That is the story here. 

 

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From around the invisible primary...

• NYT/Siena finds Trump ahead in Iowa, but lagging behind the pace he has established in national surveys. In a Mondale versus Hart sort of way -- wins relative to expectations -- maybe that matters, but a Trump win in the caucuses in January is one less opportunity for someone else to break through (if no one has by that point).
• Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin received another big contribution to his political action committee, the one geared toward success in the off-year state legislative races in the Old Dominion, from Thomas Peterffy, who had previously given to Ron DeSantis.
• Former Vice President Mike Pence is slowly but surely gaining on debate qualification, pulling in donors after his strong comments about Trump following the former president's third indictment.
• In the endorsement primary, Ron DeSantis was endorsed by another 35 state lawmakers and local officials in South Carolina. The inclination of some may be to shrug endorsements like this off, but with all the big endorsements in the Palmetto state already behind Trump or running themselves, these sorts of endorsements matter. The Florida governor recently also rolled out a wave of sheriff endorsements in Iowa. 
• In Ohio, Trump won the endorsements of Reps. Bill Johnson and Troy Balderson as well as state Treasurer Robert Sprague. And ahead of his address to Alabama Republicans, the former president received the endorsements of the six member Republican US House delegation from the state. 
• In the travel primary, Trump will trek to Alabama tonight, South Carolina tomorrow and New Hampshire early next week. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum was in the Granite state earlier this week. 
• The Quad City Times had a local look at Iowans kicking the tires on South Carolina Senator Tim Scott's campaign. 
• Stand for Freedom PAC, the super PAC aligned with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, has placed a $6.2 million ad buy for Iowa and New Hampshire over the next nine weeks. 
• In more from the money primary, Florida donors continue to be a financial lifeline for DeSantis.

--

Recent posts:

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster 

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Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• California Republicans have new delegate selection rules for 2024. And it seems like some folks are racing to score the change as a win for Trump. It might be! But that is not guaranteed. There are some California-sized caveats, but CAGOP may be the big winner. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

...

FHQ will level with you. I have found the Washington Post's coverage of the evolving Republican delegate selection rules to have been fabulous all year. Reporters there have done a fantastic job of digging up state-level changes, large and small, and have furthermore done well in contextualizing them for a unique 2024 Republican nomination race. Look, the Post has a much larger, much broader audience than FHQ, and the stories are crafted with such an audience in mind. 

They do not necessarily get down in the weeds. And they do not have to! Leave that to niche sites like FHQ with equally niche audiences. Hey, we are happy to fill the void. 

And while that overall view of WaPo coverage has not changed, FHQ did find their article on delegate selection rules following the change in California from this past weekend lacking. And some of this is just cranky blogging, pet peevish stuff for FHQ. But there were also some nuggets in the piece that left me shaking my head, stuff simply not backed up by the facts. So let us endeavor to set the record straight on a Monday. 

Winner-take-all by congressional district

Right out of the gate, Maeve Reston and Michael Scherer hit readers with this:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign notched a major victory Saturday when members of the California Republican executive committee voted to parcel out convention delegates based on the statewide vote next year — doing away with the state’s longtime system of awarding them by congressional district, which had been perceived as a more level playing field for lower-tiered candidates.

Okay. That is a loaded clause highlighted there. And some of it is technically correct even if it glosses over the nature of delegate selection rules changes made by California Republicans in recent cycles. It is true that California Republicans have had a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation scheme for most of the 21st century. And it was still on the books until its death sentence was signed this weekend (technically for 2024 and for good afterward). 

However, that allocation method was overridden in 2019 for the 2020 cycle with a contingency provision that called for the proportional allocation of the entire California Republican delegation. [Yes, that sounds an awful lot like what the Republican Party in the Golden state just adopted. It is quite similar.] That temporary condition was added in 2019 because the Republican National Committee rules prohibit winner-take-all by congressional district methods of allocation before March 15. Therefore, the state party had to make a change because the 2020 primary fell on Super Tuesday, before March 15. 

But again, that was a temporary contingency that expired at the beginning of 2021, leaving California Republicans with the same default winner-take-all by congressional district method in place. Time passed and the RNC carried over the same winner-take-all prohibition for the early calendar into the 2024 rules. So that was never going to be the method Golden state Republicans used in 2024. Look, California Republicans were not going to give up the one feather in their cap in this process. Theirs is the most delegate-rich state on the Republican calendar. The state party was not going to give up half its delegation -- the penalty for using an unsanctioned winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method in an early March primary -- to keep that method. They just were not. 

That brings the timeline to May of this year when the LA Times had an article describing how California Republicans were going to have this strategically unique delegate allocation method for 2024. The method? Winner-take-all by congressional district. Yes, the very same noncompliant method detailed above. FHQ raises the LA Times piece because it set a baseline that has subsequently poisoned the discourse on these changes that California Republicans have actually made for 2024. 

It was that article that made it seem as if California Republicans were going to use that noncompliant method when all it ever was was a placeholder until the state party set rules for 2024 this summer (just as the party did in the summer of 2019). Indeed, before the new plan was adopted over the weekend, there was an alternative proposal that called for a proportional districted method of allocation. Still districted, but proportional and compliant.

Moreover, that baseline set in the LA Times piece from May has led subsequent news accounts to compare changes relative to what was never going to be a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method. In reality, the comparison should have been to the rules used by the state party in 2020, rules that were compliant. Yes, those rules expired, but to better understand the nature of the change for 2024, the 2020 rules are the better comparison and the better encapsulation of the state party's thinking on how to craft compliant rules for an incumbent cycle (2020) versus a competitive one (2024). 

The press has dropped the ball on this one. 

Fortunately, the newly adopted 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules sunset at the end of next year. Not just the subsection detailing the compliant proportional allocation, but the whole section including the legacy winner-take-all by congressional district method. Make note of that now. Hopefully that means we all will not be talking about these same noncompliant rules in California in 2027. No one should be comparing any changes then to that method anyway. 

To circle back to the WaPo reference to "the state’s longtime system of awarding them [delegates] by congressional district," it really was not necessary. That is a false point of comparison for the new method. And it is one that did not need to feature as prominently as it did in that story or the similar story about the rules change from the LA Times. 

Did the winner-take-all by congressional district method warrant a mention somewhere in either story? Sure, but the endless parade of quotes from Republicans in California seemingly pining for the "old system" just made those folks look out of touch. To repeat, the California Republican Party was not going to sacrifice half of their delegates to allocated delegates the old way (2016 and before). 

Okay. FHQ got that one off its chest. What else? 

--

Looking for Part Two? Find more of the discussion over at FHQ Plus.

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Recent posts:

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster 

It is not a national primary, but...

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• The Trump campaign influenced frontrunner-friendly delegate allocation rules on the state level for 2020. One of the state parties that made it that way was Massachusetts, but Bay state Republicans are eyeing rules changes for 2024 that may diminish the frontrunner advantage in the allocation. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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The Des Moines Register had a fantastic and well-researched piece on the impact the Republican National Committee debate qualification rules may be having on the regular rhythms on the campaign trail in Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Visits are down versus previous cycles. Ads are up.

What's different? For one there is a more stringent set of RNC debate criteria requiring both a polling and donor threshold for the first debate rather than the either/or requirement Democrats had four years ago. It is a persuasive argument about the nationalization of the presidential nomination process overall. But that is not new in 2023. And it was not new in 2019 either. But this is the latest manifestation of the nationalization of the process that has been going on for quite some time, pushing further and more meaningfully into the invisible primary every cycle. 

Look, it is not that Iowa does not and will not matter. There will continue to be value in being first (no matter which state is there). It is only that the Hawkeye state, first or not, is just another state. Still first, but first after significant jockeying in the invisible primary. The debate qualifications build on that evolution. 

...

Benjy Sarlin had a nice piece up at Semafor today that kind of builds on something Amy Walter touched on last month. It is one of those 2024 is not 2016 because Trump is more popular pieces. But it takes things a step further, pushing back against the recent Romney notion that Republicans should consolidate behind a Trump alternative before Super Tuesday next year. 

And the argument is simple enough: Republicans already did that for 2024. They massed behind the idea of DeSantis and it is not going at all well to this point. As Sarlin points out, there are not alternatives waiting in the wings who can save this thing in the way that only the rosiest depictions of Rick Perry (pre-launch) could in 2012. [Or Jeb Bush. Or some other white knight.]

It just does not work that way. And it is not that parties cannot coordinate in that way. It is that a broader party network cannot coordinate in that way that quickly, try as it might. Folks might respond that Democrats coordinated quite quickly, aligning behind Joe Biden after South Carolina in 2020. And while that is true, Biden had been the frontrunner throughout much of the invisible primary in 2018-19. He was the former vice president. He was not coming into the race anew at that point in late February 2020. In other words (and probably too simplistically), Biden was an easier point of coordination. 

Trump is popular and DeSantis may still be the best point of alternative coordination for Republicans in 2023-24. And that may be a cause for celebration among DeSantis fans as much as it is depressing for a certain segment of Republicans. 

...

From around the invisible primary...

• There may have been some complaints in recent days about the paid canvassing operation that Never Back Down, the super PAC affiliated with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but the group hit one million doors knocked last week in Greenville, South Carolina. One may question the effectiveness of the canvassing effort across seven states, including the four early voting states, but that is a notable milestone even if the success rate is not one hundred percent. More than half of the interactions have been in South Carolina (390,000 knocks) and Iowa (211,000 knocks).
• New Jersey 101.5 dug into the FEC reports from the Garden state and former President Donald Trump so far leads the way in receipts with more than half a million dollars to his credit.
• Also in the money primary, DeSantis is expected, although it is not confirmed, to attend a fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut in September. The event is said to be host by Scott Frantz and his wife, who have held similar fundraisers in the past for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. 
• Elsewhere in the travel primary, DeSantis will headline South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan's Faith and Freedom BBQ in the Upstate next month. 
• In the endorsement primary, Florida Senator Rick Scott remains on the sidelines and seems intent on keeping his endorsement in the non-endorsement category at the presidential level. 
• Vivek Ramaswamy filled the room in in Muscatine, Iowa and had to cancel an event in Nevada over the weekend because demand was so high. 

--

Recent posts:

Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster 

It is not a national primary, but...

On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

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Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• There is some great reporting in the recent AP account of the under-the-radar battle to set the Republican delegate rules for 2024. But there was some important context missing from the state-level updates in that article. FHQ attempts to bridge the gap. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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A month before Ron DeSantis officially entered the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, FHQ described the basic organization of the nascent campaign as "a bit of an attempt at a better Frankenstein's monster in 2023, taking elements of the Bush super PAC build out in 2015 and melding it with the deep organizing -- staff, grassroots and delegate efforts -- of the Cruz campaign. Neither were particularly successful against Trump separately in 2015-16, but fused in some respects in 2023, it may prove different."

Two months after the Florida governor announced his campaign, it appears that Dr. Frankenstein has lost control of the monster. From Playbook: 

But behind the scenes, there are serious doubts whether the layoffs will do anything to address a fundamental weakness of DeSantis’ presidential bid: the rising tension and distrust brewing between his campaign and the main super PAC supporting him, Never Back Down.

Look, DeSantis and company may yet turn this thing around, but this is more evidence that there is a certain balance to be maintained between a campaign proper and its affiliated super PACs (and other groups). The broader DeSantis effort very simply seems to have outsourced a lot to Never Back Down and that makes it tough for a candidate and the campaign to rein in without the ability to directly coordinate. 

FHQ spent much of the candidate entry phase earlier this year discussing candidates and campaigns learning lessons from 2016. Unless DeSantis mounts a comeback, one of the lessons potentially learned from 2024 may be about properly calibrating the balance between campaign and super PAC. 

...

Illinois Republican National Committeeman Richard Porter appears to have endorsed Ron DeSantis in an op-ed at Real Clear Politics. He will not necessarily be an automatic delegate to the national convention next year because the Republican state convention in the Prairie state will select the national committeeman and committeewoman to attend the convention in Milwaukee next year. Unless there is a significant change to Illinois Republican Party rules, then the three RNC members will be bound to the statewide winner of the March 19 primary. Theoretically, Porter could be reelected at that convention and then bound to a candidate other than DeSantis. 

The RNC has pledged to say neutral in the presidential contest and not many members have gone out of their way to weigh in on the race at this point in the invisible primary. But this counts as an early (initial?) exception to that, and it is someone taking a position. Porter not only talks up DeSantis as likely to emerge as nominee, but also gives an explicit unendorsement of Trump in the process. 

At a time when there are not a lot of rays of sunshine for the Florida governor, this counts as one: a national committee endorsement.

...

From around the invisible primary...

• In the money primary, Donald Trump has a nearly five to one advantage in Oklahoma-based fundraising according to an analysis of FEC data by The Oklahoman.
• It has not been a mystery that DeSantis has done better among big donors than those giving small amounts, but a little less than one in five dollars coming into the campaign has come those giving less than $200 to the DeSantis campaign. 
• Hamptons fundraiser cancelled for lack of interest is not a good look when a campaign is already trending downward. But that is where DeSantis was last weekend. 

--

Recent posts:

It is not a national primary, but...

On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

[From FHQ Plus] A second state-run primary option in New Hampshire?

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

It is not a national primary, but...

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...

• Haven't had a chance to read the piece on the proposal California Republicans have for delegate allocation in 2024 yet? Go check it out. There is a story there that is floating under the radar about how the changes could affect the sort of delegate bonus a primary winner will take from the Golden state. It will not be like 2020 for a lot of reasons. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

...

Monmouth just released a new national survey on the Republican presidential nomination race and at first glance it appeared to be a reality check for the sort of consolidation theory that Senator Mitt Romney described in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers—large and small—are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb. 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. 

First of all, that resembles in some respects the reaction Democrats had in 2020 after Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses. Candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Kobluchar withdrew and aligned with an alternative, Joe Biden, after his victory in South Carolina and before Super Tuesday. That is basically what Romney is describing. 

Of course, win though Sanders did early in the 2020 calendar, he did not represent the sort of force that Donald Trump currently does at this juncture in the invisible primary ahead of 2024. And the Monmouth poll demonstrates the difference. 

When asked whom they would like to see as the Republican nominee for president in 2024, 46% of GOP-aligned and leaning voters name Trump and 20% name DeSantis without any prompting. In a primary ballot question that explicitly lists 14 announced candidates, Trump’s support increases to 54% while DeSantis’ vote share barely moves (22%) and no other candidate gets above 5%. In a head-to-head contest between just the two, Trump garners 55% support and DeSantis gets 35%. These results are similar to a Monmouth poll taken two months ago when DeSantis officially launched his campaign.

Sanders was successful enough, but the Vermont senator never consistently approached majority support in primary surveys or at the ballot box in 2020. Trump has consistently hovered around the 50 percent mark for a while now. And even if one theorizes that the former president's position in the extant polling is a sugar high, the consistency of his position over time augurs against that conclusion. 

Moreover, that Trump is around 50 percent in national polling is instructive for how one thinks about the delegate battle that lies ahead. FHQ has spoken on occasion about how DeSantis has been flirting with the qualifying threshold since he officially jumped in the race, but Trump is doing some flirting of his own. 

Look, this is one poll and it is a national poll of contest that will play out sequentially from state to state during the first half of 2024. But if Trump is flirting with 50 percent when the votes start coming in next January, then the conversation will quickly turn to the former president tripping winner-take-all triggers when the race actually turns more national in scope on Super Tuesday next March 5. The chatter in some Republican circles may now be about stopping Trump in one of the early states, but the former president may be looking to stop his opposition and with an emphatic exclamation point on Super Tuesday if he is triggering those winner-take-all thresholds. 

...

There is more news on DeSantis below, but it is not all bad. The Florida governor pulled in an additional six endorsements in New Hampshire, five state representatives and a county commissioner. And he has not done poorly in the endorsement primary. No, more often than not, they are not high profile endorsements. But as Newsweek reports, DeSantis has quietly put together a robust roster of lower profile backers, the sorts of folks who can help organize in caucuses in both the allocation and selection phases and who can also serve as national convention delegate candidates on down the line. 

Of course, Ted Cruz followed a similar path in 2016. 

...

From around the invisible primary...

• The DeSantis campaign cut 38 jobs from its payroll and moved other staff into new positions as the attempt at a pivot continues.
• North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum bought his way onto the debate stage in Milwaukee next month. An aggressive advertising strategy since his launch and gift for donation quid pro quo got the governor over the polling and donor thresholds set by the RNC.
• Best of America PAC, a super PAC aligned with Burgum announced a $5.5 million TV and radio ad buy, but scaled it back to $1.4 million after the governor qualified for the debate. 
• Vivek Ramaswamy will headline a Dorchester County Republican Party fundraiser next month in the Lowcountry of South Carolina just ahead of the first debate.

...

On this date...

...in 2000, Texas governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush tapped former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate. On the same date and in answer to a reporter's question, Alan Keyes announced that he was no longer a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. 

--

Recent posts:

On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

[From FHQ Plus] A second state-run primary option in New Hampshire?

Another way to look at current support for the First-in-the-Nation primary in New Hampshire

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