Race to 1144: Florida Primary

The numbers keep changing daily with the vote tabulation in Florida -- see, it has already changed¹ -- but FHQ will go ahead and post this today in the interest of making a few points about the overall delegate count. However, the vote total will be changed -- and folks, it is only changing slightly and will in no way affect the outcome -- when and if the Division of Elections within the Florida Secretary of State's office adds, or in some cases, subtracts votes from a candidate's total.

Now, about those delegate counts...

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Source:
Contest Delegates (via contest results)
Automatic Delegates (Democratic Convention Watch)

FHQ wants to get out ahead of as much of this delegate count talk as possible because most of it is very, very wrong. In fact, an NPR story this morning -- one FHQ was quoted in -- incorrectly stated that Ron Paul is fourth in the delegate count. That statement followed a clip of Paul correctly stating that he was in third. He is according to the RNC.

As such, FHQ will call its delegate count the RNC+ delegate count. The Republican National Committee stated this week that it had the delegate count at Romney: 59, Gingrich: 23, Paul: 3, Santorum: 0 and there are 30 unbound delegates. Let's dig into that.

• Romney: 59 (50 Florida delegates, 7 New Hampshire delegates, 2 South Carolina delegates)
• Gingrich: 23 (23 South Carolina delegates)
• Paul: 3 (3 New Hampshire delegates)

Yes, that's right. Santorum has 0 delegates according to the RNC.

But we do have additional information. We also have automatic delegates, technically unbound, who have stated preferences for one candidate or another. That adds fifteen delegates to Romney's total, two to Gingrich's total and pushes Santorum's count from zero to one.

You will also notice that the Huntsman column from previous "Race to 1144" posts has disappeared and been replaced with an "Unbound" column. This brings up a couple of additional points. First of all, the two delegates Huntsman won in the New Hampshire primary have not been officially released. The RNC is counting them among the unbound delegates. The remaining unbound delegates are the 28 delegates at stake in Iowa. Remember, none of those delegates has been allocated yet. That will happen at the Iowa state convention in June and even after that point, those delegates will head to Tampa unbound. That said, one of those Iowa delegates, Kay Lehman, the Iowa Republican Party national committeewoman, has come out in support of Rick Santorum. That's Santorum's lone delegate. What that means for those keeping track at home is that two of those unbound delegates are Huntman's two contest delegates from New Hampshire while the remaining 27 unbound delegates are Iowa's 25 contest delegates and the remaining two Iowa automatic delegates who have yet to endorse a candidate.

[NOTE: Due to the fact that New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida were all penalized for holding their primaries too early, they lost their 3 automatic delegates according to the RNC delegate selection rules.]


The Nevada caucuses this weekend will add no unbound delegates to the equation. All 28 delegates are bound according to the results of the precinct caucuses on Saturday. The delegate allocation in the Silver state will be completely proportional.

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Changes to the delegate count since South Carolina:

• Romney added 50 delegates from Florida.
• Romney gained the support of Puerto Rico automatic delegate, Luis Fortuno.
• Gingrich added the support of Puerto Rico automatic delegate, Carlos Mendez.

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¹ The vote totals seem to have stabilized on February 6. The vote totals in the graphic above reflect the numbers as they were as of then.

Recent Posts:

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Nevada

Florida May End Up "Proportional" But It Won't Be Proportional

Visual Representation of the Argument from Non-Romneys, Post-Florida

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