Showing posts with label delegate allocation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label delegate allocation. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Uncommitted delegates are not necessarily Listen to Michigan delegates

Leading the day at FHQ...

The Michigan presidential primary is now in the rearview mirror, and while others will move on to the next contests or focus on the perceived threats the results in the Great Lakes state have on both likely nominees, FHQ will do what it does. And namely, that means digging into the delegates. 

For those who are interested in such things, there are a pair of delegate stories out of Michigan -- one on each side -- worth fleshing out some. 

Democrats
The story of the night in Michigan -- well, it seemed like it had already been flagged as the story well in advance of last night -- was how Listen to Michigan's push for Michiganders to vote uncommitted in protest of President Biden's Gaza policy would fare. Lowball estimates from the group and its allies aside, the group did pretty well. And by pretty well, FHQ means that they were probably wildly successful in capturing the attention of media folks and political junkies desperate for something other than "Biden and Trump win again."

Well, Biden and Trump won again and Listen to Michigan certainly grabbed some attention. Some will try to read the tea leaves on what that portends for the general election in a battleground state -- a fool's errand -- but there are other ways of looking at how uncommitted did in the Michigan primary.

Some of this FHQ contextualized yesterday over at FHQ Plus. Uncommitted 2024 did about as well as Uncommitted 2012 would have done had the Michigan Democratic presidential primary actually counted and not been a beauty contest that cycle. And that is to say that Uncommitted 2024 failed to hit 15 percent statewide to qualify for any PLEO or at-large delegates. Despite that, Uncommitted 2024, just like Uncommitted 2012 would have, managed to qualify in a couple of congressional districts. Then, it was the sixth and tenth districts. Last night saw Uncommitted 2024 qualify in the sixth and 12th districts, receiving just north of 17 percent in each. 

And what does that get Uncommitted 2024 in the delegate count? 

Two delegates. 

One delegate in each of those districts. 

[As of this writing, the Michigan secretary of state has all 83 counties reporting, but the tally may not be complete.]

However, just because there are two uncommitted delegates does not mean that those are two Listen to Michigan delegates. Again, they are uncommitted delegate slots. Uncommitted. Any national convention delegate candidate that files as uncommitted in the sixth and 12th districts can run for one of those two slots. It will be the uncommitted delegates to the congressional district conventions in May who will decide who gets those positions. 

Listen to Michigan may organize its supporters in Michigan to run for and win spots to the congressional district conventions -- more on that process here -- but the group does not have a lock on those delegate slots. Nor does it have the ability to vet potential national convention delegates in the same way that an actual candidate and their campaign can. The group will not have that check. 

In other words, Listen to Michigan is vulnerable to a knowledgable and organized delegate operation, one that could run or overrun the uncommitted delegate pool in those congressional districts and take those uncommitted slots for their own. 

Yes, FHQ is suggesting that the Biden campaign could swoop in and win those uncommitted delegate slots in Michigan's sixth and 12th districts.  

But they likely will not. That would likely end up being far more trouble than it is worth. Why stir up an angry hornets' nest any more than it is already riled up over two delegates? There really is no need to. Had uncommitted fared better last night, reaching, say, a third of the vote, then maybe there could have been a more concerted effort to contest the selection of delegate candidates to those allocated slots. But as it is -- at two delegates -- why attempt that particular flex?


Republicans
FHQ is not really sure what the deal with the AP delegate count in Michigan on the Republican side was, but it had been stuck on Trump 9, Haley 2 for the longest time. The Michigan Republican delegate selection plan is weird, but this is not that hard (even with an incomplete tally at this point).

Here is the number one needs to know: 25 percent.

If Nikki Haley slips under 25 percent in the Michigan primary results then she will claim three (3) delegates. As it stands now, she is over that mark and would be allocated four (4) delegates.

Trump will get the rest regardless of whether his total climbs some or falls. Why? 

Well, as of now, Trump is sitting on 68.2 percent of the vote in the Michigan primary. That would qualify him for 11 delegates. If the former president's total rose above 68.75 percent, then he would grab the last delegate, his would-be twelfth. But he would claim that delegate no matter what. Even if Trump stayed right where he is -- under 68.75 percent -- he would still win the last delegate. It would be unallocated based on the results, but all unallocated delegates go to the winner of the primary. 


--
FHQ has started rolling out the state-by-state series on Democratic delegate allocation rules over at FHQ Plus. So far there have been looks at rules in...
What's the difference between Democratic and Republican delegate selection rules? FHQ Plus has it covered.

Looking for more on delegates and delegate allocation? Continue here at the central hub for Republican delegate allocation rules on the state level at FHQ. That includes the latest from...

--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 9:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Share |

Monday, February 5, 2024

Trump and Titanic Tuesday 2008

Leading the day at FHQ...

Last night as FHQ was preparing for the week ahead, I looked up and saw that today was going to be February 5. Big deal, right? 

Actually, for those who follow the presidential primary calendar and its many iterations, it is a date with some significance in the post-reform era. February 5, 2008 was Super Tuesday. It was so super -- so chock full of delegates, in fact -- that some took to calling it Titanic Tuesday. Indeed, both parties allocated more than 45 percent of all of their delegates that cycle on that one day! For comparison, neither party will have allocated any more than 41 percent of the their delegates in all the contests through Super Tuesday in 2024 combined. 

In other words, when folks look up frontloading in the dictionary -- if they are lucky enough to find it -- then they will see a picture of the 2008 map. 

What is more, the allocation rules were different than they are today. Okay, they were different on the Republican side. Democrats had and continue to have the same standard proportional rules with 15 percent qualifying threshold that they have had in place going back into the 20th century. 
In 2008, the GOP rules were different.

But in a lot of ways the Republican calendar was not only frontloaded but the rules were sort of inverted. There was no prohibition on winner-take-all rules early in the calendar as there is in 2024 (and has been in some form or another since 2012). And it showed. The map was peppered with plurality winner-take-all states in the 2008 Republican process and all of them save one -- Vermont -- were in contests held in or before February that year. And many of the other states on Titanic Tuesday and throughout February 2008 that were not truly winner-take-all had winner-take-all elements. Most of those, including California, were winner-take-all by congressional district.

John McCain rode success in those early states to a gigantic delegate lead that crested above the majority mark, clinching the nomination for him, during the first week in March. 

The interesting thing to me is that for all the talk of the Trump campaign working the state-level delegate rules for 2024 -- and, ahem, Team Trump did the bulk of that work in 2019 -- they would have killed to have had that 2008 calendar with its particular patchwork of delegate rules for 2024. With that combination, we would be talking about Trump clinching today rather sometime during the first three weeks in March. 

Team Trump definitely would have traded for that if they could have. But the RNC carried over the same basic set of guidelines for 2024 that the national party had in place in 2016. Which is to say that there remained a super penalty in place to prevent most states from going earlier than March and another penalty to nix plurality winner-take-all rules in states with contests before March 15. 

Anyway, it is a fun thought experiment. Changing to 2008 rules would probably not change the outcome in 2024, but it certainly would have changed the pace of how nomination season resolved itself. Happy Titanic Tuesday Remembrance Day. 


--
Last week a bow was finally tied on the delegate allocation from the New Hampshire Republican primary during the prior week on January 23. Only it was not exactly a nice and neat bow. Instead, as the AP reported it, the New Hampshire secretary of state allocated the one remaining delegate in limbo to Donald Trump, raising his total in the Granite state to 13 delegates. 

How Secretary Scanlan arrived at that was a little, well, weird. And the method used was not consistent with how the secretary's office under previous longtime Secretary Bill Gardner handled the delegate count during the last competitive Republican presidential nomination race in 2016. 



--
FHQ has started rolling out the state-by-state series on Democratic delegate allocation rules over at FHQ Plus. So far there have been looks at rules in...
What's the difference between Democratic and Republican delegate selection rules? FHQ Plus has it covered.



--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 11:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Share |

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

2024 has been a weird cycle in New Hampshire ...and more

Leading the day at FHQ...

Happy New Hampshire primary day!

It has been a weird cycle in the Granite state. 

The Democratic primary there today will happen as it always does, but it will not count toward determining the outcome of the nomination after the national party reshuffled its early primary calendar for 2024. [There will be New Hampshire delegates -- reduced by half -- but they cannot be allocated based on the results of an unsanctioned primary.] But all the chatter of bumping the primary and the resulting write-in effort on President Biden's behalf in New Hampshire will likely garner a few seconds more attention than the primary otherwise would in an incumbent cycle for Democrats. And that is to say, not much.

On the Republican side, well, this looks like it. If the last polls, especially the tracker in the field after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign, are taken as the final results or anything near them, then Donald Trump is in for another romp. A 60-38 win would translate to a 14-8 delegate win for Trump over former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. And that, not the net delegate gap, per se, but the 3:2 loss in a state that is supposed to be "good" for the former UN ambassador, would make it a little easier to bow out with her home state up next. Haley is not on the ballot in Nevada, so South Carolina would be next. And even in the event of a closer than expected loss, Haley would be staring down the prospect of getting whipped at home for a month and a day. In other words, she may have made it out of New Hampshire with a win relative to expectations, but that would not necessarily carry her all the way to and through South Carolina. The winnowing pressures would have grown deafening in that time.

As FHQ said before Haley's third in Iowa took some of the [limited] air out of her sails, "Haley may or may not become a disruptive factor in her bid for the presidential nomination, but if she does, it is more likely to be in the form of a speed bump rather than a total roadblock."

But that it came down to two viable Republicans by New Hampshire -- just the second contest -- is the weirder thing for the Republican contest relative to past cycles. It is one thing to have local Granite staters politically plugged into the politics of it all complain in the year before the primary about candidates not showing up as much as they used to, but it is quite another for folks on the ground in New Hampshire to be talking about how dead things are in the 24 hours leading up the voting. 

New Hampshire typically does at least some of the winnowing -- and the primary may yet in a limited capacity for 2024 -- but most of the winnowing took place in the invisible primary (and after Iowa) before New Hampshire. And a lot of this is it is just the nature of the cycle. After all, there is an incumbent president running on one side and a former president running on the other (and one of them is not even on the ballot in the Granite state). 

Again, it has been a weird cycle. But it is not clear that some of the same forces will not return to New Hampshire for 2028. It remains to be seen if the Democratic National Committee wants to take another shot at shunting New Hampshire to a different slot on the calendar, but the nationalization of the process in the invisible primary preceding New Hampshire will continue to be a factor that likely detracts from the way the New Hampshire primary "used to be."


--
Over at FHQ Plus... 
I pushed back on what has seemingly become a dominant narrative in how the delegate rules came together on the Republican side for 2024. There has been way too much Trump was heavy-handed in forcing state parties to adopt favorable rules and not nearly enough examination of the actual rules. 

If anything the delegate rules are marginally less favorable to Trump in 2024 than they were in 2020. 

That does not mean that they are not well suited to the former president. Far from it! But there very simply was not much improving Team Trump could have done in 2023. They did some incremental work, but most of it was working the phone lines to defend what they established for the 2020 cycle. That is the story of the Republican rules for 2024.



--
Posted by Josh Putnam at 9:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , ,
Share |

Friday, January 19, 2024

How many delegates do New Hampshire Democrats have anyway?

Leading the day at FHQ...

By now the story is old hat. At least around these parts it is. The Democratic National Committee altered its presidential primary calendar rules for the 2024 cycle. New Hampshire Democrats did not take kindly to the change that saw South Carolina's primary nudged into the first slot and spent 2023 openly defying the national party rules changes. 

Now, under the delegate selection rules of the Democratic Party, such a move on the part of New Hampshire Democrats carries a penalty, a 50 percent reduction in the size of the base delegation. That reduction has taken place, and New Hampshire Democrats now have 10 delegates to the national convention in Chicago later this summer. But the reporting, if one reads it closely, still seems to toggle between saying that New Hampshire Democrats will lose/have lost half of their delegates and that Granite state Democrats will lose/have lost all of their delegates.

So which is it? Half or all?

Actually, it is both. The actions of the New Hampshire Democratic Party -- opting into the noncompliant state-run presidential primary on January 23 -- cost the party half of its delegates. That is done. However, due to a tweak in the national party delegate selection rules for the 2024 cycle, state parties cannot allocate any delegates to any candidate who campaigns in a state like New Hampshire which has a primary scheduled in violation of the guidelines. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson cannot even win any actual delegates by being on the ballot in the upcoming primary in the Granite state (even if they manage to qualify). 

So, New Hampshire Democrats have 10 delegates but cannot allocate them. Half and all, all rolled into one. 

The question is, what happens with those 10 delegates? Obviously the back and forth continues between the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the national party to resolve their impasse. But in the meantime, here are some thoughts at FHQ Plus on where things may go as primary season progresses. 


--
In the continuing state-by-state series on delegate allocation rules, FHQ examines changes for 2024 in...
  • Utah: Republicans in the Beehive state have once again shifted to caucuses for selecting and allocating delegates. Otherwise, the same eccentricities remain under the surface in the allocation process.
  • Vermont: FHQ often says that there are only so many ways to proportionally allocate three congressional district delegates under RNC rules. Well, that is true in terms of the 17 delegates Vermont Republicans have to offer as well. Nevertheless, Republicans in the Green Mountain state have built some unique features into their delegate selection plan.


--
Posted by Josh Putnam at 8:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Share |

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Trump's firewall isn't the delegate rules, it's his support ...and more in response to Iowa

Leading the day at FHQ...

Over at FHQ Plus yesterday, I had a long takedown of the notion that Donald Trump has a firewall in the state-level delegate allocation rules across the country. 

Look, the rules Team Trump crafted for 2020, and for the most part defended for 2024, are not a bad thing for the former president. But no firewall provides any real safety if it is a conditional firewall. And for the next month, true success in the delegate count for the Republican frontrunner is going to depend on how often he hits 50 percent in states and in congressional districts in many cases. 

If the results in Iowa demonstrated anything it was that Trump's support among Republicans is his firewall. Yes, the Hawkeye state is state that is well-suited to the former president, so one should use some care not to extrapolate too much from the caucus results. But still, a majority is a majority in Iowa and that does not mean nothing. But if the caucuses prove to have been a harbinger of things to come, then Trump will likely rack up a lot of delegates in March. 


--

Speaking of delegates...
As it stands now, the delegate count coming out of Iowa will end up somewhere around the following:
DeSantis -- 9 (21.2 percent)
Haley 8 -- (19.1 percent)
Ramaswamy -- 3 (7.7 percent)

That is no different than it was last night before I turned in, but overnight there was an interesting shift and a delegate moved to unallocated. And how do the Iowa Republican rules work in the case of an unallocated delegate? Here is what FHQ had to say on the matter last month in our rundown of the Iowa rules:
Hypothetically, there is one unallocated delegate after rounding and Donald Trump has won a little more than half the vote. His raw, unrounded share of the delegates ends up at 20.47. On the other hand, Asa Hutchinson receives a little more than one percent of the vote (but under 1.3 percent) and his raw, unrounded share lands on 0.48 delegates. Hutchinson would receive the last delegate because his remainder is closer to the .5 rounding threshold than Trump. He would gain one delegate and Trump would stay on 20 delegates.
Well, overnight Ron DeSantis saw his vote share drop from 21.3 percent to 21.2 percent. Big deal, right? Actually, it meant that his raw delegate share dropped below the rounding threshold, lowering his total from nine to eight delegates and leaving one delegate unallocated. 

But that also left him with a fairly high remainder. The unallocated delegate came down to Trump (20.4 unrounded delegates) and DeSantis (8.48 delegates). DeSantis has the highest remainder under the rounding threshold, and as such, the unallocated delegate goes (back) into his column. 

Rounding rules at work!

[Yes, it is more than a little eerie that the very same .48 remainder I made up for Hutchinson in the hypothetical above was the remainder DeSantis ended up on.]


--
Maybe New Hampshire shakes things up next week, but I stand by this from that Firewall piece over at FHQ Plus:
First, let’s dispense with the obvious: Trump remains a heavy favorite to become the Republican Party standard bearer atop the ticket in the general election. Haley may or may not become a disruptive factor in her bid for the presidential nomination, but if she does, it is more likely to be in the form of a speed bump rather than a total roadblock.
DeSantis placing second in Iowa had many on cable news last night speculating about whether that may have blunted any momentum Haley had or has heading into the Granite state next week. It also had them -- and this was true on Fox News last night and NPR this morning -- falling back on the tired 2016 adage that Trump does well when his opposition is divided among several candidates. 

Maybe, but it is not as if DeSantis coming in third last night and joining Ramaswamy among the winnowed candidates was going to set his supporters rushing off to Haley. Some DeSantis folks may gravitate toward Haley, but many, maybe even most, would likely drift over to Trump, bolstering the former president's prospects even more moving forward. Still more may have decided to stay home rather than participate in subsequent primaries and caucuses. 

It just is not clear at this point that a continued split in Trump's opposition is hurting the opposition. It may just be that Trump has majority support and the opposition cannot be helped (...at least not to a winning position). 

Perhaps DeSantis and Haley need each other to limit Trump's delegate haul through the early part of March. Of course, that sort of three person race is not sustainable long term. The winnowing pressures are only going to pick up in the days ahead. And besides, one them will have to figure out how to not only win, but win consistently to derail Trump. 

On to New Hampshire.


--


--
Posted by Josh Putnam at 9:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , ,
Share |

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Colorado Republicans Eyeing a Primary Switch? ...and more

Leading the day at FHQ...

The Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Donald Trump from the presidential primary ballot in the state has the state Republican Party exploring a late shift from a primary to a caucus. But that process is more complicated than simply declaring the change. More in a gift article at FHQ Plus.


--
In the continuing state-by-state series on delegate allocation rules, FHQ examines changes for 2024 in...
  • The US Virgin Islands: Republicans in the territory pushed the limits of the RNC rules in putting together a delegate selection plan for this cycle. ...and paid a price for it.
  • South Carolina: Meanwhile in the Palmetto state, Republicans are back to business as usual in a competitive presidential nomination cycle. But there are some interesting tweaks to an allocation system that has been a model of consistency for much of the post-reform era. 


--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 8:45 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Share |

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Is confusion inevitable in the Nevada Republican Party primary/caucus situation?

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...
  • A belated look at the recent DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. Yes, Iowa and New Hampshire stole the headlines -- and for good reason -- but there was some other interesting stuff that transpired in St. Louis. Some thoughts on Iowa, New Hampshire and all the rest: 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...
In the wake of the filing deadlines passing for both the Nevada presidential primary and the Republican caucuses in the Silver state over the previous two days, Natasha Korecki of NBC News had a piece up about the confusion the two contests may create for Nevada Republican voters next year. 

It is not the first time the notion of voter confusion has arisen in the context of the double dip elections taking place in Nevada in 2024. But it does raise some questions. Why are Nevada voters different from other voters who have encountered similar two-pronged processes like this in past cycles? Why (or maybe how) is the Nevada primary and caucus situation different from states that have had both previously? Is any of this primary/caucus conundrum in the Silver state unique at all? 

First of all, FHQ is of a mind that Nevada voters are not substantively different from voters in, say, Nebraska or Washington. Both had Democratic caucuses for allocating delegates and a state-run beauty contest primary as recently as 2016. Voters did not appear to be anymore confused than usual at the process in either case. Sure, more folks showed up to participate in the primaries than the caucuses, but that is not a new feature of the caucus/convention process. They are low turnout affairs by nature (if not design). 

Yet, one difference between those two sets of contests from 2016 and the Nevada situation in 2024 is their timing, or rather the time between the two events. Nebraska and Washington Democrats had March caucuses before May beauty contest primaries. That two months buffer (and the sequencing!) was different than what will take place in Nevada next February. Only two days will separate the state-run beauty contest primary on February 6 from the Republican party-run caucuses on February 8. And the binding contest will follow the beauty contest. So maybe that is a little different. 

But still, confusion? Texas Democrats did not seem to be muddling through the Texas two-step all those years. For much of the post-reform era Democrats in the Lone Star state held a primary and caucuses on the same day. The primary allocated about two-thirds of the delegates while the post-primary caucuses allocated the remainder later in the evening. [Incidentally, while the Texas two-step died on the Democratic side starting with the 2016 cycle, Republicans in the state have revived it and will use it again in 2024.] Voters seemed to make it through that process. Delegates were allocated. And all of it happened with no buffer between the two contests. 

But the real difference between Nevada in 2024 and some other earlier similar examples is that there will be interesting cross-pressures in the Silver state next year. Some debate-qualifying candidates will be urging Nevadans (at least to some extent) to participate in the primary for which they already have a ballot in the mail. Others, and it is most of the big-name candidates, will be trying to get out the vote in the caucuses two days later. 

That is different than previous examples. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were on the primary and caucus ballots in Nebraska and Washington. Barack Obama and Clinton were both participants in both phases of the Texas two-step in March 2008. None of those candidates were working against another group of candidates who were only vying for delegates or attention in one or the other of the two contests in a given double dip state. 

What this Nevada Republican situation is akin to is like what happened in the Michigan Democratic primary in 2008. Under rules new to the DNC that cycle, candidates were not supposed to campaign in states like Michigan (or Florida for that matter) that held unsanctioned primaries earlier than allowed by the national parties. But some Democratic candidates -- Obama and John Edwards among others -- went a step further and removed their names from the January 15 ballot in the Great Lakes state. Clinton did not. The former group asked their supporters to vote for "uncommitted" in the primary in the hopes of swinging some delegates in any subsequent fight, but that Obama and Edwards were not on the ballot had some impact on turnout. 

And it is likely that the split filings across contests will have some impact on turnout in the Nevada beauty contest primary. But that dampening effect and any felt by the primary being a beauty contest may be masked to some extent by the convenience of voting by mail on a ballot provided to all registrants. Even without that masking effect, the turnout is very likely to be higher, if not much higher, in the primary than in the caucus. And participation in the primary may even be a drag on later caucus participation. 

That may or may not also be by design. 


...
From around the invisible primary...


--
Posted by Josh Putnam at 3:30 PM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Share |

Monday, October 16, 2023

In Nevada, a choice between a symbolic win and delegates

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...
  • Over the weekend, The New York Times had yet another "Trump is working his connections in state parties to affect the delegate rules" stories. The article and others of its ilk keep falling into the same trap in considering the depth of Team Trump's efforts without contextualizing either it or the lacking outreach from other campaigns. It was not all bad, but we go over the good, the bad and the ugly from the piece. 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...
...
Today is the filing deadline in Nevada for the state's newly established presidential primary. It comes a day after filing closed for the Republican caucuses in the Silver state. 

Since the Nevada Republican Party is prohibiting candidates who file in the primary to also file in the caucuses, the nearly overlapping filing deadlines offered a split screen comparison of sorts. Some candidates -- Mike Pence and Tim Scott -- opted for the primary while others -- Donald Trump, Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis -- have filed in the caucuses. 

[It is not clear that Nikki Haley filed or not in the caucuses, but if the former UN ambassador has not yet filed in the caucuses, then the primary will be the only remaining option.]

The choice confronting the campaigns is one between a symbolic win in the primary two days before the Nevada Republican caucuses or of claiming some share of a small pool of delegates on the line in the February 8 caucuses. That the campaigns standing behind known quantities like the former vice president and a current US senator from South Carolina (one with significant financial backing) opted to forgo even a small share of delegates suggests something about the state of their campaigns and their thinking about how Nevada fits into the broader 2024 Republican presidential nomination process. 

For starters, the qualifying threshold for delegates in the Nevada caucuses is relatively low. "All candidates who receive the percentage of vote required for one or more delegates" qualify under the standing rules of the Nevada Republican Party. The state party suggests that is roughly 4.5 percent.1 And all things considered, that is a pretty low bar. 

Yet, Pence and Scott have taken a pass on any of those delegates by filing in the beauty contest state-run primary. That strongly suggests that both campaigns view the odds of succeeding in the caucuses as long and/or that, even set so low, the qualifying threshold is too high. There are also alternative ways of looking at either of those. The odds can be seen as long because the rules put in place for the caucuses by the state party appear to advantage Donald Trump. As for the delegate threshold, it may be less that the bar is too high and more that the payoff is so low in the Silver state. After all, there are just 26 delegates at stake that will be divided among the qualifying candidates. 

Through that lens, the gamble may be worth it to Pence and Scott. A win in a statewide primary -- even a beauty contest -- with likely more participants than the caucuses later in the week may grab some attention. That may be worth something. But what exactly that something equates to is harder to pin down and likely destined to quickly dissipate. The effects may not wear off before the caucuses two days later, but will certainly trail off well in advance of the next contest, the South Carolina Republican primary on February 24. 

Is that worth more than taking some small share of 26 total delegates in Nevada? 

In the very short term (next February), maybe. But long term, probably not. At some point candidates are going to have to start treating the race for the Republican presidential nomination as a process to keep delegates away from Trump. Delegates, after all, are the currency of the process in the end. And whether a campaign views Nevada as a lock for Trump or not, it is probably a mistake to cede any delegates. 

However, it is worth pointing out that the Nevada Republican caucuses of 2024 are not some Harkin-in-Iowa-1992 scenario. Pence and Scott may have opted out of the Silver state contest where candidates are vying for delegates, but others have filed for the caucuses. And that may be enough to trim some delegates from Trump's total in the state. There is no winner-take-all trigger, so there is only so much that the former president can run up the score on the rest of the field. 

Still, proportional states are where the field has to collectively dent Trump's haul.


...
From around the invisible primary...
  • In the filing primary, Tim Scott filed in South Carolina today ahead of the deadline there at the end of the month. And DeSantis opted for the Nevada caucuses on the last day of filing.
  • The AP has a go at a Trump-bolsters-his-campaign-in-Iowa story. Folks are making the obvious comparisons to Trump's 2015-16 efforts in Iowa, but here is another: this slow build feels a bit like the pace of the Romney operation the Hawkeye state in 2011. There are differences, of course. Iowa was never really a good fit for Romney in the 2012 cycle. That is not exactly the case for Trump in the state in 2023. But polling suggests a weaker Trump advantage there than nationally. And while Trump 2023 may be emphasizing Iowa differently, he has not exactly pushed all of his chips into the Iowa-or-bust pot. ...because he does not have to. 
  • Over in the money primary, Q3 reports continue to be released. President Biden and the DNC jointed posted a $71 million figure for the period ending on September 30. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum raised $3 million in July-September. Former Vice President Pence raked in $3.3 million for the quarter but debt accrued to this point is starting to be a drag.


--
1 There is some wiggle room on that figure based on the full language of the rule, but that is a story for a separate post. Plus, how NVGOP interprets its own rules matters in this context regardless of any variation in interpretation of the qualifying threshold.


--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 2:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , ,
Share |

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

The 14th amendment and presidential primary ballot eligibility

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...
  • Add Missouri Democrats to the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Democrats in the Show-Me state finally released a draft delegate selection plan with proposed details of their process for 2024. That and delegate allocation will look different for Massachusetts and Montana Republicans than it has in past cycles. 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...
...
Discussion about former President Donald Trump and his eligibility under the 14th amendment given the events of January 6, 2021, have been en vogue during August, set off first by a pair of conservative scholars associated with the Federalist Society and then reignited in recent days by Michael Luttig and Lawrence Tribe, writing at The Atlantic. FHQ has kept most of it at arm's length, choosing to focus instead on the evolving state-level delegate allocation rules on the Republican side. Mainly that is a function of the whole thing being compartmentalized in my head as a general election question.  

But then came questions about and lawsuits pertaining to Trump's eligibility for presidential primary ballots. There have been questions raised in first-in-the-nation New Hampshire and in Arizona and lawsuits filed or threatened in the Granite state and Michigan as well. But in FHQ's eye, those actions face a much steeper climb to success in the courts. And that is not to suggest that the case for Trump's eligibility on the general election ballots across the country are a slam dunk. [David Frum is probably right.] But those general election access challenges would be a cleaner proposition than the comparative legal thicket challengers would wade into with respect to primary ballot eligibility. That is probably why Baude and Paulsen, the conservative scholars who started all of this, did not dwell on the primaries but in a handful of passing references in 120 plus pages. 

The primary side of the equation is messy (or messier) for a few reasons. First of all, a primary is an election for a nomination and not an office. Does the 14th amendment address eligibility for nominations? Yes, a primary is a step toward an office, but it does not solely hand someone said office if a candidate wins it. Furthermore, presidential primaries are different than primaries for other offices. The winner of a presidential primary will not necessarily appear on the general election ballot. Ted Cruz, for example, won the 2016 Texas Republican presidential primary but was not on the ballot on the presidential line in the Lone Star state in the November general election. When Cruz won his Senate primary in 2018, he was on the general election ballot.

And then there is the whole issue of primaries -- well, nominations -- being the business of political parties, entities that have certain free association rights under the first amendment. Sure, that veers into questions of political parties opting into state-run (and subsidized) primary elections, a complication that arises in other contexts. The linkage to a state sponsored election may serve to weaken the argument against primary eligibility. 

All of this merely scratches the surface. There are probably other complexities in addition to those above, but each and every one of those would be added to list above and on top of the ones that will be raised in any challenge to Trump's eligibility to appear on the general election ballot should it come to that. The primary questions are just messier, but that does not mean that someone more litigious than I will not wander down that path. In fact, they already have. But they have quite the legal minefield to get through.


...
A new survey of the Republican presidential nomination race in Utah from Deseret News offers an interesting hypothetical in terms of delegate allocation in the Beehive state next year. First, the results from the poll:

So Trump is ahead but by a narrower margin than in some other states. How would the delegate allocation look in this situation? 

Before FHQ answers that, I should note that the Utah Republican Party adopted rules in June 2023 that carried over the allocation rules from 2020. Yes, the party will use a caucus system rather than the state-run primary option in 2024, but the basic allocation scheme is the same. No one has a majority in this poll, and thus no candidate trips the winner-take-all trigger. Two candidates -- Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis -- hit the 15 percent qualifying threshold called for in the Utah rules and would be entitled to a proportional share of the 40 delegates at stake in Utah. 

But there is a catch. Under Utah Republican Party rules, if three or more candidates clear the 15 percent hurdle statewide, then they are entitled a proportional share of the delegates based on the qualified vote, the combined vote of just those over 15 percent. If, however, two or fewer candidates win 15 percent statewide in the caucuses on Super Tuesday, then the threshold is dropped altogether. All of the candidates who could mathematically round up to a full delegate would claim a share. That would take delegates away from Trump and DeSantis under the results above (assuming there was a universal 15 percent qualifying threshold that applied in all cases except when one candidate wins a majority). 

Yes, there are still 13 percent who are undecided in this survey and Super Tuesday is a long way off. But this is one of those rules quirks that bears watching. [Yeah, there are a lot of them in the Republican process.]


...
From around the invisible primary...


--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 4:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Share |

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Yes, Donald Trump is ahead in the delegate battle. That has not changed.

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...
  • Earlier this month Utah Republicans informed the state that the party would opt out of the state-run presidential primary and conduct caucuses on Super Tuesday instead. There has been some primary-to-caucus movement this cycle, but it has been muted and the maneuver by Beehive state Republicans is not exactly like the rest. 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...
...
FHQ appreciated the delegate story from CNN yesterday, but honestly, I cannot really tell what contribution it is making. The general story is that in the race for delegates in the Republican nomination process, former President Donald Trump is ahead. He is ahead in influencing the setting of what the Trump campaign considers to be favorable delegate rules. [They certainly are rules that benefit frontrunners, assuming said frontrunner hits some particular benchmarks in the voting across the country during parts of the first six months of 2024.] That, in turn, should give Trump a leg up when delegates are actually allocated. Or in the worst case scenario -- again, from the Trump campaign perspective -- insulate the former president to some degree should an insurgent (or insurgents) rise, prolonging the race for the nomination. 

But most of the tale that the folks at CNN tell is one covered throughout 2023 in reporting at other national outlets. In fact, it ends on essentially the same "rigging/Ken Cuccinelli" note that a Politico story from earlier in August detailed. There is not a lot of news here. However, that is not to say that there is none. 

It has been clear for much of the year that both Trump and the campaign apparatus around him have been working his connections with state parties built during the course of his presidency. That network is stronger in some areas of the country than others, but it is an area of strength that one would expect for a former president. Trump should be ahead in these efforts and he is. Actually, it would be a much bigger story if he was not. But the story beyond Trump is perhaps what is more interesting and it is twofold.

First, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his campaign continue to appear to be the only other entity putting up much of a fight on the delegate front. But the DeSantis effort is different as CNN describes: 
The pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down is running much of DeSantis’ political campaign from the outside. Many state parties only allow the campaigns themselves in the room for crucial talks, forcing Never Back Down to operate from a distance. DeSantis allies did not immediately respond to questions from CNN about this dynamic.
It is being run through its affiliated super PAC, Never Back Down. And that conduit to state parties is far less efficient, meaning that the DeSantis push to chip away at Trump's advantage here is being done on some level with one arm tied behind its back. That is another variation in the story of the Frankenstein's monster that the broader DeSantis campaign is attempting to assemble between its formal campaign and affiliated groups for 2024. Lobbying state party officials from afar is a tougher enterprise than doing so on a more intimate level as Trump has been doing for the last two cycles. 

The second thing is that if other campaigns outside of Trump and DeSantis are waging a delegate fight, then they are doing so very quietly. To be clear, it is still early to be organizing for any looming delegate battle next year. Those strategies may still be forming even in the top campaigns. One should actually expect those plans to be somewhat dynamic in nature anyway given the constant influx of new events and new inputs. However, it is way too late to be jumping into the game of influencing state party officials to put rules in place that are, if not beneficial, then clearly do not advantage one other candidate over all of the rest. 

Moreover, that those efforts from everyone not named Trump or DeSantis have been so quiet remains a big story under the surface of this race. After all, the rules are not yet set in stone at the state level. And they will not be on the Republican side until October 1. If campaigns have not already been out there advocating for particular rules for delegate allocation and selection already as they have locked in in fits and starts over the summer, then that says a great deal about either 1) their comfort level with the rules as they are or 2) that they just do not have the manpower to adequately make a push at all. Either way, that is an important invisible primary story. 

BONUS: For more reactions to other aspects of the CNN delegates story, see FHQ Plus.


...
Look, I love James Pindell. He and I have had some great conversations over the years about New Hampshire and the primary calendar. But I am going to continue to point out what I consider to be journalistic malpractice when I see it on the broader 2024 story about New Hampshire and the DNC's revamped early calendar. I understand the audience to which Pindell's recent New Hampshire Magazine piece was directed. Readers are primarily going to be made up of folks who want to see the presidential primary in the Granite state remain first. So throwing some blame at the feet of the national party makes sense. They changed the rules. New Hampshire has a state law. The national rules and the state law conflict. Impasse. That is fine. More to the point, it is true. However, it is only part of the equation.

Try as New Hampshirites might, defusing this situation does not completely revolve around the DNC and it caving, letting New Hampshire Democrats hold a contest wherever the secretary of state schedules it. The DNC is not the only one "in a pickle." New Hampshire Democrats are too. The state party has options it has ignored but could "fix" this situation. And most everyone else is ignoring those possibilities too. 

Secretary Scanlan is very likely to set the date of the New Hampshire presidential primary for January 23. That will conflict with DNC rules. And no one expects that contest not to happen. No one. That is not the question here and has not been since December. However, New Hampshire Democrats do not have to use the results of that contest to allocate delegates to the national convention. The state party could do that in some alternate party-run process that is conducted under conditions compliant with national party rules. Something in addition to a neutered, beauty contest Democratic primary on January 23. 

That the Democratic Party in the Granite state has not given one inch toward that possibility, doubling down on "live first or die," is unlikely to play well with the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee after September 1, the new deadline for New Hampshire Democrats to comply. That is the same attitude that got Democrats in both Florida and Michigan in hot water in 2007. It is also what led to fairly significant penalties from the national party being levied against both. The DNC may again try to find an off ramp for New Hampshire, but at some point, whether that is immediately after September 1 or not, Democrats there are either going to have to take that off ramp or prepare for severe delegate penalties. 

It is a two-way street and all too often folks in and out of the media are only looking in one direction on this story. Look at what the state party is not doing too. That will play a role in how the DNC reacts and how this all plays out. 


...
From around the invisible primary...


--
See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
Posted by Josh Putnam at 8:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Share |
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)