2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: NEW MEXICO

This is part fifty-two of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

NEW MEXICO

Election type: primary
Date: June 7
Number of delegates: 24 [12 at-large, 9 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: proportional
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 15%
2012: proportional primary

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Changes since 2012
New Mexico Republicans are about to do in 2016 what they have done every four years since 1980: hold one of the final presidential primary elections of the season. Though Democrats during Bill Richardson's time as New Mexico governor created and opted into a February firehouse primary that was allowed at the time by state law, Republicans in the Land of Enchantment never followed suit. Likewise, the 2015 push by Republican legislators to move the consolidated primary -- presidential and those for other offices -- into March stalled in committee.

All that means is the New Mexico will once again have a primary on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. Furthermore, the Republican Party of New Mexico is like its neighbor to the west, Arizona. In both cases, the procedure for the primary and delegate allocation (and all that goes along with that) are laid out in state law rather than state party rules. The latter are dedicated to describing the delegate selection through a caucus/convention process. But since the presidential primary law has not been altered since 2011, there are no changes to the method by which Republicans in New Mexico will allocate delegates in 2016.

The only difference is based on the guidance provided by the RNC on the binding of automatic delegates. Now, those three, formerly unbound delegates are allocated and bound like the at-large and congressional district delegates.


Thresholds
The aforementioned state law sets the threshold for candidates to qualify for delegates at "at least 15 percent". Like most other states, fractional delegates are rounded in New Mexico, not fractional percentages. A failure to get at or above 15 percent in the statewide vote would leave a candidate excluded from the delegate allocation.


Delegate allocation (at-large, congressional district and automatic delegates)
New Mexico Republicans do not separate the delegate allocation across congressional districts and the state. All 24 delegates are in one pool that is proportionally allocated to qualifying candidates at 15 percent or more of the statewide vote in the primary.

The rounding rules are not laid out in either state law or the state party rules. In a competitive environment that would be consequential, but given the position of the New Mexico primary on the calendar and the fact that the field has typically winnowed down to a presumptive nominee, the lack of clear rounding rules carries less weight.

The tendency, then, is for the presumptive nominee to be the only one to clear the 15% threshold. And since the allocation equation divides by only the qualifying vote, the winner ends up being allocated all of the New Mexico delegates. That has been the case over the last two cycles in any event. Mitt Romney was the only candidate to earn more than 15 percent of the vote in the 2012 primary, and though Ron Paul just barely missed out on qualifying in 2008, John McCain took all of the delegates in 2008.

UPDATE:
After touching base with the Republican Party of New Mexico, the rounding scheme the party uses works as follows:

• Fractional delegates are rounded to the nearest whole number.
• If that leads to an overallocation of delegates, then the surplus delegate is subtracted from the candidate with the remainder least proximate to the rounding threshold.
• The allocation is done sequentially from the top votegetter down, but should any delegates remain unallocated, then the delegate would be allocated to the qualifying candidate with the highest remainder (closest to the rounding threshold). 

Binding
Again, this is a matter that is covered by state law. Delegates are proportionally allocated to all qualifiers (or just to the winner/presumptive nominee if he or she is the only qualifier) and bound by statute to vote for that candidate on the first ballot at the national convention. The law essentially provides the delegation chair at the convention with enforcement power. Said chair is instructed by the law to cast the votes in proportion to the vote in the primary (rather than the delegates themselves).

Delegates are released after the first ballot, but can be released before that if the candidate to whom they are bound dies or by written release.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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Recent Posts:
More Past Primary Calendar Revisionism

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: NEW JERSEY

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: MONTANA

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More Past Primary Calendar Revisionism

Under normal circumstances, FHQ would greet early morning NPR references to the 1981 Hunt Commission -- the Democrats' 1984 cycle commission to reexamine presidential nomination rules -- with great excitement. Right or wrong, such references are few and far between. However, these are the waning days of primary season 2016, and with that comes the continued distortion of the evolution of Democratic nomination rules, post-reform.

Previously, FHQ has dug into this, initially pushing back against the notion that the 1988 Southern Super Tuesday was a concept designed to keep Jesse Jackson from being successful in his second run for the Democratic nomination. In the time since then, that line of attack has morphed into a broader criticism on the alignment of the primary calendar in 2016. Bernie Sanders, the Sanders campaign, his surrogates and supporters have at various points over the last several months latched onto the idea that southern, conservative contests were frontloaded on the calendar at the expense of states with more progressive voters.¹

That conclusion ignores a couple of important points relative to the calendar.

The first is procedural. While it is true of the 2016 calendar that all of the southern states had voted by March 15, the blame for that cannot be attributed to the Democratic National Committee. Instead, it was Republican-controlled state governments that positioned those states' contests where they were on the calendar. Those Republican legislators were not making those moves -- and really, it was only Arkansas and North Carolina that moved into March² -- to help Hillary Clinton. Sure, her name came up in state legislative committee hearings discussing bills to move primaries around, but it was always in the context of how an earlier date for the primary in [fill in the blank state] would help quickly produce a Republican nominee who could beat the former Secretary of State in November.

Motivation aside, however, the fact remains that the national parties are not making the schedules of contests. The states -- either the state parties or state governments -- retain the ability to maneuver how they see fit within the guidelines handed down from the national parties. And parameters of those guidelines are not overly cumbersome. Outside of the carve-out states, those rules are not detailed to the level of persuading/dissuading certain states to hold primaries at certain points on the calendar. It amounts to the definition of a window in which states -- all states other than the carve-outs -- can conduct primaries and caucuses. Basically any time between the first Tuesday in March and early to mid-June (depending on the party). That's it. There is nothing at the national level that says, for instance, Texas here and California there.

The second neglected aspect is historical. Detractors of the regional configuration of the 2016 calendar often trace the origins of so-called SEC primary to the early to mid-1980s. That, again, southern conservative and/or establishment Democrats manufactured a southern-heavy beginning of the 1988 calendar and that that has survived. The problem is that ignores a quarter century of calendar movement.

First, the DNC widened its window from the second Tuesday in March for 1988 to the first Tuesday in March in the 1992 cycle. That tugged Georgia out of the 1988 regional cluster not to mention that several states -- Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina -- abandoned the conglomeration for later, pre-1988 calendar spots in 1992.

Then, over the next several cycles, both national parties allowed the calendar of contests to creep into February, widening the window even further. Yes, some southern states moved up, but that pattern was not unique to the South. Many states, regardless of region, shifted into February for 2004 and to a much greater degree for 2008. Importantly, Texas and Mississippi remained in March. The May North Carolina primary was even competitive late in the 2008 Democratic race.

Thereafter, the national party efforts to scale back the beginning of the calendar created partisan motivations at the state level but regional implications. February 2008 states moved their contests to later dates to comply with the new, informally-coordinated national party guidelines. Republican-controlled states sought to position their primaries and caucuses for a competitive 2012 cycle. As a result, those states were motivated to go as early as possible; usually March. Democratic-controlled states, on the other hand, were differently motivated. With an incumbent president seeking renomination unopposed, those states faced little urgency to settle into early dates. Instead, most shifted to April (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island) or later (California and New Jersey) dates.

That created a calendar with a southern and interior western flavor early and coastal (west and mid-Atlantic/northeastern) presence later. The regional aspect was a byproduct of partisan moves at the state level, not some push from above by the national parties.

Despite the fact that the Democratic nomination was open for 2016, the same basic alignment carried over from 2012 to 2016. That had little to do with the DNC. In fact, the party barely altered the 2012 rules for 2016. But states made decisions on 2016 primary positions in 2015 based on what 2016 looked like at the time: a likely Clinton nomination. Like 2012, Democratic-controlled states did not have the motivation to budge from those later positions on the calendar. There was no perceived urgency to shift to an earlier position to impact or maximize state-level influence on a competitive nomination race. At the time, it did not look like there would be one.

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All of that is nuance completely glossed over in the misguided foundation to the comments Sanders supporter, Nomiki Konst, made in the Morning Edition segment on NPR mentioned above. The more egregious shortcomings were in Ms. Konst's comments with respect to California ahead of the primary in the Golden state on June 7:

KONST: Yes, I have. I just got back from California. I spent five days visiting 12 cities with other surrogates from the campaign, just campaigning, trying to reach different communities that hadn't been reached.

You know, California, by design, in the '80s, if many listeners may recall, there was a Hunt Commission, which was sort of the counterreform effort after a few reform commissions. And at this Hunt Commission, the establishment spoke up and said, you know, we want to have our say in the party as well, not just the voters. And that's when they created - they came up with the idea of superdelegates.

And they also put some of these primaries, the more conservative states at the beginning of the process and more liberal states, like California, all the way at the end. So even though California is the largest state, by far the most progressive state, it was put at the end to prevent a more progressive grassroots candidate - and that was actually spoken of at the commission - from taking the nomination.

And that worked, I think, it the '80s because it was a much more conservative country. The Democratic Party today is 70 percent more progressive than it was 10 years ago. You have more independents. Forty-three percent of this country are made up of independents now. The Democratic Party's hemorrhaging membership every single year. And in the past 10 years alone, we have lost over 1,000 seats.

That whole passage is misleading on a number of levels. It draws from the foundation of the regionalism argument above, but also attempts to cherrypick an out-of-context situation with California and ram it into some party elites-gone-wild narrative tethered to the creation of superdelegates. The result is this twisted version of what supposedly happened in 1981-82 with the Hunt Commission.

The reality looked a bit more like the following:

First, the Hunt Commission is often viewed as a backlash to the reforms of the 1970s. While the pendulum did swing back toward more of an institutionalized party voice in the process, it was evidence of the continued experimentation on the part of the DNC to find the right balance between an open process and winning White House. Yes, it brought superdelegates, but it also brought back a relaxation on the prohibition of loophole primaries (directly elected delegates) and retained not only the "window rule" but the exemption of Iowa and New Hampshire from that rule. It also should be noted that the recommendations that came out of the commission were the hammered out mainly by surrogates for latent Mondale and Kennedy candidacies and a bloc of labor supporters on the commission.

Second, counter to Konst's contention, California was not "put at the end" of the calendar. That is simply false. The members of the commission from California raised something of a stink over the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire were exempt from the window rule. There were rumblings if not a state-level effort to move California to an earlier date, but that never materialized. That was due to a number of factors, but none of them were the DNC "putting" California at the end. Again, as described above, it was within the power of the state government to move the date of the primary. That never happened. And that may have had more to do with that fact that there were some in the Golden state who pushed for California to take New Hampshire's first in the nation spot. The aim was too high in other words and California kept its early June consolidated primary.

Relatedly, one other item that was conveniently left out of the commentary on NPR was that for four cycles -- 1996-2008 -- California occupied a range of non-June primary positions; all the way from late March 1996 to, yes, (not-so-southern) Super Tuesday in early February 2008. And if the national parties' calendar limitations were not already obvious, neither the DNC nor the RNC had much luck "putting" Florida and Michigan in compliant positions on the 2008 calendar.

The one coda FHQ would add to this is that the Hunt Commission came after an election. Its recommendations are not the direct function of a primary battle, bitter or otherwise. They certainly were not made in the immediate aftermath of primary season or even the 1980 national convention. Rather, those recommendations for rules changes for the 1984 cycle were a byproduct of two prospective campaigns -- Mondale and Kennedy -- trying to push rules that would benefit themselves. That is an important, parallel lens through which to view this as well. It was not all Establishment Strikes Back.

...and neither was 2016 either. At least it wasn't in terms of California's position on the calendar.


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¹ Never mind the fact that as older, conservative Democrats in the South have aged out of the electorate and been replaced by younger, conservative Republicans, the Democratic electorate across the South has become much more minority-based and more liberal/progressive.

² Yes, Texas "moved" but the Lone Star state having a late May primary in 2012 was a function of redistricting issues, not a conscious effort to "backload". The Texas statutes have had the primary there scheduled for a Tuesday during one of the first two weeks of March since 1988. Texas' shift then was a reversion rather anything engineered (by the DNC, Republican legislators or otherwise).


Recent Posts:
2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: NEW JERSEY

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: MONTANA

About those bound delegates

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2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: NEW JERSEY

This is part fifty-one of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

NEW JERSEY

Election type: primary
Date: June 7
Number of delegates: 51 [12 at-large, 36 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-all
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: winner-take-all primary

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Changes since 2012
Like California, New Jersey abandoned its February primary in 2012 for a cheaper, consolidated primary in early June. And like California, New Jersey will carry over the same rules from 2012 to 2016. The primary will fall on the Tuesday after the first Monday in June, the delegates will be directly elected on the primary ballot and the allocation will be winner-take-all based on the statewide results in the primary.


Thresholds
The winner-take-all method New Jersey Republicans utilize means there are no thresholds to qualify for delegates. The winner must have just one more vote than the runner-up to claim all 51 delegates.


Delegate allocation (at-large, congressional district and automatic delegates)
Not to belabor the point, but the plurality winner of the statewide vote is awarded all of the delegates in the Garden state according to New Jersey Republican Party rule 5(B)(3):

Note also, that the three automatic/party delegates are included in that allocation. Contrary to the majority of states, New Jersey Republicans did not have to make any adjustments to their previous formula in the aftermath of the RNC general counsels' office guidance on how automatic are to be allocated in instances where their allocation is/was not clear in state party rules.


Binding
As opposed to the ballots in some other states where delegates are directly elected -- Pennsylvania and West Virginia come to mind -- voters have a much easier time voting for their preferred candidate and the delegates on the ballot aligned with them. In fact, the candidates' names appear at the top of the ballot and their respective slates (of delegates) are listed immediately below. That ballot proximity -- delegates to candidates -- makes it much less likely that any ballot roll-off will occur and/or that delegates/delegate slates of another candidate would win.

Rule 6 of the New Jersey Republican Party rules for delegate selection and allocation bind all 51 delegates to the statewide primary winner for the first ballot. That is always true unless the winner declines to participate in the national convention or "makes known publicly" that he or she is no longer in the running for the nomination, then the delegates are unbound and free to choose whomever in the voting at the convention.

That is a more expansive view of the method by which delegates are released. There is no language about suspension or withdrawal. If not for the fact that New Jersey has such a late primary and that a presumptive nominee has already emerged, then the Garden state would appear to have a low bar for the release of delegates similar to those in Louisiana and Michigan.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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Recent Posts:
2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: MONTANA

About those bound delegates

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: CALIFORNIA

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook or subscribe by Email.

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: MONTANA

This is part fifty of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

MONTANA

Election type: primary
Date: June 7
Number of delegates: 27 [21 at-large, 3 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-all
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: non-binding primary/convention

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Changes since 2012
Little is different on the surface in Montana in 2016 as compared to the 2012 cycle. The primary in the Treasure state will still bring up the rear of the primary calendar on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June as usual. However, unlike past cycles, the primary will carry more weight. As was the case in Nebraska, the state party in Montana dropped its formerly non-binding/advisory primary in order to comply with the new binding requirements added to the RNC rules during and after 2012.

Montana Republicans traditionally have sent an unbound delegation to the Republican National Convention, but to continue doing that while essentially ignoring the results of the primary would have run afoul of changes made to Rule 16(a)(1). Under the new rule for 2016, any statewide preference vote -- whether via primary or caucuses -- binds the delegates to the national convention in a manner to be chosen by the state party.

And in this case, Montana Republicans chose a route similar to the one in Nebraska: all delegates will be bound to the statewide primary winner. That is made all the simpler by the fact that with only one congressional district, Montana Republicans had no options at their disposal in terms of splitting the allocation between statewide and congressional district results. They are one in the same.


Thresholds
Since the Montana Republican Party has opted to hold a winner-take-all primary for their 27 delegates, there is no threshold of voter support a candidate must meet in order to qualify for delegates.


Delegate allocation (at-large, congressional district and automatic delegates)
All 27 delegates, regardless of distinction, are allocated to the winner of the June 7 primary under Montana Republican Party bylaws (Section III.F.3). While only a plurality is required to claim all of the delegates, the late date of the Montana primary and the fact that the field has winnowed (and a presumptive nominee has emerged) likely means that the winner will take more than a majority of the vote.


Binding
Delegates selected at the May 14 State Delegate Convention are bound to the winner of the June 7 primary through the first ballot at the national convention. That binding is contingent upon the Montana primary winner having his or her name placed in nomination. If that does not occur, then the  27 delegates are unbound on the first ballot. However, and again, given the late primary date and a field narrowed down to the presumptive nominee, it is likely that the Montana primary winner will have his or her name put in nomination. Stated differently, the presumptive nominee is likely to win the Montana primary. That presumptive nominee will have his or her name on the roll call ballot at the national convention.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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Recent Posts:
About those bound delegates

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: CALIFORNIA

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: WASHINGTON

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About those bound delegates

The Associated Press delegate count inched above the 1237 delegate barrier for Donald Trump last week, making the New York businessman the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. What put Trump over the top were not delegates bound to him through the Washington primary two days prior. Rather, it was a handful of unbound delegates pledging to Trump that did the trick.

That is all well and good. FHQ has no issue with the call. Given the suspensions of the Cruz and Kasich campaigns in the wake of the Indiana primary in early May, Trump was going to cross over the majority threshold at some point anyway.

What gives FHQ some pause, though, is that the AP number of bound delegates keeps changing. Trump's total shrunk from 1150 on May 26 to 1144 as of June 1. Both are north of where Trump likely is in the bound count in reality. By comparison, FHQ has Trump at 1138 bound delegates.  Here is where the two counts differ:

Where the AP has fewer delegates than FHQ bound to Trump
Washington
AP: 40
FHQ: 41
Notes: When the Washington secretary of state certifies the results of the May 24 primary -- importantly with the write-in votes not currently included -- Trump's total will likely settle on 40 delegates. The remaining four will be unbound. That will be true so long as the Washington total of write-ins hovers around the percentage of similar votes in the Oregon primary (around 3 percent).

That means that Trump is likely only at 1137 bound delegates and that there is a difference of seven delegates to be reconciled.

Where the AP has more delegates than FHQ bound to Trump
New Hampshire
AP: 12
FHQ: 11
Notes: There is nothing new from NHGOP that has been made public with respect to the certified delegate count in the Granite state. There were some discrepancies that were pointed out about how the count in New Hampshire ended up where it did, but if that correction was made, Trump would have fewer not more delegates. The twelfth delegate did come from Rubio's total. FHQ still has the Florida senator at two delegates to the AP's one. If Rubio had released a delegate (if only one could be released), then that delegate would be unbound and free to pledge to whomever. Yet, that would still be an unbound (and not re-bound) delegate.

Nevada
AP: 16
FHQ : 14
Notes: The difference here is the two Carson delegates. The Carson campaign released those delegates -- making them unbound -- rather than choosing to have them reallocated as is allowed under Nevada Republican Party rules. Those are unbound but pledged delegates; released by Carson and pledged to Trump.

American Samoa
AP: 9
FHQ: 0
Notes: All nine American Samoa delegates are unbound by rule.

Colorado
AP: 1
FHQ: 0
Notes: Ted Cruz claimed 30 of the 34 possible bound delegates in Colorado. The remainder elected at congressional district and state conventions were unbound/uncommitted but aligned with Cruz. That one delegate the AP has in the Trump column is either one of those four uncommitted delegates or one of the three unbound automatic/party delegates. Regardless, like Nevada and American Samoa above, that delegate is unbound but pledged to Trump.

Oklahoma
AP 14
FHQ: 13
Notes: Due to the allocation equation used by the Oklahoma Republican Party -- the denominator was total rather than qualified -- votes, there were three uncommitted delegates that came out of the March 1 primary. Since the delegates allocated to Cruz and Rubio cannot be released until those candidates do not appear on the first ballot at the convention, one of those three uncommitted delegates has likely pledged to Trump. But again, that delegate, too, is unbound and thus does not contribute to the difference between the two counts.

Louisiana
AP: 25
FHQ: 18
Notes: First, Louisiana had a similar allocation equation to Oklahoma. That meant that there were five uncommitted delegates from the March 5 primary in the Pelican state. Additionally, under LAGOP rules, delegates are automatically released from any candidate who has suspended their campaign. That is a low bar compared to most states that require a more formal withdrawal from the race to release delegates. Since the AP still has Cruz at 18 delegates from Louisiana, that means that the additional seven delegates they have in Trump's column are from some combination of the five uncommitted delegates and the five released (and unbound) Rubio delegates. So again, all of those are unbound.

Virgin Islands
AP: 8
FHQ: 1
Notes: This one is still tricky given the dispute over which delegation will be seated at the Republican National Convention. The uncommitted slate of six delegates that was elected was discarded and replaced by the six elected alternates; one of which was a committed (and thus bound) Trump delegate. Seven others -- some of whom are automatic/party delegates -- have since pledged to support Trump as well. But again, those delegates were either already unbound or were made so upon the suspension of the campaigns with which they were aligned (and thus bound). This, then, is another group of delegates that are unbound but pledged to Trump. Only the original one delegate -- an elected, Trump-aligned delegate -- is bound to Trump.

Guam
AP: 9
FHQ: 0
Notes: As with American Samoa, the nine delegates from Guam are unbound by rule.

North Dakota:
AP: 16
FHQ: 0
Notes: All 28 of North Dakota's delegates are unbound by rule since the state party skipped any direct preference vote. The 16 from the AP count are all unbound but pledged delegates.

Pennsylvania
AP: 64
FHQ: 17
Notes: The 47 delegate difference here is based on unbound delegates elected at the congressional district level in the Keystone state. None of them are bound to Trump. They are only pledged to him.

Looking at the differences, only the New Hampshire one stands out as one that might be bound. But even that is not clear. The rest are clearly unbound whether by election, rule or release. The FHQ picture is also largely corroborated by the overall count at The Green Papers. The FHQ (1138) and Green Papers (1139) counts are within one delegate of each other and that is based on outdated results the latter is using for Oregon. Once those numbers are brought in line with the totals the Oregon secretary of state has, then the overall total matches completely.

Again, FHQ is not disputing that Trump is over 1237 or the AP's estimation of that. Unbound delegates put the now presumptive nominee over the top. However, the AP is currently overestimating the bound delegate total Trump has. Hopefully that number continues to decrease as it has since last week and converges with the more accurate counts.


Recent Posts:
2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: CALIFORNIA

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: WASHINGTON

Dayton Signs Minnesota Presidential Primary Bill

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2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: CALIFORNIA

This is part forty-nine of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

CALIFORNIA

Election type: primary
Date: June 7
Number of delegates: 172 [10 at-large, 159 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: winner-take-most primary

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Changes since 2012
The opening of the Section 3 summary of the California Republican Party delegate selection rules in the party's 16F filing with the Republican National Committee says it all:

California rules have not changed from those applicable to the 2012 convention.

And that is true. The primary still falls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June as it did four years ago. The delegates are allocated by a winner-take-most formula. Additionally, those delegates are chosen by the candidates and their campaigns rather than in caucuses/conventions that give the candidates less control over who is bound to them.


Thresholds
Since California Republicans use a winner-take-all by congressional district method of awarding delegates, there are no thresholds candidates must meet in order to qualify for delegates. The plurality winner(s) is/are allocated all of the delegates either statewide or within the congressional districts.


Delegate allocation (at-large and automatic delegates)
The 13 at-large and automatic delegates are allocated to the winner of the statewide contest. Relative to other winner-take-most states like South Carolina or Wisconsin, California's is a rather modest winner's bonus. Winning South Carolina meant winning just over half of the total number of delegates to be allocated. In Wisconsin, the at-large delegates comprised more than a third of the total number of delegates. That much more closely resembles a true winner's bonus.

Another way to look at it is that a challenger to the statewide winner would find it difficult overcome the deficit created by a loss statewide in the congressional districts. That is not necessarily the case in California, where the at-large (and automatic delegates) only make up a little less than 8% of the delegates the state has to offer. Theoretically, a challenging candidate could overcome the winner's bonus deficit by winning five more congressional districts (in a pool of 53) than the statewide winner. That is a scenario where the statewide winner's support would be concentrated in a smaller number of districts with a greater number of votes/voters.

There is, then, a path by which a candidate other than the statewide winner could win the delegate race in California. However, while that path looks good on paper, the allocation rules have not tended to work that way in practice in the Golden state.

Take 2008. The California primary was in early February, concurrent with a number of other states and at a much more competitive point on the primary calendar. Furthermore, John McCain's victory statewide was by about 7.5 percent over Mitt Romney. That is not necessarily close, but not a landslide either. McCain got the 10 at-large delegates, and that statewide win was nearly uniformly distributed across the 53 districts. Romney took just four of them for 12 delegates.

The takeaway, as has been the case with other winner-take-most states, is that the statewide results would have to be really close for the winner to be imperiled in any way in the delegate count coming out of the state. That is less true in smaller (and/or more Republican states using the allocation method) than in California where there are more opportunities/districts. Yet, even in California, that has not tended to occur.

Some of that has to do with how late the primary is; typically after the a presumptive nominee has emerged.


Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
The allocation in the 53 congressional districts is simple enough: win the district, win its three delegates. The difference for California is that its congressional districts alone account for more delegates than are available in any other state.


Binding
As mentioned above, the candidates and their campaigns form a slate of delegates ahead of the June primary. The results of the primary determine which delegates -- from which campaign -- will head to the national convention. At the convention, those delegates "shall use his or her best efforts at the convention for the party’s presidential nominee candidate from California to whom the delegate has pledged support until the person is nominated for the office of President of the United States by the convention, receives less than 10 percent of the votes for nomination by the convention, releases the delegate from his or her obligation, or until two convention nominating ballots have been taken." Unless any of the other conditions are met, then, the California delegation is bound through the first two ballots at the national convention.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


--
Recent Posts:

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: WASHINGTON

Dayton Signs Minnesota Presidential Primary Bill

Colorado Presidential Primary Bill Dies in Committee

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Tradition is a powerful force to overcome

That's Jeremy Peters from the New York Times in one of the opening salvos in what is a quadrennial rite after every primary season: the look ahead to delegate rules for the next cycle. Nomination largely settled, Republicans are already batting around a range of ideas to again reform the party's presidential nomination process for 2020. But rather than focus on the specifics of some of the ideas  -- and there are no doubt some intriguing ones included in Peters' story -- FHQ will instead hone in on the negative inertia that "tradition" tends to bring to the table around which rules changes are negotiated every four years.

First, tradition is an imperfect term. It is not inaccurate, but it is a catch-all that glosses over a complicated, political process. No one has ever been satisfied with "tradition" as the answer to questions like...

Why are presidential nominees selected in this way? 

Why are Iowa and New Hampshire always first?  

Why aren't all primaries opened/closed? 

Why do we still have caucuses?

The list goes on.

Again, no one is ever satisfied with that answer -- tradition -- because it borders on the tautological: the rules are the way they are because those are the rules. Additionally, it always leads to the very obvious follow up question, "Well, why?"

The answer ultimately lies in the fact that rarely is an alternative put forth that can garner widespread enough support among convention delegates or national party committees or state parties or the state themselves as separate groups or collectively to be implemented. It is not that there are not alternatives. There are plenty of them, but what they lack is consensus. To the national parties what they lack is certainty. To the states/state parties what they lack is flexibility.

The trouble with presidential nomination reform is not tradition. Instead the problem is that reform is a complex effort at coordinating widely ranging interests within and sometimes across diverse political parties. If that were not enough, add to the mix that state governments, often in partisan conflict with at least one party, control important aspects of the process (eg: when primaries are, who can participate in them, etc.).

Those competing interests often make bringing about fundamental, sweeping changes (or even incremental ones where there is enough overlapping interest) to the system impossible. Such a set up does not tend to produce directives from the national party to close all primaries, for example.¹ To the contrary, with so many interests involved, the likely outcome is more incremental and smaller in scope; like the RNC decreasing the proportionality window from a whole month in 2012 to just two weeks in 2016. Incremental changes -- goals -- are more achievable, but are the very types of tweaks that are most likely to maintain large parts of the status quo.

...or tradition, if one will.

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¹ Closing or opening primaries cuts to the very heart of what political parties are. They are private organizations that can, under the first amendment, freely associate with whomever they choose. But who gets to choose who gets to associate; to participate in a primary election? Under the above idea, it would be the Republican National Committee (or the delegates at the national convention) making that determination. But what about Republican state parties that would prefer a more open system that allows the party to potentially draw more voters into its ranks? That was the basis of the Tashjian case. Or what about the open primary states that are controlled by Democrats in states that Democrats in control of at least one part of the decision-making apparatus within the state? Does a national party push those state parties toward closed caucuses? Do they offer some sort of incentive/penalty structure to gain compliance? What? The more one digs, the more complicated it gets. The more questions arise.


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2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: WASHINGTON

This is part forty-eight of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

WASHINGTON

Election type: primary
Date: May 24
Number of delegates: 44 [11 at-large, 30 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: proportional (with winner-take-all trigger for majority support at the
congressional district level)
Threshold to qualify for delegates: 20%
2012: nonbinding caucus

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Changes since 2012
Washington state joins Idaho and Missouri on the list of states that shifted from 2012 caucuses to 2016 primaries. Each has its own story, but the tale in the Evergreen state is a long one. Historically, the primary has been little used in Washington since a voter initiative added after the 1988 cycle. Washington Democrats have never utilized the election as a means of allocating national convention delegates in the three competitive cycles the party has had since 1988 and that carried over into the 2016 cycle as well.¹

Evergreen state Republicans have only been marginally more active in using the primary election over the same time period. Traditionally, the party has allocated about half of its delegates through the primary while the other half were awarded through a caucus/convention process.

The story of the Washington primary, then, is one of a contest that has traditionally been underemployed by the state parties. Given that reality, in less competitive cycles, there has existed at least some motivation to cancel the primary in order to save the state money. That was the case in 2004 when only Democrats had an active nomination race and were not going to use the primary anyway, and again in 2012 when the combination of a budget shortfall and the Washington State Republican Party only half using the primary led to cancelations.

But those cancelations were always only temporary, lasting just the one cycle. That brought the primary back in the subsequent presidential election years. And that all set the baseline to which a number of changes the WSRP has instituted for 2016 can be compared.

Yes, the 2016 primary replaced the 2012 caucuses, but that came about because Washington Republicans narrowly held the state Senate after the 2014 elections. That allowed them to stop any efforts to cancel the primary (which they did). However, holding only the state Senate meant Republicans in the legislature faced a partisan roadblock in moving the primary to an earlier date. Plans to for a coordinated March 8 primary with Idaho were scuttled by Democrats on several occasions.

Once the primary scheduling had finally resolved itself in August 2015, Washington Republicans also opted to use the primary to allocate all of their convention delegates, breaking with the half and half approach that had been the custom. All told, Washington Republicans shifted from a non-binding, early March caucus in 2012 to a binding, late May primary in 2016.


Thresholds
In trading the non-binding caucuses for a binding primary, the WSRP adopted a proportional method of allocation that split the awarding of delegates across both congressional districts and the state. Part of that allocation plan entails a qualifying threshold. To win any delegates in the Washington primary a candidate must win at least 20 percent of the vote -- the maximum allowable threshold under RNC rules -- within a congressional district or statewide. Those who fail to reach that threshold fail to win any delegates. This is not unlike a number of the states that held contests in the proportionality window; particularly those that were part of the SEC primary on March 1.

Additionally, there is a winner-take-all threshold that applies. However, that only applies in the case of the allocation of congressional district delegates. The candidate who wins a majority of the delegates within any of the ten congressional districts in Washington state, wins all three delegates from that district.

But again, this threshold is only applicable in the congressional districts. There is no winner-take-all threshold for the 14 at-large and automatic delegates. As such, that pool of delegates is always proportionally allocated to candidates with more than 20 percent of the vote statewide. This is is a setup unique to Washington. In most cases where there is a winner-take-all trigger, it separately affects both the at-large and congressional district delegate allocation. In other instances, a statewide majority supersedes the separate allocation, awarding all delegates, regardless of distinction, to the majority winner.


Delegate allocation (at-large and automatic delegates)
If the unevenly applied winner-take-all trigger was not enough, there are additional wrinkles to the allocation of the at-large and automatic delegates. It is impossible under the WSRP delegate allocation plan for a candidate to win all 14 at-large and automatic delegates. Not only is there no winner-take-all trigger, but a candidate cannot even take a backdoor route to the allocation of all of those delegates by virtue of being the only qualifying candidate.

There is no backdoor winner-take-all trigger in Washington and that has everything to to do with the underlying allocation equation the Washington Republican Party is using. Rather than dividing a candidate's vote share by the total qualifying vote -- just the votes for the candidates with 20 percent or more of the statewide vote -- the WSRP is dividing by the total number of votes cast for both qualifiers and non-qualifiers alike.

This is atypical as the modal activity on the state level in 2016 has been to use the qualifying vote instead of the total vote as the denominator in the allocation equation.

Why?

Basically, the answer lies in efficiency. To use the qualifying vote is to streamline the process; to eliminate the possibility of the obvious follow up question. What do we do with these unallocated delegates? This is less of an issue when there is a small group of candidates who are qualifying. But that is a pretty limited sweet spot. In scenarios where there is a large field of candidates (and only a limited few are barely clearing the qualifying threshold) or a smaller field of candidates with a clear frontrunner (but the laggards are still winning votes), the number of unallocated delegates tends to increase.

Those are situations in which non-qualifiers are still winning a sizable chunk of the vote; leaving a corresponding bloc of delegates unallocated in the process.

Let's use the results in last week's Oregon primary to illustrate this point. Donald Trump won 67 percent of the vote in the Beaver state while Cruz and Kasich respectively took 17 percent and 16 percent of the statewide vote. If that outcome were to repeat itself statewide in the Washington primary, it would create the following byproducts: 1) Cruz and Kasich would not qualify for any of the 14 delegates but 2) Trump would not win all of them as the only qualifier.

Trump would take two-thirds of the delegates, but the remaining one-third would be unaccounted for. Of course, "unaccounted for" in this case means that those delegates are unallocated. And in Washington, the state party is treating those delegates as unbound. That one-third is about five unbound delegates.

All of this is compounded by the rounding method the WSRP is using. The basic rounding scheme is simple enough. The party is rounding to the nearest whole number: Qualifying candidates with a fractional delegate of .5 or above round up while any fraction below .5 rounds down. The complication comes in how the party is dealing with the contingencies in which rounding leads to either an over- or under-allocation of at-large and automatic delegates.

Consistent with some other states, Washington Republicans are using a furthest from the rounding threshold method in cases where superfluous delegates are allocated due to rounding. An over-allocated delegate is subtracted from the total of the candidate with a fractional delegate furthest from the rounding threshold.

If, however, there are any under-allocated delegates due to rounding, then those delegates remain unbound as opposed to being allocated to the candidate, for example, closest to the rounding threshold (as is the case in some other states).


Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
The picture of how the 30 congressional district delegates are allocated is a bit more defined. There is no potential for unbound delegates, but there are a number of possibilities that the WSRP has helpfully laid out for their allocation in Rule 37B of the party bylaws:

1. There is a winner-take-all trigger on the congressional district level. If a candidate wins a majority of the vote in any of the 10 Washington congressional districts, then that candidate receives all three delegates from that district. The remaining scenarios are dependent on whether/if a candidate hits the 20 percent qualifying threshold. 
2. If no candidate hits 20 percent, then the top three votegetters in that district each are awarded one delegate. 
3. There technically is also a backdoor winner-take-all trigger on the congressional district level. If only one candidate clears the 20 percent threshold in one of the congressional districts, then that one qualifying candidate receives all three delegates from that district. 
4. If two candidate surpass 20 percent of the vote, then the allocation resembles, say, the Georgia congressional district allocation: the district winner gets two delegates and the runner up, the remainder..
5. Should three candidates all qualify for delegates, then each qualifier is allocated one delegate as in Oklahoma. 
6. Finally, if four candidates clear 20 percent, then the top three finishers receive one delegate each.

A winnowed field with a frontrunner/presumptive nominee is likely to produce a lopsided allocation of congressional district delegates. The winner-take-all trigger described in #1 above is most likely to be tripped in that scenario.


Binding
While the 2012 caucuses in Washington were described as non-binding above, that glosses over some of the intricacies of how the Republican Party in the Evergreen state handled its delegate selection process. Delegates were bound but based not on the results of the early March caucuses in 2012. Instead delegates were bound as they have been in Colorado, the Virgin Islands or Wyoming in 2016: based on which presidential candidate the delegate candidates (selected at district and state conventions) affiliated with in filing to run for national convention delegation openings. Four years ago, Washington Republican delegates were bound for the first ballot at the national convention to the candidate they preferred when filing to run.

The first ballot is still the limit of the bond in 2016 as well. However, the selection of delegates does not have to follow the results of the primary. As is the case in most other states, the selection process is completely divorced from the allocation process. Whereas 2012 delegates from Washington were locked into to the candidate they preferred when filing to run, that is not the case in 2016. The delegates have already been selected in Washington, and 40 of the 41 selected were aligned with Ted Cruz. Rather than supporting the Texas senator -- as would have been the case four years ago -- those delegates will likely be bound to Donald Trump based on the primary results on the first and likely only ballot at the national convention.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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¹ Those cycles include 1992, 2000 and 2008. Yes, 2004 was a nomination that was contested on the Democratic side, but the Democratic-controlled Washington legislature postponed the primary that year.


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Dayton Signs Minnesota Presidential Primary Bill

The list of caucus states for 2020 decreased by one more on Sunday, May 22.

Already, Maine has shifted from caucus to primary for 2020, and now Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (D) has signed legislation triggering the same transition in the North Star state. Like Maine, the newly signed law does not specify a date for the new election, but instead defers the "when" decision to another party. Under the Maine primary law, the legislature cedes the decision-making authority to the secretary of state who consults with the state parties before settling on a date.

The new Minnesota law provides for a similar setup. However, the power flows in a different manner. As has been the case with the past Minnesota caucuses, the state parties have the right of first refusal. If they can agree on a date for the primary (see 2015 action on the caucus date), then the parties jointly set the date. Absent agreement (see 2011 inaction), though, the default date on which the secretary of state is to conduct a primary election is the first Tuesday in March. The power, then, is mostly housed within the state parties in Minnesota. In Maine, they only play a consulting role to the secretary of state, who makes the final decision on the date of the primary.

It is also worth noting that while there is no specified date in the new Maine law, it does restrict the window in which the primary can occur to a Tuesday in March. The parties in Minnesota are not as constrained. Earlier is often preferable and the past certainly suggests a convergence between the default date in the new law, the likely earliest date allowed by the national parties and what the state parties will ultimately choose. All of that points toward the first Tuesday in March. However, if they agree to it, the state parties in the Gopher state could opt for a later date -- outside of March -- for the primary as well.

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As FHQ discussed during the Maine post, presidential primary legislation -- whether to shift the date or change to/from a primary -- is not common during presidential election years. Usually legislators wait to make a decision after -- not in the midst of -- a primary battle, heated or otherwise. That is not to say that the tendency is to wait until no one is paying attention. Rather, the decision is typically held until closer to the next election, a point after the national party rules for the following cycle have been set. That avoids unintended consequences (or the need to return to an issue and re-legislate). Of course, the Minnesota shift is a change that is likely well within the calendar window the national parties will establish for nominating contests in the 2020 cycle (barring unlikely fundamental changes to the nominating system).

If legislation in presidential election years is atypical, then changes are even rarer. Minnesota now makes the second state to have made a change in 2016 for 2020. Given the tradition the caucus holds in Minnesota, this was a move that was surprisingly uncontroversial. The 2016 legislative session opened in the wake of the March 1 caucuses in Minnesota and there was a bevy of legislation introduced during the last two weeks of March.

Of the seven bills that were introduced across both legislative chambers, four of them -- including SF 2985, the bill just signed into law -- basically called for the establishment of a primary election with date-setting authority vested in the state parties. The other three established the primary but kept the date decision in the hands of the legislature. Two called for a first Tuesday in March primary while the third proposed a would-be non-compliant first Tuesday in February date. Only SF 2985 and its state House companion ever got out of committee.

And SF 2985 did not really face much resistance other than time. It languished in committee, but with the legislative session in its waning days in early May, the effort to move from a caucus to a primary gathered steam. A flurry of activity pushed it first through the Democratic-controlled state Senate. Just over half of the minority Republican caucus (15 of 28 Republican senators) opposed the bill, but could not stop it from passing the chamber on the strength of support from a unified Democratic caucus and the remainder of the Republicans. On the House side there was only token opposition to an amended version of the Senate-passed bill. Nearly even numbers of Democratic (10) and Republican (13) representatives voted in opposition, but they were outgunned in a lopsided 106-23 final vote. That version found concurrence in the state Senate with only 11 votes in dissent before heading off to the governor's desk.

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This is not the first attempt at such a change either. A similar caucus-to-primary effort failed just a year ago. And before that primary bills were introduced but never acted on in both 2008 and 2009.

Minnesota has had a history with presidential primaries, but the experience was minimal. There was a primary in 1992, but it was a beauty contest for Democrats (The party continued to use the caucuses.) and state Republicans used it in a year in which President George H.W. Bush saw only limited opposition for renomination.


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Colorado Presidential Primary Bill Dies in Committee

The 2016 effort to reestablish a presidential primary in Colorado ended up in the same place as a similar push in 2015: bottled up by Republicans in a state Senate committee as the legislative session expired.

The bill emerged late in the session on the heels of March precinct caucuses that left some in the Centennial state and in aggrieved campaigns complaining about the process on inclusivity and fairness grounds. Despite those issues, Republicans on the Colorado Senate Veterans and Military Affairs Committee balked at rushing legislation through in this session.

Still, this is the second year in a row in which legislation to bring a presidential primary back in Colorado stalled in the state Senate. The 2016 version passed the state House with only nine dissenting votes. However, there is a split in the Republican-controlled state Senate, and the pattern there appears to be one in which the pro-caucus forces have some advantage.

This issue will likely come back up in some subsequent session of the Colorado state legislature. But movement on any effort to return Colorado to the ranks of presidential primary states may depend on how the dust settles on state legislative elections this fall. A change in partisan control in the state House or Senate -- each party controls a chamber now -- may buoy the fortunes of primary advocates or further cement the caucus process in the state for another cycle.


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