Who's your money on?Follow

Game of Thrones viewership numbers disagree with you there.

Disappointingly, none of them show up in tights.

The question I have is how the delegates themselves are chosen. I don't mean how they are pledged to vote in the first round at the convention, but how the actual physical people are chosen. That could become super important if no one has a majority going in. You'd normally expect that delegates who are also supporters of the candidates they are delegates for will continue to support them in subsequent voting rounds (resulting, intentionally, in an amount of delegate support for the plurality candidate often well in excess of his actual popular support in the state the delegates represent). How much of that "goes back" in subsequent rounds though. I've been poking around trying to figure this out, but it looks as though, at least on the GOP side, there are some delegates that are effectively "your delegates", assigned based on the districts you win in the election (of course, this too varies by state), and then additional delegates based on the state party control in the state, whether they voted for the GOP in the last presidential election, etc. Are these slots filled by faithful supporters for the candidate who 'won' them in the primary, or are they existing people who are merely required to support that candidate in the first round because of the primary outcome and convention rules?

And what's the ratio of these? I recall when we were talking about SC, there were 21 district based delegates (3 per each of the 7 districts), and 29 total "bonus" delegates (for all the other various reasons delegates are granted to a state). How many of those would remain (or are) actual Trump supporters themselves? I can't seem to find a definitive answer for this, but it may have a massive effect on the votes if no majority is there going in since actual support in second round voting could shift significantly as a result of this. I'm not in favor of someone else parachuting in or anything, but I suspect that's where negatives within the party may become huge. Also not a huge fan of Cruz, (and he's not well liked by the party establishment either). I've also heard that rule 40 only applies on the first round of voting, so it's not super relevant for this case. So basically *anyone* would be up for potential nomination as a result. More interestingly, depending on how those additional delegates are actually chosen, the odds of neither Trump or Cruz being able to win enough to get a majority if/when those delegates are freed up, could be quite high.

And that's when things get "interesting".

Not much to go on, and not really going out of my way to find more either, but looks like in tomorrow's primary Trump and Clinton are leading in Arizona while Cruz and Sanders have Utah. Idaho looks pretty even for Clinton and Sanders, slightly in Sanders' favor but by less than a margin of error.

Edited, Mar 21st 2016 12:57pm by lolgaxe

Sanders won the Democrats Abroad vote, 9 delegates to 4.

#FeeltheBern #Bernmentum #FourmonthsuntilCalifornia

It sounds as though Cruz reached out to Rubio about a "unity campaign" with Rubio in the VP slot and was shut down. Just as well, Rubio might have helped secure the nomination (probably not though; see below) but would have offered nothing to the general election ticket.

Latest polling suggests that the big winner from Rubio leaving the race was Kasich (up 4pts), with Trump getting a single point boost and Cruz getting nothing.

Might as well just plug Palin in for VP and complete this nightmare.

I threw up in my mouth. Thanks.

Is you nightmare the Dems winning?

I'm unsure of what you mean.

AZ is only 2% reporting -- Kasich might still pull it out!

Edit: Speaking of Palin, I guess she has a TV show pending where she's.... a judge? Not like a sitcom but a Judge Judy sort of thing? And this is something someone is paying her to do? And the best thing she has to do?

Edited, Mar 22nd 2016 10:59pm by Jophiel

Cruz looks to have overperformed in Utah, not that it really matters once you break 50%.

Unfortunately, Trump still received the most delegates for sweeping Arizona and I think Utah was the last caucus state considered to be that favorable towards Cruz.

At this rate he'll be a little more than halfway caught up by the last primaries.

Even then, he probably wont win. Let's imagine that HRC gets indicted. This does not actually eliminate her delegate count though. She's ineligible for the nomination, but (um... I've only looked at the RNC rules, but assuming they're similar) her delegates are still pledged to vote for her in the initial count. So if Sanders doesn't have a majority, and she does, she still "wins". So you have a majority candidate who is ineligible to be nominated, so you go to further rounds of voting. At which point the delegates are free to vote for someone else. I suppose it's possible they all decide to go for Sanders at that point, but my suspicion is that the DNC would put up a replacement candidate for Clinton (Warren perhaps?), and that replacement will get her votes in the convention.

Again, I'm basing this on some analysis of the whole "rule 40" thing on the RNC side (and some other stuff), so it's possible there are some differences. Super delegates for one, but I think that just makes it easier for them to just replace her rather than have Sanders win if she's somehow ineligible for the nomination. And I suspect that that Democratic party is far more willing to parachute a candidate in than the GOP is. Especially in this election cycle, where it looks pretty clear that the DNC more or less declared Clinton to be the sole viable candidate from the get go, with Sanders never having been considered to really be in the running (boy were they surprised).

Probably wont be an issue. I long ago realized that the political analog to "too big to fail' is "too prominent to indict". Well, at least on the Democrat side of the fence. Certainly does seem to be the case with the Clintons.

If something happened to Clinton to effectively eliminate her from nomination, she could release her delegates. She did exactly that (in the name of party unity, not because of any scandal) in the 2008 convention before the vote occurred so that her delegates could vote for Obama and give him the nomination via acclamation instead of forcing a state-by-state vote. There were some still bound to her via state rules and some who just wanted to go down with the Clinton ship but most moved into Obama's camp.

Those who watched may remember Pelosi's amusing call for the "ayes" and the rousing cheer followed by her single breath "Thoseopposedsaynaytheayeshaveit" before the remaining loyalists could react.

Edited, Mar 23rd 2016 10:36pm by Jophiel