POLITICS
Do The Math!
By Stump Connolly
Are we headed to the first brokered political convention since 1952? Is it a possibility? Or a certainty. Do the math.
The scenarios are different for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, but the rush of states to advance their 2008 presidential primaries to a “Giga Tuesday” showdown on February 5 makes it more likely, not less, that no frontrunner can emerge with enough delegates to assure a first ballot victory at the party conventions.
What if, after New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Michigan and all the other states threatening to move up their primaries cast their ballots -- and it’s a split decision?
A Touchy Situation
For the Democrats, it’s a particularly touchy situation. Democratic party rules forbid winner-take-all primaries. State delegates are apportioned among contenders according to their share of the primary vote, provided a candidate receives at least 15% of the votes cast. So if three or more Democrats stay in the race through early February, even a big winner on February 5 will have to struggle to turn his victory into an automatic nomination.
When the Democrats awaken after the February 5 Giga Tuesday balloting, they will discover that 2,275 of their 4,362 convention delegates have already been selected. Assuming the three leading contenders – Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards – roll through these primaries with approximately the same poll numbers they garnered in a March 27 CBS Poll (LINK) – 36%, 28% and 18%, respectively – one can adjust out the other candidates who haven’t reached the 15% threshold and conclude the delegate tallies on February 6 would look like this:
Hillary Clinton – 1001 delegates
Barack Obama -- 774 delegates
John Edwards -- 500 delegates
On the surface, that might look like a decisive lead for Sen. Clinton (or whoever is holding that top spot come the actual race.) But, alas, there are only 1,237 delegates left to be picked up in all the remaining primaries. If Sen. Clinton wants to go into the Democratic convention assured of the majority (2,181 delegates) needed to win the nomination, she will have to win 95% of the delegates up for grabs in the remaining primaries.
There is, of course, a grand (short) tradition in politics of Super Tuesday losers dropping out if a frontrunner can properly spank them on the big day. But we are presented this year with three candidates who have no incentive to give up so easily. All three will have campaign war chests large enough to not only pick and choose their races on Giga Tuesday but soldier on if there is no decisive winner. And even if Edwards can’t rise above a third-place showing, he may be the least likely to leave an unfinished race, not only to vindicate his wife’s devotion to the campaign, but give her an opportunity to play a crucial role in a convention that may be as dramatic as any we’ve seen in our lifetime.
Not a lot needs to go wrong to see a divided convention. If all the campaigns stick to their game plan – and their game plan is right – the spread between the frontrunners will narrow, and the probability of a brokered convention will increase.
In the past, the media has played a key role in creating momentum for the eventual nominee. Coverage of one primary sets the table with expectations for the next, and election night TV anchors like to anoint the winner -- and drive the losers off the battlefield. But the media is hardly a monolith these days. It is divided into the mainstream media and the political blogosphere, plus the candidates themselves have internet operations that can, in a single email, spin a story that will reach more people than subscribe to the next day’s New York Times.
There is a subterfuge in these numbers. All the calculations are made without factoring in the 850 Super Delegates who automatically attend the convention as “unpledged” delegates by virtue of their position as governors, congressmen or members of the Democratic National Committee. Many have already or will soon endorse their favorite candidate (and it’s only a matter of a redesign before ABC’s The Note starts counting them.)
But if the Democratic race remains fluid after Giga Tuesday, the Super Delegates are free to change their mind at any point before or during the August 25 convention in Denver. They are, after all, the powerbrokers who will broker the convention should an impasse come about.
The Republican Scenario
The Republican scenario is more complex, but no less intriguing. Republicans will take only 2,517 delegates to their Labor Day convention in Minneapolis. But some 662 (26%) will be officially unpledged. These include every state party chairmen, every Republican state committeeman and committeewoman, and, under more liberal Republican rules, delegations from states like Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine who will go to the convention not bound to vote for any candidate.
If all the states planning to move up their primaries succeed, some 1444 Republican delegates will be selected by February 6. Eight of these early primary states apportion delegates, just as Democrats do, based on a candidate’s percentage of the vote. Nine are winner-take-all states. The remaining five, including California, Florida, Georgia and Michigan, give three delegates to the winner in each Congressional district and some smaller percentage to the overall winner in the state.
It’s not a great stretch to apply the same poll projection hypothesis to the Republicans as the Democrats in these early primaries. No matter how poorly they fare in Iowa or New Hampshire, it’s unlikely the top three Republicans – Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney – will drop out before their home states of New York, Arizona and Massachusetts/Michigan vote on Feb. 5. Each will have the war chest to compete nationally. Their only strategic problem will be figuring out which districts in which states can be effectively swayed by advertising and/or troops on the ground.
Time Magazine published a poll in late March rating the top four Republican contenders. The results were:
Rudy Giuliani 35%
John McCain 28%
Newt Gingrich 14%
Mitt Romney 12%
Others 1%
Undecided 10%
Assuming Gingrich and Romney will not go down to the wire appealing to the same conservative base, and barring a breakaway start in Iowa and New Hampshire by one of the contenders, I’ve thrown away the undecideds and calculated how a Giuliani, McCain and Romney/Gingrich (combined) race might look when the candidates wake up the morning after Giga Tuesday.
If they divide the proportional-voting states in roughly the same manner as their current standings, and each takes a similar share of the winner-take-all Congressional districts, Giuliani will have 568 delegates (39.3%), McCain will have 455 (31.5%) and Romney/Gingrich will have 421 (29.2%) – nowhere near the 1,259 delegates needed to win the nomination.
And the real problem is, because all those states have moved up, there are only 411 more delegates to be won in all the remaining primaries, caucuses and state conventions. A pack-leading Guiliani could win all of them and still be 280 delegates short of a majority.
The way the Republicans have written their rules the largest bloc of available votes by far at the convention will be party bosses and others chosen in state conventions by party leaders. California, the largest single state delegation, will have 173 votes. But “unpledged” will have 662.
The Unknown Unknowns
Donald Rumsfeld’s axiom about known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns applies to politics as well as Iraq. At this early stage, the “unknown unknowns” are spread across the playing field, chief among them being the existence of 13 other announced presidential candidates who don’t even figure in these equations.
Let’s say one of them – a Christian conservative dedicated to preserving family values? -- emerges from the primaries with a pocket of strong supporters. Or one of the leading contenders starts strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, but stumbles on Giga Tuesday. Or another gathers a bunch of delegates, then suspends his campaign, without releasing delegates, to play a kingmaker role at the convention.
1952 was an interesting year for political conventions, especially because, for the first time, 70 million Americans were able to watch the proceedings on TV.
The Republican gathering in Chicago was a messy affair, pitting war hero Dwight Eisenhower against Ohio Sen. Robert Taft. Only after Eisenhower forces unseated Taft delegates from Georgia, Louisiana and Texas was Eisenhower able to win nomination on the first ballot.
If the Republicans were messy, the Democrats were positively exhausting. Ten candidates were placed into nomination and negotiations over their eligibility, credentials, loyalty, and party platform positions stretched out into a six-day marathon, the longest convention in American history. In the end, the Democrats nominated Illinois favorite son Adlai Stevenson – on the third ballot.
Now imagine that scenario playing out in 2008 with hundreds of TV cameras running around the floor, and blackberries humming in every seat, and bloggers blogging, and funders funding, and pundits punding . . . oh, what journalistic joy we have to look forward to.
