Who Is To Blame?
In the weeks since we last looked at the GOP delegate scramble, primaries and caucuses have been held in Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Kansas, and the Virgin Islands.
Races of note: and a few haphazard comments
Arizona – despite national GOP instructions for proportional delegate allocation, Arizona awarded all 29 delegates to Romney.
The Arizona Republican Party has said the winner of the February 28 primary will be awarded all of its 29 delegates, despite the Republican National Committee mandate for pre-April event states to award delegates proportionally. The scheduling of Arizona’s Republican primary resulted in the loss of half of its expected delegates to the Republican national convention.
Michigan – Santorum nearly won, Romney squeaked out with 16 delegates to Santorum’s 14. Romney’s status as son of a fairly popular Michigan governor might have helped, but not much. One of the best lines came out of this primary race where Romney claimed the trees in Michigan were the right height, whatever the hell that means. Sounded like a faulty sub-routine in his programming.
Washington – a non-binding caucus, actual selection won’t be completed until May 30th, so who knows.
Northern Mariana Islands
Guam, and Northern Marianas Islands – 18 delegates, but the votes are not binding, which is a fancy way of saying the delegates can vote any which way. The current population of Guam is in the neighborhood of 180,000, yet only 215 people voted for Mitt Romney, and nobody voted for anyone else. Yikes, that is less than 1%. In the Northern Marianas Islands (population 53,000 or so), Romney got 740 votes, Santorum 53, Gingrich 28 votes, and Ron Paul 27. Big turnout on the islands! Weather must have been cold.
Georgia – Newt Gingrich’s home state. Romney still won 15 delegates to Gingrich’s 47.
Ohio – Romney won, partially because Santorum’s organization didn’t get on the ballot everywhere. The popular vote was very close: 456,513 to 446,225, but the delegate count was not (35 to 21).
In three of the state’s 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state’s eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates may also be in jeopardy. Sources say that in six other congressional districts — the third, fourth, eighth, tenth, twelfth and sixteenth — Santorum submitted fewer names than required to be eligible for all three delegates up-for-grabs in each district. That means even if he wins in those places, he might not be able to receive the full contingent of delegates. In the three districts where Santorum did not submit a delegate slate at all, he will not be able to receive any delegates. In the six where he submitted only a partial slate, he is eligible to be awarded only the number of delegates he submitted, assuming he wins a particular district.
(click here to continue reading Rick Santorum’s Ohio Delegate Problems Pile Up – ABC News.)
Virginia – we discussed this previously, only Romney and Ron Paul were organized enough to get on the ballot. Thus, Romney got 43 delegates, Ron Paul 3.
Super Delegates – as of today, Romney has 27, Ron Paul 1, Newt Gingrich 3, and Rick Santorum 2.
To Think I saw it on Morgan Street
By my count, I have the current totals as:
- Romney – 456
- Rick Santorum – 217
- Newt Gingrich – 107
- Ron Paul – 47
but of course, those numbers are a bit soft with all the malleable counts for various caucuses and so on. The New York Times delegate tracker shows the count as of this morning as:
- Romney – 454
- Rick Santorum – 184
- Newt Gingrich – 118
- Ron Paul – 66
The Greenpapers lists hard total as:
- Romney – 354
- Rick Santorum – 131
- Newt Gingrich – 107
- Ron Paul – 23
Not over yet, in other words…