| Gingrich | Huntsman | Paul | Romney | Santorum | Unallocated | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selected | 23 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 2117 | |
| Automatic | 1 | 18 | 1 | 112 | ||
| Total | 24 | 2 | 3 | 27 | 1 | 2229 |
At this time, I can now project that Mitt Romney has won the final two delegates in South Carolina, as discussed previously.
The delegate count now stands at Romney 27, Gingrich 24, with 6 scattered to other candidates and 2229 yet to be allocated. Six days until the Florida primary.
Some awesomeness from Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones (in which the Court held that attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle was a Fourth Amendment “search”):
I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on. I do not regard as dispositive the fact that the Government might obtain the fruits of GPS monitoring through lawful conventional surveillance techniques. I would also consider the appropriateness of entrusting to the Executive, in the absence of any oversight from a coordinate branch, a tool so amenable to misuse, especially in light of the Fourth Amendment’s goal to curb arbitrary exercises of police power to and prevent “a too permeating police surveillance.”
More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. Perhaps, as Justice Alito notes, some people may find the “tradeoff” of privacy for convenience “worthwhile,” or come to accept this “diminution of privacy” as “inevitable,” and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.
Well, it’s time for the next round of Republican primary goodness. Tonight, we’re in South Carolina, where polls indicate that Newt Gingrich–who I had written off towards the end of December–is doing surprisingly well.
South Carolina’s delegates are selected via what I like to call a “Winner-Take-Most” system. Candidates get 2 delegates for each Congressional district they win. Additionally, the winner of the state as a whole gets the 11 at-large delegates. It’s not quite winner-take-all, but this selection process tends to heavily skew the delegates towards the statewide winner.
| SC-R | Gingrich | Romney | Unallocated | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD 1 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 2 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 3 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 4 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 5 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 6 | 2 | ||||||
| CD 7 | 2 | ||||||
| At Large | 11 | ||||||
| Total | 23 | 2 | |||||
| Last updated 20:47 Eastern Standard Time | |||||||
UPDATE [19:00 EST by Goobergunch]: And as the polls close in South Carolina, the statewide winner is projected: Newt Gingrich. He’s immediately awarded the 11 at-large delegates, and he’ll probably get most of the remaining 14.
UPDATE [22:43 EST by Goobergunch]: Well, it’s obvious that Gingrich got all the delegates except for those in the 1st Congressional District, which includes two of the only three counties in the state that went for Romney. That seat is difficult to call based only on county-level data, so I’m waiting for more detailed information before calling that district.
UPDATE [3:02 EST by Goobergunch]: If I had to guess, I’d say that Romney picked up the final 2 delegates since he won Charleston, the heart of SC-1, fairly convincingly. But there’s enough outlying territory in SC-1 that I’m not quite comfortable calling it. Moreover, the Associated Press suggests that even with precinct-level data those last two delegates are too close to call. So I’m calling it a wrap for this election night. As always, the delegate count will be updated when I get new information.
CNN is reporting that Mitt Romney has all 3 RNC member delegates from both Rhode Island and the Virgin Islands. By implication, that means that Ken McKay Mark Zaccaria and Carol Mumford of Rhode Island, as well as Holland Redfield and Lilliana Belardo de O’Neal of the Virgin Islands, support Romney.
CNN also has an RNC member delegate endorsement for Newt Gingrich in Nebraska, but since I have no idea who that is I’m not adding it. (If you do, drop a message in the comments.)
Since I’m tired of people asking about Iowa:
The vote results reported on caucus night, and now revised to show Santorum in the lead, are based on a tally conducted by caucus attendees. Unlike Iowa Democratic caucuses, they’re not scaled by anything and aren’t necessarily reflective of the eventual outcome. However, since the caucus attendees are (at least theoretically) the same people that vote on the delegates to the county conventions that vote on the delegates to the Congressional district conventions that vote on the delegates to the state convention that votes on the delegates to the national convention, one would hope that the results would in some way reflect the caucus-night tallies.
That being said, “reflect” is a wonderfully broad term and can’t be used for any actual calculations. So I’m just pulling the Iowa numbers until a bit later in the that state’s process. It’s not like the state really has that many delegates anyway.
A couple new superdelegate additions from this AP story:
Herbert Schoenbohm, the GOP chairman in the Virgin Islands, said that beating Obama is important, but his support for Romney goes much deeper.
[...]
Lawrence Kadish, an RNC member from Long Island, N.Y., challenged that assessment, saying Gingrich “towers head and shoulders over those other candidates. I don’t view Mr. Romney as having a deep rudder, but he’s OK.”
And from the L.A. Times:
Indeed, two top Perry fundraisers—Mississippi-based political strategist Henry Barbour and Dirk Van Dongen, a lobbyist who co-chaired the governor’s fundraising efforts in Washington–signed on to the Romney camp Thursday.
(Barbour’s an RNC member, Van Dongen isn’t.)
Happy election night, true believers! Tonight, we’re in New Hampshire for this year’s Republican primary. It’s not really that exciting, as everybody’s expecting Mitt Romney to win in a blowout, with Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul vying for second and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum both hoping to finish fourth. The real action will be in South Carolina a week from Saturday.
But New Hampshire’s also the first Republican race where delegates are truly allocated. (As opposed to Iowa, where the delegate count was at best an educated guess.) Any candidate that gets at least 10% of the vote will get at least one delegate.
| NH-R | Gingrich | Huntsman | Paul | Romney | Santorum | Unallocated | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 2 | 3 | 7 | ||||
| Last updated 9:22 Eastern Standard Time | |||||||
UPDATE [20:00 EST by Goobergunch]: At this time, all polls have closed in New Hampshire, and I can now project that Mitt Romney has received the most votes statewide.
UPDATE [21:50 EST by Goobergunch]: Well, this was a boring primary. The only remaining delegate-count questions are whether either Gingrich or Santorum will get over the 10% threshold.
While the Iowa caucuses aren’t that useful for predicting eventual Republican nominees, they do help usher candidates who aren’t really viable out of the race. The winnowing begins now, as the National Review confirms that Bachmann, who placed sixth in Iowa with only 5% of the vote, is suspending her campaign. No word yet on whether she’s running for re-election to the House, or who she’s endorsing. Since Bachmann didn’t pick up any delegates, there’s no effect on the delegate count.
Meanwhile, despite having no realistic chance of winning, Rick Perry hasn’t dropped out and is going to continue campaigning in South Carolina. He placed fifth in Iowa with 10% of the vote.
The Republican caucuses in the state of Iowa have now begun, and we’ll shortly see the results. At stake tonight are… well actually there aren’t any delegates being formally allocated tonight. Tonight’s precinct caucuses only select delegates to county conventions to be held on 10 March. Those conventions select delegates to congressional district conventions that will be held on 21 April, which select delegates to the state convention. The national convention delegates aren’t selected until that state convention meets on 16 June—over five months from now.
That being said, it’s possible to estimate delegate preferences from tonight’s caucus Presidential preference vote. These are, naturally, extremely rough estimates which can and almost certainly will change before the actual delegates are selected. (Updates to the Iowa delegate count will be made if the race is still contested during subsequent Iowa delegate selection stages.) So, here’s the current estimate of pledged delegate preferences from Iowa:
| IA-R | Gingrich | Paul | Perry | Romney | Santorum | Unallocated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 2 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 7 | |
| Last updated 8:42 Central Standard Time | ||||||
UPDATE [19:08 CST by Goobergunch]: The CNN entrance poll of “early bird” caucus voters: Paul 26%, Romney 23%, Santorum 19%. Note that this result is skewed in favor of more enthusiastic voters and won’t necessarily hold up—Romney led the entrance poll in 2008, but Mike Huckabee was the winner at the end of caucus night.
UPDATE [19:30 CST by Goobergunch]: The final CNN entrance poll data: Romney 24%, Paul 24%, Santorum 18%, Gingrich 13%, Perry 11%. The “winner” of the Iowa caucuses doesn’t really matter in term of the delegate count, but the order of finish, especially for the top three, matters in terms of the media narrative and that mystical momentum factor.
UPDATE [20:57 CST by Goobergunch]: Well, NBC is saying they’re not going to project a winner in Iowa until all the votes are counted. Fun. At the moment, with 31% reporting, the order is Romney>Santorum>Paul, each with 23% of the vote.
UPDATE [21:13 CST by Goobergunch]: Paul’s fallen behind Santorum/Romney by about a thousand votes. Looks like he’ll drop to third. Also looks like Santorum might be the One True Not-Romney. (I know, I can’t believe that either.)
UPDATE [22:41 CST by Goobergunch]: Well, Bachmann didn’t drop out in tonight’s speech, so looks like we won’t scratch anybody from the field tonight. And the first-place spot is still too close to call with 95% in!
UPDATE [22:59 CST by Goobergunch]: Perry’s not actually withdrawing tonight, but he says he’s going back to Texas and mulling over his options. Look for the official withdrawal in the next couple days.
UPDATE [1:25 CST by Goobergunch]: With one precinct remaining, Santorum’s ahead by 4 votes. Fox News and the Romney campaign are claiming that the final precinct will yield a 14-vote Romney victory. With that effective tie (I think the designation of Rick Santorum as the One True Not-Romney is the most important result of the caucuses), I’m calling it a night. I’ll see who won and make the final delegate calculations tomorrow morning.
UPDATE [8:40 CST by Goobergunch]: And the final tally: Romney 30,015, Santorum 30,007, Paul 26,219. Rommey wins by 8 votes. Of course, delegatewise that’s a three-way tie.
Powered by WordPress