Goobergunch Political Report

It’s that time again! Specifically, time for all doors to have closed in today’s Nevada caucuses.

Unlike Iowa and most other Republican caucus states, the Nevada caucuses’ presidential preference vote directly determines the pledged delegate allocation for the states. There are 28 delegates at stake today, allocated proportionally as follows:

At this time, I can now project that Mitt Romney will receive the most votes in Nevada.

UPDATE [17:03 PST]: Apparently there’s one caucus that doesn’t vote for another two hours. Frankly, I’m tired of pretending that Nevada is too close to call or any such nonsense. The projection’s staying up.

UPDATE [21:00 PST]: Romney’s the only candidate that has a clear path to the nomination, but Gingrich and Santorum continue to stay in the race. I am entertained. Anyway, still waiting for Clark County returns to finish up the delegate count.

UPDATE [23:17 PST]: Still waiting on Clark County. Apparently they’re counting all the ballots by hand or something. Even then it shouldn’t take this long. I may just call it a night and update tomorrow morning.

UPDATE [11:20 PST, 5 Feb]: Dear Clark County GOP: Please learn to count. Most of us do it, at the latest, in elementary school.

UPDATE [11:48 PST]: Apparently it’s not just a counting problem:

With just half of the vote counted, officials have already discovered some discrepancies. In some precincts, the number of ballots did not match the number of voters who signed in to participate in the caucus. [...] State party secretary Jim DeGraffenreid said they are still determining “the facts” and then will decide how to proceed, but acknowledged the ballots from those precincts may be dumped from the results.

It’s not exactly news that the Nevada Republican Party is incompetent, but this is just impressively awful. (And to any Paul supporters that read this and cry voter fraud, there’s no evidence of that. Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.)

UPDATE [19:52 PST]: In case anybody is wondering, if the current vote percentages (with 89%) reporting holds up, the final three delegates go to Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.