Goobergunch Political Report

After resynchronizing the relevant portions of the delegate count with data from the Republican National Committee, the pledged delegate count from Alabama has been revised to: Santorum 22, Gingrich 14, Romney 11. All other pledged delegate counts from this week remain unadjusted.

Because numbers are rather dry, here’s a graphical representation of the state of the primary race at this point. Each square represents 1 delegate. Romney’s delegates are marked in blue, Santorum’s in red, Gingrich’s in orange, Paul’s in green, and Huntsman’s in violet. Gray squares indicate “uncommitted” delegates who have not announced support for a candidate—most of these are automatic RNC delegates.

Because I wanted to give some indication of how caucus states have voted, I’ve also added striped squares based on the Associated Press’s delegate allocation for caucus states. I do not endorse the methodology behind these counts and they may not actually resemble the final delegate allocation in these states. (Of these “fantasy delegates”, 73 are allocated to Santorum, 62 to Romney, and 15 to Paul.)

In the upcoming week, 94 more delegates will be allocated from Puerto Rico, Illinois, and Louisiana.

Add another superdelegate for Romney, this time from Washington, D.C.:

Of the four remaining GOP candidates, Rick Santorum is the only candidate not on the ballot in the District. The city’s Republican Committee Chairman Bob Kabel is backing Mitt Romney.

That’s Romney’s second District of Columbia delegate.

Another AP report from the territories:

Chairman Herb Schoenbaum says Romney can count on seven delegates from the Virgin Islands. He already had three superdelegates before Saturday’s caucuses and he picked up three more in voting in St. Thomas and St. Croix. After the vote, an uncommitted delegate switched to Romney.

Ron Paul got one delegate, and one delegate remains uncommitted.

In more unbound territorial delegate news:

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — Another victory for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. He’s won the Republican caucus in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, picking up nine delegates from the U.S. territory.

Like in Guam, that includes the 3 RNC delegates.

So for the last several months, I’ve divided Republican delegates into “Selected” delegates, those selected by Republican primaries, caucuses, or conventions, and “Automatic” delegates, those who get to go to the national convention because they’re members of the Republican National Committee. That’s a bit of a simplification, but most modern nomination races have been decided before the details have really become notable. However, since this year’s race still hasn’t quite been resolved after Super Tuesday, I’m further subdividing the “Selected” delegates into two groups: “Bound” and “Unbound” delegates. The distinction is simple: “Bound” delegates are bound, by state law or party rule, to vote for the candidate that they are pledged to on the first ballot at the convention unless released. While an “Unbound” delegate may be pledged to or otherwise announced their support for a given candidate, they can vote for whoever they want at the convention.

The separation between “Bound” and “Unbound” delegates is a good deal fuzzier than that between those two categories and “Automatic” delegates. For instance, any delegate selected through a normally binding process as “Uncommitted” (such as the Niobrara County, WY delegate) will become an “Unbound” delegate. Also, any delegates released by their candidate become “Unbound” if they were previously bound to him. (And yes, this includes Huntsman’s 2 delegates in New Hampshire—although to the best of my knowledge, Huntsman has yet to release his delegates.)

Of the states that have voted so far, the 103 delegates from Guam, Ohio, North Dakota, and Wyoming are officially unbound. (North Dakota is a somewhat odd case, as that allocation appears to be based on an informal agreement of the 28 delegates—including the 3 RNC member—to vote according to the popular vote. Since this agreement makes the individual endorsements of North Dakota’s RNC members moot, I’m throwing all 28 delegates into the “Unbound” column. I don’t expect to move any other “Automatic” delegates to “Unbound”.) A number of caucus states that have, I suppose, “voted” also will select unbound delegates later, but I haven’t counted any delegates from them yet. In total, there are 448 (20%) “Unbound” delegates at this time, compared to 1715 (75%) “Bound” delegates and 123 (5%) “Automatic” delegates.

In short, the big table is going from:

to

Speaking of delegates that are officially uncommitted but can be assigned to a specific candidate:

Romney picked up all nine delegates from Guam. Republicans on the tiny Pacific island met Saturday at their state convention and backed the former Massachusetts governor in a unanimous show of hands.

Those Guam delegates presumably include both the 6 delegates selected at the state convention and the 3 RNC member delegates.

The Republican National Committee has updated its delegate count with the latest numbers from state parties. They’re mostly the same as my numbers from Election Night, but there are a couple of small adjustments:

• Georgia: Gingrich 52 (-2), Romney 21 (+2), Santorum 3.
• Ohio: Romney 38, Santorum 21 (-1), “Unallocated” 4 (+1).
• Tennessee: Santorum 29 (-1), Romney 16 (+2), Gingrich 10 (+2).

These numbers might get further tweaked a little later if the vote counts shift, and of course I’ll have that update if necessary.

In Wyoming news, the delegate from Niobrara County will apparently be officially “Uncommitted”, which keeps them in my “Unallocated” column for now. That being said, I’ve decided that it’s finally time to break down which delegates are formally pledged and which are not. Expect a post on that a bit later.