Goobergunch Political Report

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.

Well, another Super Tuesday is in the books. Really, nothing particularly unexpected happened. Here’s the rundown:

There are still three Tennessee delegates that are “too close to call” because there’s no readily-accessible source for Congressional-district level data, and my estimates (based on the county-level data) didn’t show a large enough lead for a given candidate to confidently project the first or second place finish. The three missing Ohio delegates are, as previously mentioned, stripped from Santorum because he didn’t file a full delegate slate.

So what’s next? Romney’s in pretty good shape, having taken 53% of the night’s delegates, and it’s hard to see either Santorum or Gingrich getting to 1144 delegates. But it’s not entirely clear that Romney can get to 1144 before the convention, and the next few weeks aren’t going to help him too much, especially in the media. (The upcoming contests in Alabama, Hawaii, Kansas, and Mississippi allocate delegates proportionally, so his delegate count won’t get dinged too much.) Time for more number-crunching!

From a long Associated Press story about RNC members:

RNC member Bettye Fine Collins of Alabama said she supports Santorum because he can better relate to regular working people. That contrasts with Romney’s image as a wealthy investor who made millions on Wall Street.

All of the other quotes in that article were either not sufficient to count as an endorsement or were things we already knew. (I can’t just adopt the AP’s unpledged delegate count without a full listing of who’s endorsing who—the kind of listing that I’ve got here.)