In the six weeks since Donald Trump has clinched the nomination little has gone right for him. He has fallen behind about six points in the polls. He has struggled to raise money. He has gotten bad headlines. A Senator has come forward to unendorse him. The press is being much harsher than in the primary.
All of this had led to rumblings that an attempt to overthrow Donald Trump will be made at the convention. As we said when this idea first arose as voters were still voting, it all comes down to what the delegates want to do. There are 2472 delegates, which means the name of the game is getting to 1237 delegates, the same as it ever was. In the end, Trump won 1537 delegates including support from some unpledged delegates. This give Trump a decent sized cushion.
On the Democratic side, this would not be an issue at all because campaigns screen delegates elected for a candidate for their loyalty. But on the Republican side they aren’t. So all that is required is 301 defections from delegates who are not necessarily loyal to Trump. A good example: Georgia Cruz supporter Bob Barr is a “Trump” delegate. It may be that as few as half or even fewer Trump delegates are truly loyal to him.
So it does not take much to stop Trump. The Republican National Convention’s rules committee can change the rules. It seems like the plan now is to give the delegates a conscience clause. If such a clause passes all it would take to throw Trump’s nomination into jeopardy is for some number of delegates to abstain on the first ballot. This might have the effect of “unbinding” the delegates on future ballots and thus ruin Trump’s hopes of being the nominee.
This is incredibly do-able. The question is whether enough delegates actually have the will to do it, which would require overturning the results of the primary election. The means are simple and easy. But still seems doubtful that the delegates will have this kind of will even though they do have the means.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
Our Delegate Math
About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
0 comments:
Post a Comment