It has undeniably been a rough two years with Donald Trump as
President, and, while I have continued a decent amount of blogging in other
venues, The Scorecard has regrettably lapsed. That ends today. You may
notice a departure from the relatively non-partisan take adopted in 2016,
because, as I look around, I see pundits on both sides of the aisle wishing
fervently for Donald Trump to be gone. However, wanting something and
producing evidence that it is likely to happen are different things. So,
we will try and be as cold and calculated as possible.
We begin where the
process of choosing President Trump’s opposition is likely to commence, namely
the Democratic nominating process and accompanying primaries. Analysis of
who is running, where they are going and why will come later. We start, where
everyone should, with getting a handle on the rules.
Rule 1. Winning the Democratic Nomination for President requires
winning a majority of the votes from the delegates elected to the convention.
If the first ballot does not result in one candidate receiving a majority,
voting proceeds to a second ballot and on and on until one candidate wins a
majority. We can expect many well-funded candidates from different geographic
regions, and there will be opportunity for candidates with even a faint pulse
to stay in the race longer because of the internet’s potential for keeping the
money flowing.
Rule 2. Delegates are awarded following geographic contests and
allocated proportionally according to each candidate’s % of the vote, with a
15% requirement to receive delegates (Subject to two or more candidates
reaching the threshold.) The most important thing to remember is that
delegates are allocated proportionally and per contest. Each contest is in fact
not a state but the geographic category from which delegates come. In most
states this means by congressional district, but some states use different
geographic measures, also each state selects two different kinds of statewide
delegates. There is the regular selection process for ordinary delegates and a
separate selection for VIP types (note these VIP’s are not the same as the superdelegates about whom you will also
read).
The two-bucket approach mostly
matters because when doing the math each category is calculated separately. For
example, in cases where there are only two candidates, if each bucket has an
odd number of delegates, then a mere one vote victory will net the victor a two
--delegate margin at the statewide level. Things get more complicated where
there are even numbers of delegates.
Where the number of delegates is small, the burden on the winning
candidate to get more than an even delegate split is higher. So in a six delegate unit a four to two split
would require the winner to earn a high enough percentage of the vote to be
closer to 2/3 than to 50%. (somewhere
above 58%). But in a ten-delegate unit,
in order to gain a 6-4 delegate split, the winner must be closer to 60% than
50% (55% or above). So the two-bucket
approach, which might for example divide 10 statewide delegates into buckets of
six and four, will reduce the likelihood that the statewide winner will gain
better than an even split. Virtually
none of the pundits follow any of this.
But sharp campaign teams are watching carefully in selecting how to
spend resources.
As one would expect, more votes generally means more delegates,
but the way the rules work being strong in some regions can help win more
delegates than one earns from equivalent strength in other regions. You can
take fewer votes and more delegates depending on the spread. A large
field can also make the delegate division almost automatic. In a contest with
four delegates and four candidates who reach viability (15%), each candidate
will get one delegate unless one candidate is closer to deserving two than the
bottom candidate is to deserving one. Assuming candidate 4 is exactly at
15%, the top candidate would have to hit 40% or more in order to get a second
delegate and deprive the bottom finisher of anything. This
is an incredibly high bar.
Rule 3. Rule 2 decided the winner in the contest between Obama and
Clinton in 2008. All this math might seem boring, but let me repeat that
it was the delegate apportionment rules that ultimately swung the Democratic
nomination to Obama and not Clinton in 2008.
If you look at the overall vote totals from 2008, depending on how
you count, the race ended with the candidates merely one percentage point
apart. Indeed, there is a plausible argument that Clinton actually
received more votes. The bottom line tie between them that most accurately
reflected voter preference was broken by Obama’s quite small but nearly
insurmountable delegate lead, which ended up being about 160 delegates out of
3200. It would take a long time to track exactly where each extra
delegate came from, but the reality is these little details mattered. As
just one example, on Feb 5th Obama
netted more delegates from Idaho than Hillary did by winning the New Jersey
primary. Obama’s team was better focused on the exact delegate
allocation system, and this is a major reason why he won.
Rule 4. How many candidates are viable
matters a lot in each and every contest. Viability numbers can flip
meaningful numbers of delegates. In a four-delegate district, if four
candidates are viable, then the most likely outcome is one delegate for each
regardless of who gets more votes. But if only three hit the threshold
then winning the contest will earn the victor an extra delegate. Four viable
candidates in a five-delegate district means that the person finishing fourth
might earn one delegate and the person fifth be shut out even if the margin between
them is a single vote. In the same five-delegate district, the second-place
finisher would very much like to push the fourth candidate below the threshold
because in most cases (unless the first-place winner wins big) the delegate
that would have gone to the fourth-place candidate now goes to the person
finishing number two. In a six-delegate district the math changes again.
Now the top two finishers are likely to earn two delegates each with candidates
3 and 4 getting one. If you are near the top, slacking off a little bit to
allow candidate # four to beat the threshold might be worth it if you are more
concerned with reducing the delegates going to candidate 4. The point of all
this, as noted above, is that the smart campaigns will be making countless
decisions on tactics relating to delegate totals that will be invisible to the
average media consumer and overlooked by all but the best pundits. Have you
ever heard anyone on election night explain the difference between winning
districts with odd versus even numbers of delegates?
Conclusion:
It’s too soon to tell whether all
this complexity will have a meaningful impact in the 2020 contest. But as
we start our survey of the process, charting how many candidates are able to
reach the viability threshold and in how many places is exceptionally
important. A candidate who is viable everywhere is a candidate who is in
contention, whereas one who is not viable everywhere is more likely to
struggle. If three or more candidates are consistently viable, we will enter
into somewhat unchartered territory. We were almost there in 2008, but in the
end, John Edwards was unable to stay viable. Keep these rules in mind as the
process begins. Next time we will examine who’s in, who’s out and where the
candidates stack up.
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