The Nevada Republican caucus has a complex caucus system, but with the fairness of a proportional split of delegates by the caucus vote. They have 30 out of the 2,380 Republican delegates, or 1.26%. Yet to the News, the fact that Donald Trump has won three (small) primaries in a row mean that he has “momentum”, and may be unbeatable. Before Nevada, they also cited the superstition that whoever won the New Hampshire and South Carolina has won the nomination.
The good news for Trump is that he won Nevada with 45.9% of the votes, and he has finally surpassed the 33% that he was limited to before. Does this mean that he got the votes of those that dropped out? Each state’s voters and method of voting is so different that you cannot make such a conclusion. Does that mean that he is unbeatable? No. If there is an any-body-but-Trump vote, it still has 54%. Even the sum of the two southern candidates, Senators Rubio with 23.9% and Cruz with 21.4%, is 45%. If one drops out, does the other get all 45%? Very, very unlikely. However, there will be a convention in June. You might think that if Trump only gets 33%-46%, then there has to be a split convention. Yet Trump has already received 100% of the South Carolina delegates with only 33% of its votes. There are other winner-take-all states (Florida with 99 delegates and Ohio with 66 delegates) or close to that states (Texas and Connecticut) that could allow Trump to have a majority at the convention. 16% of the delegates are winner-take-all, while 25% are hybrid.
Here’s some more math, that can be celebrated in blunting the effect of the Citizens United ruling that allows companies and PACS unlimited contributions. There are many rich donors out there that each wants to buy influence with a candidate, or push a particular position. By funding two second tier candidates, they are splitting the non-Trump votes, and allowing the only candidate who is not taking funding supposedly, Trump, to clearly lead.
The other Citizen’s United bypass is that the celebrity candidate Trump has gotten most of the non-debate TV and press time, and for free. This is largely due to much hyped positions that are either impractical, or get walked back. It also includes a high amount of criticism and insults to everybody. I really think that this is all preplanned by his pollsters, media experts, and script writers.
It turns out that the total media hype over the four February primaries, treating each primary as a horse race where win, place and show by a nose really matters, amounts to only 4.6% of the total Democratic delegates and 5.6% of the Republican delegates. This delusion, plus the media stress on “momentum”, actually probably influences voters to limit their votes to those candidates that seem to be those that can be winners. This is called the band-wagon effect. Several of the most qualified candidates have dropped out. Speaking for the somewhat disenfranchised 95% who have not voted yet, this is really unfair. Yet revenues for the networks that kept viewers rapt to their TVs and newspapers and websites for the month of February have allowed them to seriously distort the importance of the February primaries, to where they become very important. The networks have also cleaned up and cleaned out the campaign funds of candidates, leaving little for the rest of the country. In any case, Super Tuesday will actually determine 641 delegates, or about 27% of the delegates, and then we will have an indication of who Southern and some Midwest states prefer.
