Super Tuesday and the Republican Strategy

Trying to correct the long Republican primary contest in 2012, this election year the Republicans planned to speed up the process. In 2012, a long time spent fighting among the delegates lowered their ratings. It also ate up a large amount of contributions that could have been used in the general election.

The early four primaries were limited to February. From March 1-14, the primaries were supposed to be proportionately divided among candidates so that candidates can be seen around the country. Starting March 15, the primaries are supposed to be winner-take-all in order to speed up the closure of the choice of the party’s nominee. With Donald Trump the leading candidate, this may now work against the desires of the Party. Anything that disrupts the democratic representation of proportionally awarding delegates always poses a danger in getting the most liked candidate for the party. (The Democratic Primaries are all proportional.).  From the viewpoint of California and other states with later primaries, the fact that states with earlier primaries are allowed to give away almost double votes to a candidate getting over 50% takes away the importance of the votes of later voters.  This is really the disenfranchisement of later voters.  I remember a saying:  No Taxation Without Representation.  Does this mean that later voters do not have to pay federal taxes?  If the party wants all voters to back the party’s eventual winner, they need to make all voters know that their votes are equally weighted.

Remember that Trump has already won 100% of South Carolina’s 50 delegates with only 33% of the vote, due to the winner-take-all primary there.

Many of the Super Tuesday primaries are winner-take-most. I will explain this below in the case of the largest Super Tuesday primary below.

On Super Tuesday, Texas has 155 delegates. This will be a test if Texas’ favorite son Sen. Cruz will win its primary with greater than 50%. Texas has 47 statewide delegates and the rest awarded as 3 per district. Statewide, if a candidate gets over 50%, they get all at large delegates. Otherwise, the candidates above 20% proportionately split the delegates.

If a candidate gets less than 20% in a district, they get no delegates from that district. If a candidate gets more than 50% in a district, they get all 3 delegates from that district. If no candidate gets more than 50% in a district, than the the leading candidate gets 2 delegates, and the second place one gets 1. In Trump’s terms, if you get less that 20% anywhere, you are a “loser” there.

The winner-take-most primaries on Super Tuesday are:

Alabama.      50
Arkansas.     40
Georgia.        76
Oklahoma.   43
Tennessee.   58
Texas.          155
Vermont.      16

——————
Total.          438

The proportional primaries on Super Tuesday are:

Alaska.               28
Massachusetts 42
Minnesota.       38
Virginia.            49

——————-
Total                157

Caucuses, with conventions later:

Colorado.          37
North Dakota. 28
Wyoming.        29
———————–

Total.                94

The total Super Tuesday delegates are 689. Out of the 2,472 Party delegates, this is 27.9%.

The second largest national delegate state is Texas with 155 delegates. Texas has 22.5% of Super Tuesday delegates, and 6.3% of all Republican delegates.

People complain that these early primaries are Southern state loaded.  If we add the Southern states along with Texas and Oklahoma, the total is 471 of 689 Super Tuesday delegates, or 68% (above 2/3).

Texas illustrates the effect of the four early February primaries.   I was looking up articles on Texas newspaper endorsements for the primaries.  I found three Texas newspapers had endorsed Jeb Bush on Feb. 12.  He is now already gone from the race.  Jeb is a native son of Texas, and was educated there including the University of Texas.  His Bush family is of course rooted in Texas.  Yet he did not last until the March 1 Texas primary to be supported there.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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