The Delegate Fight: 2016

[BCSWowbagger]

I just found this spreadsheet while trying to update my own.  Amazing work.  You found quite a few that I could not.  May I return the favor by trying to fill in a few of your blanks as well?

I'm too new to this forum to be able to post links, but:

In GA-1, I am told that Cruz had a clean sweep of the delegates.  I have not been able to find any names.  (twitter.com/EduKtorDude/status/721438998728716289)

In GA-2, you have mostly the same sources I do, but I note that Alec Poitevant is an ex-Rubio endorser (politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/02/11/marco-rubio-picks-up-another-establishment-georgia-republican-endorsement/), and the vast majority of Rubio people end up in Camp Cruz... so, if the twitter account you cited is accurate, and GA-2 was 2 Trump 1 Cruz, it seems very likely to me that Mr. Poitevant is the Cruz guy.

In GA-7, Mr. Van Gundy is a Cruz supporter: (facebook.com/bjvangundy/posts/10208803870594035?comment_id=10208804084199375)

In GA-9, Ms. Mahoney was on the Cruz slate: (pbs.twimg.com/media/CgK0vaCWwAAWSjK.jpg)

Mr. Azevedo and Ashley Bell are reportedly anti-Trump, but I have not been able to verify this more reputably than this tweet: (twitter.com/CodyHall09/status/721439115040976898)

In GA-10, Mr. Coswert is for Kasich (politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/09/14/john-kasich-picks-up-bill-cowsert-other-georgia-endorsements/) and Mr. Shook is from the Cruz slate (twitter.com/Aaron_The_Hutt/status/721352578987114496)

In KS-1, Mr. Arpke and Ms. Mast both came from the Cruz slate (twitter.com/JohnCelock/status/721372569174036480).  No information on Mr. Bohnenblust except that he's been chair of that district for a long, long time.  The tweet you found suggesting a "sweep" seems clearly wrong, since the Cruz slate did not win.

In KS-2, Trump won his only delegate: taken as a whole, Cheryl Reynolds' Twitter makes that clear. (twitter.com/CherylReynolds).  Ms. Paulus, on the other hand, is both bound to Cruz and backs him personally (facebook.com/bepaulus/posts/10208587772439095?comment_id=10208589260756302).

In KS-3 and 4, Grosserode and Kahrs are both True Cruz people, being on his state leadership team (blog.4president.org/2016/2016/02/ted-cruz-for-president-announces-kansas-leadership-team.html), and Wheatcroft was on the Cruz slate.  And Dalton Glasscock, aside from having the best name of the day, turned out (after ages searching) to have "Liked" Students for Cruz on Facebook (facebook.com/daltonglasscock1/likes).  The only other candidate he's shown Facebook support for his Carly, who has also endorsed Cruz, so I think it's safe to call him a Cruz guy.

Again, you've done amazing work here.  Thank you so much.  I'll be tracking this spreadsheet closely from here on out.  

My own spreadsheet -- which is much sloppier than yours, and which I'm still filling in with information I'm bumming off you -- is here: (docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EuyzjVHq2Ku_eU-4TLaNP5CyY_PXAykaSgZWZuEPfCg/edit#gid=261285562) .  Have a great day!

EDIT: Wait, you live in MN-5?  I'm just over the river in 4 -- not too far from St. Kate's!  *vigorous waving*

[BCSWowbagger]

Conventions are held to decide delegates, and Cruz's delegates received the most votes. How is that stealing?

The system is rigged. It should be votes that decide the delegates, not some conventions.

Convention members are elected by voters. 

Binding primaries were an invention of the liberal-progressive movement, led by George McGovern in 1972, in order to erode the republican part of our republic and replace it with the kind of direct democracy our Founding Fathers feared and loathed.  The GOPe, which was very powerful in the 1970s, then adopted the liberal system, which was convenient for them, because it just so happens that grassroots candidates like Goldwater and Reagan (who was a major threat at the time) do much better in convention systems than big-money mass-marketed primaries.

What we ought to do is abolish binding primaries entirely.  Every state should run the way Colorado did this year: you vote for state delegates who represent you and select national delegates.  No more of this direct-democracy rubbish.  That's how we chose our presidential candidates for nearly 150 years, and it's how we should choose them for the next 150 years, too.

Sadly, the GOPe does not listen to me when I tweet this at them.

***

Anyway, arguing about delegate selection is not why I'm here.  I'm here to share this with erc, in case he didn't see it yet:

facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10153428635421367&id=259920881366

Every Wisconsin CD-level delegate and alternate.  Still working on loyalties.

[BCSWowbagger]

Yeah, I just saw on Twitter one Jean Kangas got elected as a Cruz delegate in MA-3, but supports Trump on a second ballot.  That's the very first reliable Cruz --> Trump delegate on my spreadsheet.

By comparison, I've got 74 Trump --> Cruz delegates, 4 Trump --> Kasich dels, and 32 Trump --> Anybody-But-Trump people.

[BCSWowbagger]

How many delegates would Trump have to win to ensure that the majority would actually be pro-Trump delegates? 1400? 1500?

For a typical candidate? Probably about 1400 or 1500.  Delegate loyalties are much weaker than is generally assumed, even in typical cycles; it just doesn't usually matter.

But Trump doesn't just have disloyalty; he is hated by the longtime members of his own party, the conservatives even more than the establishment.  To actually have a loyal majority for Trump... yeah, I think vosem has it: 2500 or so bound delegates should do it.

He might be able to pull it off with 2000, because of the big states that allow candidates to pick their own delegates.  But we are well into the realm of the hypothetical here, because Trump won't have 2000 loyal delegates.

I think the world in general -- which is not doing the math on delegate loyalty -- is underestimating the possibility that Trump will win 1,237, but Cruz/Kasich will orchestrate a convention rules change to force a second ballot anyway.

[BCSWowbagger]

As I've said before, that's not going to happen because it would be the Alamo for Trump supporters and would guarantee that they come back in force and potentially become a full fledged political machine that takes over the party by the 2020's.  The GOP establishment would prefer even a 61/37 Trump loss with 2 years of 1960's level Dem majorities in congress to that.  And there is no consensus that Trump will do that badly anyway.

Not saying it's a sure thing; just saying that I think the chances are widely underestimated.

Cruz and Kasich are both wildly ambitious people who will stop at nothing to win if they see a path.  They are both recruiting hundreds and hundreds of delegates loyal either to them, or to #StopTrump in general -- not the Republican establishment itself -- and who are sufficiently fanatic about it to go against the popular will of Republican voters by putting anti-Trump loyalists in Trump delegate slots.  These are precisely the people most likely to assert the power of delegates over the majoritarian will, and the convention is filling up with them fast.

Since it's very likely there will be an anti-Trump majority on the convention floor, the decisive questions are going to be: (1) how large is that majority? (2) how committed are they?  If they're more like the North Dakota delegation (which was always wishy-washy, if you recall the original story), then they'll by-and-large cave in to Trump.  If there are enough who are more like the Minnesota delegation -- Trump delenda est! -- then they could (without much trouble, actually) nuke the primary.  (There would, of course, be trouble afterward.)

By my count, the convention is currently:

458 Cruz
141 Kasich
143 Generic Anti-Trump
(742 total anti-Trump)

vs.

399 Trump

...with 254 unknown/uncommitted (the majority of those are RNC members, who are notoriously hard to pin down) and 1077 left to be elected.

(SOURCE: my spreadsheet, which largely overlaps with erc's and uses the same basic format - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EuyzjVHq2Ku_eU-4TLaNP5CyY_PXAykaSgZWZuEPfCg/edit#gid=376632774)

Nuking the primary remains unlikely, but, if you were ever going to see it, this is exactly the kind of convention makeup that would allow it to happen.