Revisiting Rule 40

This past Thursday night my Twitter feed began filling up with links to Alexandra Jaffe's story on the impact of Rule 40(b) on John Kasich's chances at the Republican nomination in a contested convention. The heart of story is a three paragraph section:

But top RNC strategists confirmed to reporters Thursday at the committee's Spring Meeting that the 40b requirement amounts to little more than a technciality. Having your name put into nomination affords candidates a number of advantages, like space in the convention hall and a nominating speech. But it's not required to ultimately win the nomination. 

Under the current rules, even those candidates who don't meet the 8-state threshold can continue to amass delegate votes. And if they're able to cobble together the support of a majority of delegates — the magic 1237 number — they win, even if it's spread across all 50 states. 

Typical interpretations of Rule 40 assumed Kasich's campaign would somehow have to rewrite the convention rules to get the governor into contention for the nomination. That's a tall order for the campaign, as they'd have to pack the committee finalizing the convention rules with supporters, and both Cruz and Trump already have an advantage in that effort. Still, Rule 40b isn't final — the Convention Rules Committee will meet the week before the convention to finalize changes to the rules.

FHQ does not really see the news in this, and I certainly don't get the bit about the "typical interpretations of Rule 40".¹

The truth of the matter is that the RNC has all along viewed the process as a resetting after every vote at the convention (should it progress beyond a first ballot vote). That would theoretically give candidates the chance to 1) qualify anew, 2) qualify for the first time or 3) even fail to qualify under the provisions of Rule 40(b) on subsequent ballots. Candidates like Kasich -- likely to fall short of the majority of delegates from at least eight states threshold on the first ballot -- have that opportunity because the number of unbound delegates increases as the number of ballots increase.²

Those free agent delegates, bound on the first or second or third ballot, can move away from the candidate to whom they were bound for a candidate such a delegate 1) preferred in going through the delegate selection process to become a national convention delegate (a sincere delegate), 2) supports for strategic reasons to prevent another candidate from claiming the nomination or 3) prefers because one candidate is viewed as more electable in the general election.

Combining those two factors -- a nomination reset and a growing number of unbound delegates over time -- means that Rule 40(b) was always less prohibitive than many have cast it. Unbound delegates can shift to candidates -- white knights, John Kasichs or otherwise -- and help them to form coalitions that not only qualify them under (a current or altered) Rule 40, but ideally surpass the 1237 threshold.

Kasich does not need rules changes. His campaign needs time at the convention; time measured in terms of the number of ballots cast. He will not qualify under the current Rule 40(b) and will not have 1237 delegates behind him.

Not on the first ballot anyway.

Rule 40(b) being in place or not does not change that reality. If Donald Trump gets to 1237, then there is little Kasich or anyone else can do on that first ballot. Should Trump fall short of that mark on the first ballot, then Ted Cruz seems well positioned to increase his number of delegates on a second vote and Kasich could potentially qualify (if enough unbound delegates come his way). Things moving down that path then puts a premium on the delegate selection process going on now. Those efforts affect how a second or third vote or beyond goes. When the bond disappears, those delegates are free to fit into the three categories described above (or others). The decision-making calculus changes for them.

But the bottom line here is Kasich's roadblock is not Rule 40(b). His roadblocks are the delegates he is not being allocated now and the selection process in which the Cruz campaign has jumped out to a lead. But if, as delegates become unbound at a hypothetical contested convention, Kasich amasses 1237 delegates, then yes, he, too, can become the Republican nominee.

That is a pretty steep climb though.


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Previous Post:
The Real Import of Rule 40 in 2016


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¹ And this idea that someone can have the support of 1237 delegates distributed 50 states and not qualify under Rule 40(b). That seems quite far-fetched. Mathematically, it is possible, but it is not at all probable.

² That RNC interpretation of Rule 40 is not shared by all. There are those who say the rule is silent to the matter of renomination (or second/second chance nominations) and others who take a harder line that the rule would limit the voting to just those who qualified under the provisions of Rule 40 before the first vote.

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Changing the Rules [at the Convention] Changes the Game

For a placeholder rule, Rule 40 in the Rules of the Republican Party has gotten entirely too much attention during the 2016 presidential election cycle.

One of the least understood parts of the Republican presidential nomination process is that the delegates -- two from each of the 56 states and territories on the Convention Rules Committee -- write the rules that will govern them at the national convention. Under normal circumstances in a more typical cycle, this process is little more than a formality. Of the three basic types of rules in the Republican Party rulebook -- party organization rules (Rules 1-12), nomination process rules (Rules 13-25) and convention rules (Rules 26-42) -- the first and third types tend to be carried over from cycle to cycle with little more than some tweaking here and there. The changes to the second type, the nomination process rules, set the baseline of rules that will govern the nomination process in the next cycle, but only a baseline.¹

Rule 40 obviously sits among the rules in the convention rules section. The delegates to the 2012 convention changed the provisions in that rule, upping the requirement for a candidate to have his or her name placed in nomination at the convention to a majority of delegates from at least 8 states. It is a small change but with a large potential impact. But that rule applied in 2012 and was designed to keep Ron Paul off of the presidential nomination roll call ballot. At the 2008 convention, Rule 40 called for a candidate to have only a plurality of delegates from just five states; a far lower bar (but one that Paul was flirting with heading into the national convention).

That flirting was enough to trigger the action that raised the threshold for having a candidate's name placed in nomination. And to be clear, that rules change was a one written by and for the delegates at the 2012 convention; a normal part of the sequence of events under the Republican rules. Just as the 2012 delegates on the 2012 Convention Rules Committee looked over the landscape of the 2012 process and opted to up the requirements to qualify for nomination, the 2016 delegates on the 2016 version of that committee may choose to lower or alter those thresholds and consider other rules changes.

It is that context that made Georgia Republican National Committeeman Randy Evans' comments at a local county caucus -- a part of the delegate selection process in the Peach state -- over the weekend so interesting. Rather than some of the more chaotic scenarios that have risen to the top in some recent media accounts of the possibility of convention rules changes, Evans provided a calmer look forward to rules and rules changes to be considered before (but not adopted until at) the national convention.²

Evans basically pointed toward three rules changes likely to be considered (at the RNC spring meeting and later in the lead up to the convention):

1. Unbinding the delegates. This change would diminish the importance of winning primaries and caucuses during primary season and render the delegate allocation process going on now largely moot. While doing that, unbinding the delegates would simultaneously raise the importance of the delegate selection process; the parallel fight to fill allocated slots with party and/or campaign loyalists. Needless to say, this one would be rather contentious. Unbinding the delegates so that they may vote sincerely carries the potential of overturning the outcome of primary season in a way similar to the way superdelegates are viewed in the context of the Democratic Party process.³ Since this one is laced with toxic outcomes no matter the choice, the status quo is likely to be maintained. 
2. Some change to Rule 40. Georgia's Evans mentioned that perhaps the eight state threshold could revert to the five state required before 2012. That is consistent with conversations FHQ has had with others in the RNC. That level has not always been at five. At one time, there was no such threshold and then it became a three state threshold before being upped again. Thresholds of both three and five have been mentioned, but there was also a discussion at the RNC winter meeting in Charleston about lowering the qualifying threshold to have a candidate's name placed in nomination at just one delegate. That's one delegate, not one state. The majority/plurality control threshold is another area that could potentially see some change in Rule 40. It seems like something may have to give with the way Rule 40 is currently constructed. The 2012 working rule does not seem to fit well into the 2016 process. It seems likely that Rule 40 will change, but there is a lack of consensus at this time about what may replace it. 
3. Pledging delegates. This one is pretty fascinating. The idea is that a rule would be written -- again by and for the 2016 delegates at the 2016 convention to fit 2016 conditions -- that would allow candidates to pledge bound delegates to other candidates. On the one hand, the intent is to facilitate an easier and perhaps more orderly resolution to a contested convention. However, on the other hand, as Evans points out, individual delegates would lose discretion under such provisions. That may bear some support in the party, but in other areas would be strongly opposed. 

To be sure, this is not a laundry list of proposed rules changes. And there will be others that will likely come along at the national convention. Most of those proposed changes are likely to occur in an effort toward setting the rules baseline for the 2020 cycle, however. While that is and will be important, more eyes will be on the shorter list of changes made to the convention rules that will govern the 2016 convention.


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¹ If Rule 12 survives the 2016 convention, then the party will once again be able to alter the nomination process rules outside of the convention (as it did following 2012 when Rule 12 was created). Even given that power, the party only slightly changed the process rules between 2012 and 2014.

² It should be noted that it is consistent with expectations that members of the Republican National Committee would in the vast majority of cases urge caution and to let the rules play out rather than give into the chaos angle.

³ There are risks involved whether there is a clear presumptive nominee with more than 1237 delegates bound to him heading into the convention or if there is a candidate with a plurality of delegates.

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Vox 2016 Delegate Projection Model Explainer

The folks over at Vox asked FHQ to put together a delegate projection model of the Republican race similar to the one we created with The New Yorker in 2012. Below are the details:

The model

With more than 20 contests in the books in the Republican presidential nomination process in 2016, there is enough data to begin looking at patterns from the results. While there are a number of demographic factors that highly correlate with Donald Trump’s share of the vote in those contests -- percentage with a college education, percentage of non-white population, religiosity (in various forms), among others -- the catch is that those same variables do not all adequately explain the variation in the other three candidates’ shares of the vote across states. 

Ted Cruz’s vote share across the contests to this point, for instance, increases more in caucus states and those in the interior West. The Texas senator is helped more in those states than his opponents -- Trump most especially -- are hurt. Kasich does best in highly educated states with lower religiosity and Rubio is all over the map. The vote share for the junior Florida senator is most highly (and negatively) correlated with Kasich’s share of the vote. As Kasich votes have increased at the state level, Rubio’s has decreased. 

Given that variety, a kitchen sink approach to explaining all four candidates’ vote percentages across states and projecting across the remaining states was not fruitful. The best performing model was one in which the percentage of non-white population, an interior West dummy variable and Cook’s PVI were regressed on the candidates’ shares of the vote in the contests that have been completed. Data for that parsimonious model was available not only the state level but at the congressional district level as well. 

Those regressions, in turn, allow for a projection of the candidate’s vote shares in the upcoming contests both statewide and, where necessary, at the congressional district level. A similar process was used for a projection model the New Yorker published later in the 2012 Republican race. Once predicted, those vote shares in upcoming states allows for a projection of the delegate count through the conclusion of the contests on June 7.

The projection

The resulting projected delegate allocation is revealing. Building on the FHQ Delegate Count as a baseline, Trump crests above the 1237 delegates necessary to clinch the Republican nomination, but would not do so until June 7. California would push him over the top. The model also predicts Trump victories in both Florida and Ohio on March 15. That 165 delegates is a significant chunk of delegates in Trump’s column. 

However, it should be noted that the model does not include polling or any measure of how well candidates are or are perceived to be doing in various states, including their home states (especially in Kasich’s case). But even without Ohio’s 66 delegates, Trump is above 1200 delegates and would still have up to 250 other delegates to woo in order to close the small gap.  

Cruz does well in the interior West as the discount placed on Trump and Cruz’s overperformance in that area through March 8 pushes him past Trump in those states. That is handy in a number of truly winner-take-all states like Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota, but those are small delegation states that more than overtaken by Trump wins in winner-take-all Arizona, Delaware and New Jersey (on top of Florida and Ohio). Cruz does well, but only musters about half of Trump’s delegate total in this projection. What the model demonstrates is that Trump would use March 15 to stretch his current delegate lead and then break away in the late April contests in the mid-Atlantic and northeast. 

The delegate allocation rules really hamper Rubio and Kasich if they continue. Third place (or lower) was no place to be on Super Tuesday on March 1 due to the allocation rules and that is even more true after March 15. The combination of winner-take-all, winner-take-most and proportional allocations with thresholds significantly decrease the odds that Rubio and Kasich would be able to acquire many more delegates.

Given what is known from the results so far, the models project a delegate count that looks like this:

Trump: 1279

Cruz: 601

Rubio: 235

Kasich: 78


The weaknesses

What is not accounted for in this model are contingencies triggered by any of the candidates currently in the race dropping out. That ideally would require more data, but could also be overcome with a redistribution of the current vote shares. However, the latter course, is potentially prone to errors. When in doubt, gather or wait for more data. 

This series of models could also be vulnerable to criticism concerning how robust the included variables explain the variation in the candidates’ vote shares in the completed contests. With only three independent variables, the door is opened to omitted variable bias. 

Finally, close observation will reveal that in most cases, statewide winners are also sweeping all of the congressional districts in the winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district states. This is a function of the small standard deviation in the percentage of non-white population variable being used to predict future vote shares. The needle moves, but not much on the congressional district level. Yet, the interesting thing is that both Trump and Cruz do better in states and districts with a higher percentage of non-white population. Whether it increases or decreases, Trump and Cruz are affected in the same direction. When Trump loses share as the non-white population drops, Rubio is gaining. Cruz is most consistently in second place in those districts behind Trump, but Rubio overtakes Cruz the lower the non-white population is. That may or may not have some bearing on future delegate allocations if Rubio drops out. But the bottom line here is that a multi-candidate race seems to be hurting Cruz or the candidate in second place. It would be more troubling if there was an inverse relationship between Trump and Cruz with respect to the percentage non-white population variable.  

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A Delegate Count Reconciliation Quickie

FHQ saw Eric Ostermeier's post on the varying delegate counts this morning, and since I have looked at these numbers until I ended up cross-eyed each night for the last week, I will make a few comments about what is driving the differences across the major trackers.

First, it should be said that the combination of simpler rules and clearer results drove the agreement across all outlets. In most of those states -- six out of nine -- the delegates were pooled rather than split across congressional districts. Where they were not -- South Carolina, Alabama and Minnesota -- the results were clear. That clarity means that the rounding rules were never all that consequential or at the very least were easier to decipher in allocating delegates.

That suggests that in the states where there is disagreement among the various delegate trackers partially boils down to the results on the congressional district level. But there are some tricky rounding and other rules that are likely the culprits for the differences.

Let's look at the problem states one by one.

New Hampshire
Look, this one is a done deal for now. It may come back up at the convention, but the New Hampshire Republican Party has already certified the results and the delegate count. There is some question about whether the NHGOP or the secretary of state got the rounding wrong, but again this is a settled issue until the convention. CBS needs to catch up with everyone else. It will eventually go the other way if Rubio is still in the race because the rounding rules were not followed properly.

Nevada
Again, CBS is wrong on this one. It looks as if they are treating Nevada as a state with a qualifying threshold that it does not have. Nobody under 20% was allocated any delegates by CBS. That includes Ben Carson, who won two delegates also.

Arkansas
The Natural state is the first to demonstrate the congressional district discrepancy problem. AR-3 is a district that looks too close to call. Some of these outlets are granting Cruz the runner-up congressional district there. Others are not. The fight for second place there is really close between Cruz and Rubio. Some have called it. Others have not. FHQ is in the latter category.

Georgia
Here is another congressional district issue. Second place is close between Cruz and Rubio in both GA-4 and GA-13. Some have called that Cruz while other outlets have not. The Trump issue, given the range in the various counts, has to include some issues with whether or not some outlets are granting the winner all three automatic delegates -- as called for Georgia Republican Party rules -- or if they are allocating them as part of the at-large pool of delegates.

Oklahoma
This is an easy one. The congressional district results clearly gave one delegate to Cruz, Rubio and Trump in each of the five districts. That means the issue was with the at-large delegate allocation. Some outlets picked up on the fact that the allocation equation divides by the total number of votes instead of the qualifying candidates' share of the vote. The former leaves three uncommitted delegates  that some have missed out on. Any outlet that has Cruz over 15 delegates missed this. Period.

Tennessee
TN-9 is the issue here. Some have called this one for Trump (2 delegates) with Rubio second (1 delegate). Others are still waiting on results to clarify in that district.

Texas
This one is not that hard. The Texas Secretary of State has both the results -- with 100% of precincts reporting -- statewide and by congressional district. There really should not be any issues in the Lone Star state. As FHQ has pointed out, there does seem to be a big difference between the TXSoS count and the AP count in TX-33. Either Cruz got two delegates and Trump one (TXSoS) or Rubio won all three (AP). FHQ has deferred to the state of Texas on this one. But that one district accounts for most of the differences. in the counts.

Vermont
The AP has updated their count and is consistent with the others with an 8 to 8 divide between Trump and Kasich. CBS probably needs to just update because 100% of returns are in and Rubio is still under the 20% threshold. He would have claimed four delegates had he risen above that level, but that does not look to be on the horizon.

Kansas
This is another easy one. The outlets that do not have Cruz at 24 delegates missed that all fractional delegates round up sequentially from top of the voting order to the last qualifier in Kansas; even fractions below .5. Cruz rounded up to 24. That left one less delegate for Kasich when the rounding process got to him as the last qualifier.

Kentucky
In Kentucky, the differences are based on how one reads the rounding rules. Under Kentucky Republican Party rules, if there is an overallocation of delegates -- as there was Saturday night -- then the candidate furthest from the rounding threshold loses a delegate. Normally, that threshold would be .5, but all four qualifying candidates had remainders above .5. They all rounded up triggering an overallocation. To take one delegate away from the candidate furthest from a .5 threshold would mean Trump would lose a delegate as he was more than .3 above .5. However, since all four candidates were over .5, that made .00 the threshold for any of the candidates to round up. That took the delegate from Rubio. Those taking Kasich down from seven to six made the mistake of doing the allocation sequentially and leaving Kasich with the leftovers. That is wrong.

Louisiana
The results in the Pelican state seem to settled. The LAGOP released the delegate count there late Sunday night. Trump edged Cruz in the at-large count, but Cruz equalized by winning a majority in LA-4. In the remaining five districts, Trump, Cruz and Rubio all received one delegate apiece. That leaves Trump 18, Cruz 18 and Rubio 5 in Louisiana. That Rubio received no delegates in some counts for Louisiana was entirely due to unclear rules regarding the allocation of congressional district delegates. It was unclear if Rubio needed 16.67% of the vote to round up to one delegate or whether it was enough for him to simply place third there.


The FHQ delegate count can be found here.

Happy counting, everyone.

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The Real Import of Rule 40 in 2016

One of the more controversial rules changes that came out of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa was the change to Rule 40. This is basically the guide to getting a candidate's name placed in nomination; to be able to take part in the roll call vote. Over the years the thresholds have gradually increased. In 2012, a candidate had to control a plurality of a delegation from at least five states in order to be nominated. But that is not a bar that had been in place forever. And again, it was certainly a barrier that increased to that level over time.

In Tampa in 2012, however, the thought process was a bit different than it is today. There and then, the rules changes were designed with one thing in mind: protecting President Romney in a 2016 bid at re-nomination. As I told Matt Viser a couple of weeks ago, few were sitting around in the Rules Committee meeting the week before the convention or later in the convention room itself thinking about the possibility of 15 candidates vying for the 2016 nomination. The rules that Republican lawyer, Ben Ginsberg pushed through the Rules Committee and were ultimately adopted at the convention protected hypothetical future President Romney in several ways, but one of them was increasing the thresholds a candidate had to meet to have their name placed in nomination at the convention.

The changes?

Instead of the five states a candidate had to win in 2012, a candidate had to win at least eight in 2016. And adding to that, a candidate could no longer skirt by with just plurality control of the the delegation. The rules adopted in Tampa for 2016 upped that to a majority. The raising of the number of states is not really of much consequence. But bumping that control threshold up from just one more delegate than your next nearest competitor to having to control half of the delegates in a state's delegation plus one is a potentially significant change. The impact of the change is minimized when one considers a scenario in which a President Romney is facing off against just one likely fringe foe. Yet, when one removes a hypothetical sitting president and inserts more than 10 candidates with no frontrunner/a nominal frontrunner/an unproven outsider frontrunner, then that change to Rule 40 really seems to start to matter.

This is exactly the type of unintended consequences a party gets when it makes plans for a nomination and convention four years ahead of time. Things change and in ways that are difficult to plan for so far out.

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Well, what do these changes portend for 2016? It is pretty ominous, right? And that is seemingly even more true given a wild and unpredictable field of candidates.

Not really.

As David Byler explains at Real Clear Politics, Rule 40 is basically a placeholder. It was among the series of convention rules that the Republican National Convention (via the adopted Rules Committee package) extended to the next cycle with some tweaks as it routinely does without much notice every four years. And by "convention rules", FHQ means the rules that are intended to govern the next convention (Rules 26-42). Those are distinct from what one might call "primary rules" -- Rules 13-25 -- in one important respect: The convention rules cannot be altered between conventions (see Rule 12), but the primary rules can.

That is why we have seen the cleaning up of Rule 16(a)(2) and the reinsertion of shall for may resurrecting the proportionality requirement in Rule 16(c)(2) among other changes.

But Rule 40 and the other convention rules have been off limits, static since Tampa. The routine is that these convention rules stay the same. One convention passes them on to another and that next convention adopts them as the procedures for governing itself with no problems. Ultimately though, the convention of delegates has the final say so in that instance. While it is customary for one convention to adopt the rules passed on to it by a previous convention it does not have to. Basically, a convention is charged with adopting the rules that will govern itself. The RNC has streamlined this process, as described above, but the convention can take it off that track if necessary.

That is where the discussion of Rule 40 stands now for the 2016 cycle. Again, with a wide open race and a robust field of candidates, the requirements to place a candidates name in nomination at the Cleveland convention appear rather steep. Can a candidate reach majority control of delegations from multiple states? Can multiple candidates get there? Will none get there?

We do not have answers to those questions at this point and may not until well after voting has begun in February. But all the while, the RNC -- and ultimately the convention itself -- could have some say in this matter.

...if it has to.

One of the shortcomings of Byler's otherwise excellent piece at RCP is that it does not consider the possibility that Rule 40 works as intended; that only one candidate gets majority control of delegations from at least eight states and receives a majority of the 2470+ delegates available in the Republican presidential nomination race.

And there is no defined point in time in which it will be clear that Rule 40 is working (or not). Until then, Rule 40 and the thresholds for nomination contained therein matter. It is a goal for which all the viable campaigns are shooting. There a reason Ted Cruz's campaign (among others) has been involved in Guam. It counts as one of those eight states. The campaigns, then, are operating as if the provisions of Rule 40 are a thing; that it matters. And indeed it does. Getting to majority control of eight states is still a goal for the campaigns until it is not.

So, if Rule 40 operates as envisioned, then there is no reason for the convention to change it. In the meantime, though, between now and the convention, the rule puts in place a marker that the campaigns must hit and are in fact striving for. That is different than saying Rule 40 "won't affect the primary outcome".

It won't affect the outcome if it ends up standing in the way of the Cleveland convention completing part of its task: nominating a presidential candidate. If Rule 40 does serve as an impediment to that task, then it will be altered. But until it is clear that Rule 40 is a problem -- that the primary process has produced an inconclusive result in part because of the requirements in the rule -- it matters.

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That does leave us with a couple of important secondary questions.

First, does the RNC signaling that Rule 40 is a placeholder now -- in December 2015 -- change how the campaigns approach the process? We will not begin getting an answer to this question until votes start coming in and delegates are allocated. It is at that point that the campaigns will start attempting to frame what they have won and what that means. In other words, do the campaigns keep us updated on the progress they are making toward meeting the thresholds laid out in Rule 40 -- the process of being placed in nomination?

Second, if -- and it is still an IF, folks -- Rule 40 is determined to be problematic during the course of primary season (if an inconclusive result is seemingly almost assured), then how does the Convention Rules Committee alter it? Byler addresses at the end of his piece and FHQ disagrees with him. As I said above and as I told Ben Jacobs and Walter Shapiro via Twitter last Thursday when this whole brokered contested convention discussion broke open anew, the number of states required under Rule 40 is not the issue. The biggest, most problematic change was the raising of the control threshold from a simple plurality to a majority. The convention may attempt to game things some with the number of states, but reverting to the former plurality requirement is more likely to solve a whole lot of the potential problems with the Rule 40 requirements.

But first thing's first: Let's see if, in fact, Rule 40 is going to be a problem once votes are being cast.

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The Chaos Theory of Republican Presidential Nominations Under an Iron-Fisted RNC

Steven Rosenfeld had an interesting delegate selection rules/process piece up at Salon/AlterNet last week. He reached out to FHQ to discuss those rules and their implications for the RNC and Donald Trump, but unfortunately we never were able to connect. While I wish that hadn't been the case, I do think that both Richard Berg-Andersson and Tony Roza from the Green Papers, nonetheless, pretty closely captured a number of items I would have raised.

Still, FHQ has some comments in reaction to Rosenfeld's piece.

First, the rigging frame -- that the RNC will engineer the state-level delegate selection rules in such a way as to prevent a Donald Trump nomination -- is not consistent with what we know about how the presidential nomination process operates. The Republican National Convention adopted the 2016 national delegate selection rules at the 2012 convention in Tampa. It tweaked them slightly in the time between the convention and August 2014; readopting a proportionality requirement affecting a smaller calendar window, revising the language empowering the national party to enforce the new binding requirement that came out of Tampa and adding a rule to limit the number of primary debates among others.

A majority of the convention passed the 2016 rules, and the changes made in the time since had to garner majority support at the RNC Rules Committee stage before passing a three-quarters supermajority threshold before the full 168 member RNC in order to be implemented. And while there were voices in dissent at every checkpoint -- be it at the convention or any of the seasonal meetings the RNC holds -- the so-called establishment position won each time. And, in the case of the changes made outside of the convention, those changes achieved near consensus-level support from the members of the Republican National Committee.¹

Those are not rigged results. In actuality, they are consensus-built national party delegate selection rules. The parties on both sides of the aisle often fight this last war; drafting rules consistent with those already in place, but that troubleshoot the problems that existed in the previous cycle(s).² Again, that is not rigging. That is crafting rules in a context where different people from state parties all over the country have different views on what the rules should be; what the goals of the party and the nomination process should be. In other words, these rules are the product of politics. That process has yielded a pretty clear signal to this point: despite the diversity of opinion among members, the 168 members of the RNC have been pretty unified on the matter of the 2016 delegate selection rules. That is not to suggest that there is not dissent, but that, to the extent it exists, it has been minimal.

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But Rosenfeld is not really talking about the RNC influencing the national rules of the nomination process. Instead, he is picking up on and advancing UT-Austin law professor Sanford Levison's wild theory that the Republican National Committee will massage state-level delegate allocation rules -- whether winner-take-all, proportional or some method in between the two extremes -- to derail Donald Trump's candidacy. This notion is ridiculous for a number of inter-related reasons.

First, state parties make the decisions on how delegates to the national convention will be allocated to particular candidates based on the results of primaries and caucuses. This does not mean that those state parties are not open to influence from the national party, but that task is and would be quite difficult. In other words, it is much easier said than done. The national parties themselves are somewhat decentralized as already described, but the state party executive and state central committees that vote on and thus choose the rules that will govern the state-level delegate allocation processes are another layer of decentralization altogether. If there is a diversity of views within the national party, then there are even more opinions involved when more people -- in the form of state party executive committees and state central committees -- are invited into the process. Additionally, there is variation on this from state to state. Some states are more aligned with the positions of the RNC than others.

But keep in mind also that state parties are like the national parties in one important respect. Since, they too are decentralized to some degree and are balancing a varying multitude of views, state parties often are plagued by the same politics with which national parties can be afflicted. Given a political environment, parties -- whether state or national -- often take the path of least resistance. Like the national parties, state parties tend to carry over the same delegate selection rules from the previous cycle. That can be a function of either majority agreement that those are the best rules or that disagreement within the state party over the rules means that the status quo position (the same rules from the last cycle) prevails. The one exception is when the national party requires a rules change (but FHQ will come back to that momentarily).

The presidential nomination process is all a huge instance of party coordination in a decentralized environment. That alone speaks volumes about how mismatched the Levinson hypothesis is with how this all actually works. But there is more to this presidential nomination coordination problem than decentralization. That hovers over the entire process, but does not provide an adequate picture of how off Levinson's view is.

One other factor that ought to be included is how the Republican National Committee approaches or has historically approached the regulation of state-level delegate selection rules in the modern era of presidential nominations. They have tended to be very hands-off; allowing states to devise rules that are tailor-made for that state. In that way, it is consistent with national party's general adherence to the notion of limited (federal) government. State and local interests/parties are better able to make those decisions than the national party.

Over time, however, the RNC has become slightly more hands-on in its dealings with state party-devised delegate selection rules. Those cases have tended to be in response to state-level abuses of the national party guidelines -- the national party delegate selection rules. Again, this fits in with the idea that the national parties are often fighting the last battle, the one from four years prior. It is all cyclical: national parties set rules, states react (either following or breaking the rules), national parties react to those abuses. And on and on the cycle goes.

In both parties, there have been problems during recent cycles in dealing with the handful of states that have chosen to hold either primaries or caucuses outside of the national party-designated window. Those states have gone too early. But in those cases, the national parties have tended to deal with those problems between cycles rather than within them. The one exception is that the DNC affords its Rules and Bylaws Committee the option of increasing the (50%) penalty on states that go too early. That is intended to create some additional leverage that can be used against states before the actual voting begins. But the RNC has no similar ability. It can only make rules changes between cycles.

And even if the national party did have that ability, getting state governments to respond is another matter. This is another way in which the process is decentralized. In the majority of states, the delegate selection/allocation process is filtered through a primary election. And in most of those states it is the state government -- not the state party -- that is making the decision on when the primary will be held.³ The state party has limited say in that process. The national party has limited say in that process. Yes, the state party has the final say in whether they opt into a primary or foot the bill for a caucus themselves. But those state parties have incentive to choose the cheaper option, the primary.

The fact that Florida, Michigan and Arizona broke the RNC rules on timing during the 2012 cycles should tell us something about exactly how much power and influence the national party over the states.

The final problematic factor in the Levinson hypothesis is something he basically points out. The incentives of wading into the patchwork of state-level rules are not clear.

There are risks for an anti-Trump GOP establishment with either approach. Pushing more states into the proportional representation camp lengthens the race to accumulating 1,236 delegates. But that “would presumably assure Trump of getting some significant number of delegates, assuming he hasn’t flamed out,” Levinson said. However, pushing more winner-take-all states “obviously is a greater roll of the dice.”

If a national party is coordinating this process, even if only loosely, it is likely not inclined to "push" states to have either winner-take-all or proportional rules. The field of candidates will winnow over time, but how it winnows and importantly when it winnows are unknown factors at this point. That those are unknowns now makes it increasingly difficult for a national party -- or a state party setting their own rules for that matter -- to effectively and exactly make rules across a series of states that will definitively advantage (or disadvantage) one candidate or one type of candidate. The parties at all levels are wary of unintended consequences and this is one area -- state-level rules making -- that can produce them quite quickly.

Now, the RNC may attempt to influence state parties' delegate selection plans, but their rate of success there is likely to be mixed at best. It is not that the national parties are not powerful. They are. But they are also limited in how they can respond to states. As Tony Roza points out in Rosenfeld's article, the state parties submit plans to the RNC and the RNC green lights those plans or rejects them. [The same is true for Democrats, though the sequence of submission and approval/rejection is frontloaded.] While that potentially provides an opportunity for the RNC to massage state-level delegate allocation rules, the party does not tend to handle these matters that way. First, there is no evidence that the RNC does anything other than give a thumbs up to these plans. Faced with a Florida plan in 2011 that called for both a non-compliant primary date and non-compliant allocation formula (winner-take-all in the proportionality window), the RNC, nonetheless gave a thumbs up to the plan. And that was an instance where the party had national level rules (penalties) in its favor, backing it up. There was a violation. Additionally, when the RNC considered increasing the penalties on rogue states in the late summer of 2011, it opted not to.

Most of the state party rules are publicly available, and most of them follow closely the rules of four years ago. There are exceptions, but collectively the picture of the rules that are public sets a baseline now for us to look back on later in the year when the RNC has approved and thus finalized the state-level rules. We will know then whether the RNC has in fact massaged the rules. Chances are pretty good that the national party will leave well enough alone. If it pressed forward with such an intervention, word would get out and that would further stir up the hornet's nest of discontent that is already brewing, for the time being propping up (in the polls anyway) outsider candidacies like Trump's. The RNC does not want that kind of backlash, and besides does not operate with that kind of iron fist anyway. They might intervene on matters like who participates in primary debates (i.e.: no more kiddie table debates, an increasing threshold of support for participating in those debates or a decreasing number qualify over time American Idol-style, etc.), and while that is important, it speaks to how limited the RNC is in controlling the process. The national parties really only seek to facilitate or manage the presidential nomination process.

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The second comment-worthy item in Rosenfeld's piece concerns the Haugland-driven, rules-based chaos theory of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination process. If one works hard enough, it can be tied in with the delegate allocation discussion above, but in practice, it makes for a Frankenstein's monster of an article when bringing the two parts together. The article really seems little more than an attempt to shed some light on a couple of fringe hypotheses, Levinson's and Haugland's.

By FHQ's count this is at least the third vehicle for Haugland's Rule 40-based chaos theory; following Dave Catanese's and Reid Wilson's lead. The premise is basically this:

1. There are now 15 candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination.
2. RNC rules require a candidate or candidates to hold a majority of delegates in at least eight state delegations at the national convention in Cleveland.
3. RNC rules require states with contests during the first two weeks of March to proportionally allocate their delegates to candidates based on the results of their primaries and caucuses.
4. There are likely to be between 20 and 25 states that hold contests in those two weeks (March 1-14).
5. Together, all of the above in combination make it less likely that any candidate gets to the level of majority control of eight delegations.
6. Brokered convention!

Yeah, maybe. But in reality, this hypothesis is the victim of overanalyzing the rules and underanalyzing some of the regular patterns of the presidential nomination process in the post-reform era. Stated differently, it puts the cart before the horse.

2016 could be different. It could also be that it falls into the regular winnowing pattern that tends to mark these processes. That is one element that is common to each of these pieces: They emphasize the chaos because it makes for a better story than "the field will winnow and there will be a ho-hum pep rally of a convention that gives way to the general election phase of the campaign". There are reasons to believe that the 2016 Republican field of presidential candidates will winnow in ways similar to most of the rest of them since 1972.

First, as Catanese mentions, states whose contests fall in the proportionality window have the option of putting in place thresholds (of the vote) that candidates have to meet in order to win delegates at the statewide and congressional district levels. Proportionality window states can set that threshold as high as 20%. On the surface, that minimum threshold is intended to limit the number of candidates who emerge with delegates bound to them from a given state. That is even true in the scenarios where no candidates reach the threshold (the top two candidates win the delegates) or only one candidate receives 20% or whatever the threshold is set to (in most cases, either that candidate gets all of the district/statewide delegates or that candidate shares those delegates with the district/state runner-up). Most of the SEC primary states fit this category.

That is going to have the likely effect of creating at least two classes of candidates: those with delegates and those that have none or very few. That latter category will face increasing pressure in a sequential process to put up or shut; to win contests and/or delegates or drop out. Yes, that is true even with super PACs. Donations to and spending from those groups is going to becoming increasingly results-driven as the process continues. That goes for the remainder of the invisible primary phase (increase your poll numbers or get out) as well as when the process moves from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and onward (win delegates or get out). Neither super PACs nor voters are going to be drawn to candidates who have only demonstrated that they cannot move up the polls or win contests/delegates. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon typical of the sequential presidential nomination process.

But what if the winnowing only occurs to a certain point, leaving four or three or two candidates? Actually, it is likely that the field shrinks after the February contests and continues in March/April until it is down to two candidates.

But why?

It is tempting to say that that the above threshold is like the electoral process in a parliamentary system, the membership of which is dependent upon a system of proportional representation. Those systems have thresholds too. Duverger's law would tell us that that type of system would end up with multiple parties in the governing coalition even with a minimum threshold for gaining seats in the parliament. Why would the Republican presidential process with thresholds for delegates be any different? Why would it not produce a stable group of multiple (and not just two) candidates?

The answer lies in the fact that the presidential nomination processes for both major parties in the United States are actually 50(+) contests that are happening in a sequence, rather than just one vote in the parliamentary example. Each step in the sequence gives onlookers -- voters, donors, super PACs, the candidates and their campaigns -- an opportunity to revisit the tally, the score in the horse race. Those opportunities -- those chances to reflect on how the process is progressing -- means that there are constantly points where the collective process is separating the wheat from the chaff.

But some may ask, if you are a candidate who has a fair number of delegates, why would you drop out and give up any leverage at a convention that may not be a coronation for a presumptive nominee? Why would you free up delegates -- your own -- to have no choice but to gravitate toward that presumptive nominee? This is the heart of the Haugland argument: if there's chaos, don't give up your delegates/leverage. That is why his comments are often peppered with statements like his intention to educate delegates on their responsibilities.

But there are a couple of reasons why candidates might and, in fact, very often do give up that leverage and release their delegates. First, like Scott Walker, they reason that there is no utility to be gained by continuing the fight. There is nothing to be won and plenty to be lost. Now, not all of the candidates fit that category. In fact, one could easily foresee candidates like Donald Trump or, say, Ted Cruz completely ignoring that Walkerian rationale and fighting on if they have delegates.⁴ The rest of the field is likely more pragmatic; willing to play the Boehner role and drop out for the good of the party and its chances of winning the general election.⁵

And that brings us to the second reason Republican candidates may feel compelled to bow out in favor of another better positioned (in primary season) candidate: Hillary Clinton. Well, not Hillary Clinton, per se, but how the Democratic presidential nomination process is going by comparison. If the advantages Clinton has in polling, fundraising and in party endorsements collectively translate into votes throughout presidential primary season, then the Democratic process will reach its natural conclusion more quickly. That comparison is important. If Republican voters, super PACs, donors and/or the campaigns feel like that gives any advantage (real or imagined) to the Democratic candidate, then some herding toward a resolution -- a candidate -- is the likely result. There would at the very least be some pressure to hasten the ultimate resolution. That pressure is exerted formally and informally on the candidates; for them to drop out and release their delegates in order for the party to focus on the general election task at hand.

Chaos theory proponents will point toward 1976 and the contested nomination battle that cycle. Of course, that was a nomination race shaped by a much different set of conditions. It was the first Republican nomination race under the new-to-them, Democratic Party-triggered nomination system where winning primaries affected who attended the conventions and thus who won the nomination. In other words, the Republican Party was new to the process and had not adapted to it in the way that it has in the intervening 40 years. 1976 was also a year in which Republicans only ever had two options: status quo (Ford) or outsider (Reagan). A bigger field in 2016 means more instability, but it also means that there will be a winnowing process that, in combination with the delegate allocation rules, may give an advantage to one candidate that is difficult for any other candidate to overcome, if there is significant competition to become the alternative to that frontrunner. Any delay in that secondary jockeying is a win for a front-running candidate.

Out of chaos may come order, but the type of chaos that the adherents of this theory describe is not likely to produce any of the order they desire until after 2016. And when there are presidential elections only once every four years, that means putting it off until 2020. And actually, that may be the goal of this: to hope for chaos that will yield if not a candidate that is acceptable to the chaos theory proponents, then enough mayhem to force some changes to the rules of the game.

Hey, it worked for Democrats in 1968. Chaos gave way to a new system of nominating presidential candidates. FHQ is not sure how much order they got out of that, though. At best it had a delayed impact.


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¹ And to be clear, these members are not stooges installed by the national party to do their bidding. These are the state party chair and the Republican National Committeeman and National Committeewoman from each of the 50 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and the territories. Each of the three members that form the state delegation to the Republican National Committee are elected at the state level by the members of the state party. That leaves a diversity of different voices to form the core of the national party.

² This is less manufacturing than it is carrying over the rules from previous cycles and augmenting them in ways to prevent the problems of the past. To build consensus, the path of least resistance is to take what already exists and tweak it. That often leads to the type of contradictions that North Dakota Republican National Committeeman, Curly Haugland, mentions later in Rosenfeld's piece.

³ Party-in-state-government is not necessarily the same as the state party. The goals of the individuals involved in each are institutionally different and even absent those differences, the groups can be completely different in make up.

⁴ Both are in a similar space and are unlikely to continue going on together against, for example, one alternative "establishment" candidate.

⁵ Some of the candidates in the 2016 field have already had experience dropping out in the past. See Huckabee and Santorum.

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Rules Matter...

But correctly interpreting rules changes matters more.

Adam Nagourney and Jonathan Martin at the New York Times are the latest to venture down the path of tea leaf reading about the changes the Republican National Committee has made to its 2016 delegate selection rules and their impact. Their conclusions?

The rules changes to streamline the Republican presidential nomination process may backfire. More specifically, they add:

But as the sprawling class of 2016 Republican presidential candidates tumbled out of their chaotic second debate last week, it was increasingly clear that those rule changes — from limiting the number of debates to adjusting how delegates are allocated — had failed to bring to the nominating process the order and speed that party leaders had craved.

What follows in the article is more of the same.

...and it is wrong. It is wrong because Nagourney and Martin fall into the post hoc ergo propter hoc trap. Essentially, the conclusion is: the RNC made nomination rules changes, thus the "chaos" we are currently witnessing is direct result of those rules changes. And then they even talk to and aggregate quotes from folks like Richard Hohlt who not only subscribe to the chaos theory, but who feel the rules changes have led to "unintended consequences".

But here's the thing: For those rules to have either the desired effect that the national party wants or for there to have been unintended consequences, the rules actually have to be implemented. And a great many of those rules and their attendant effects have not kicked in yet. One cannot draw conclusions from something that has yet to occur. One can only speculate. And that is pretty much what we're getting from this article: speculation.

--
Let's take a step back here for a moment and lay this out piece by piece. There are four main rules changes that Nagourney and Martin both directly discuss and indirectly hint at:

1. limiting the number of debates
2. increasing the penalties to keep states in line on the primary calendar
3. compressing that calendar due to #2 and shifting up the date of the national convention
4. tightening the proportionality rules for states with contests during the first half of March

Out of those four changes, only one has truly been implemented so far. That is the new debates-limiting rule. And it could be argued that even the effects of that one have not been felt yet. Debate season, after all, has not run its course yet. We are going on information from just two debates, long in duration though they may have been, at this point.

To have the desired effect that Nagourney and Martin describe -- to tamp down on the "chaos" and calm the nerves of jittery Republicans in the campaigns, the donor class or in the heartland -- the only solution would have been to eliminate primary debates altogether. But the RNC was never going to do that. Their objective was to limit the perceived damage. As we are witnessing on the Democratic side, even limiting debates can be a tricky business. The objective is the same though: limit, not eliminate the sort of jockeying that is a normal part of this invisible primary stage of a presidential nomination process. In other words, the national parties are attempting to manage the sorts of party divisions that always end up being emphasized in these events.

That is the only rules change that has had anything approaching a direct impact on the process so far, and the results are inconclusive. Of the other three changes cited above, the only other one to have even an indirect effect is the effort to compress the primary calendar on the front end: the increase in the severity of the penalty for holding a primary or caucus before March. Has that had an impact on the nomination race? The answer is not really. In any event, we will not know its impact until we actually get into campaign season. Could a newly compressed calendar backfire on the RNC? Sure, but it has not yet.

However, we have seen an indirect effect of this rule. It has kept states in line on the calendar. That is the desired impact of the change. The Florida and Michigan chaos of four and eight years ago -- you know, actual chaos, not the normal kind discussed above -- is not present during the 2016 cycle. That has affected candidate and campaign activity. Are there unintended consequences from that? We don't know. What we do know is that the campaigns have some confidence in what the primary calendar is going to look like in 2016. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada will have February primaries and caucuses. Other states are falling in line in March and thereafter. Four and eight years ago, things were different. States like Florida were agents of uncertainty. Threatening a January primary date well into September 2011, for example, meant that the calendar was shrouded in mystery. The campaigns had a pretty good idea that the carve-out states would be first, but what came next and in what sequence was not set in stone until relatively late in the calendar year before the primaries started.

That affects candidate and campaign behavior. And in 2011, candidates tended to focus on the near sure things at the beginning of the calendar -- the carve-out states -- and not those that came after, the sequence of which was an unknown.

Again, this is the desired impact. The RNC has reined in rogue state activity. It wanted more certainty so that candidates and their campaigns could actually plan ahead; plan for states with early March 2016 contests. Is that evidence that the campaigns are planning for a long delegate fight. Maybe, but we don't know for sure yet. What looks like a long delegate fight more than four months before Iowa may not actually be a long, protracted delegate fight once the process gets to and through Iowa next February.

But let's give credit where credit is due: the RNC (and DNC, for that matter) has successfully curbed calendar chaos in 2015. That may be fighting the last war. That may yield unintended consequences, but hasn't really done so yet.

Whether the best intentions of that compressed calendar are upset by a huge (at this point un-winnowed) field of candidates remains to be seen. We'll have a better idea next year.

That goes for the final two rules included in this unintended consequences hypothesis that Nagourney and Martin advance as well. Look, we just have not felt the effects of either the recalibrated delegate allocation rules or the earlier convention (and thus backend-shortened primary calendar) yet. One cannot test the effects of supposed unintended consequences until the rules have actually been implemented. Those haven't been. In the void, we are left to speculate, and that is really what Nagourney and Martin are doing here. They are taking, as many others before them have, this large field of candidates and are projecting changes based on that, that at the same time have not happened yet.

Rules matter, folks, but the rules changes the RNC put in place for 2016 have not been fully realized yet. As a result, we really cannot fully determine at this point whether the desired impact has been felt.

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Ohio Republicans Choose Winner-Take-All Plan for 2016 Presidential Primary

A switch has been a possibility if not in the works in Ohio since March, but the Ohio Republican Party on Friday, September 18 voted overwhelmingly to adopt winner-take-all rules for its 2016 presidential primary.

Via Robert Higgs at the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

State Republican leadership on Friday formally designated the party's presidential primary next March as a winner-take-all event -- a move that could boost Gov. John Kasich's quest for the GOP presidential nomination.

FHQ will leave the Kasich angle for others, but the change over from a hybrid system of allocating national convention delegates to a truly winner-take-all plan for the March 15 presidential primary is significant.¹ As FHQ described earlier this year, in 2012 those sorts of hybrid plans often ended up closer to a truly proportional allocation than a winner-take-all allocation despite having elements of both. Past is not necessarily prologue here, but a candidate would have to win by a large margin for such a hybrid plan to approximate a truly winner-take-all plan.

Any trade, then, to a winner-take-all plan, post-March 14 is of note. Ohio now joins Florida (and perhaps North Carolina) as true winner-take-all contests on March 15. Still the list of states in that category is only marginally different than it was four years ago. Ohio has switched. Nebraska is now winner-take-all. And North Carolina Republicans have signaled it, too, will trade out a proportional plan for a winner-take-all one. But the list is still pretty limited to that group and the handful of states that were winner-take-all in 2012.

Most of those states are clustered around the March 15-22 week.

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¹ The hybrid system Ohio Republicans utilized in 2012 proportionally allocated the small cache of at-large delegates based on the results of the March 6 presidential primary, but was winner-take-all at the congressional district level (i.e.: win the district, win three delegates).

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Trump in the Blank

There is a positive relationship between the length of Donald Trump's time atop the Republican presidential primary polls and the breadth of coverage he receives from the news media. As one increases, the other increases as well. But then again, that is how this process tends to work. In the Sides and Vavreck parlance, it's discovery, scrutiny and decline.

The temptation is perhaps to address why, given ample fodder, scrutiny has not yet yielded to decline in Mr. Trump's case. In fact, that discussion -- why hasn't that decline happened? -- has claimed a sizable chunk of the scrutiny phase to this point. Yet, there have been several extended, in-depth discussions of Mr. Trump's policy positions on a number of issues, too.

Mark this last full week of August 2015 down as the week that Mr. Trump's continued polling success intersected with how that might translate into primary success next year. Another way of looking at this is that folks have run out of things to write about Mr. Trump and have finally gotten to the delegate selection rules. If a polling boomlet lasts long enough, people will get bored enough to start talking about the rules.¹

The problem with the rules portion of the scrutiny phase (if it comes at all) is that it can often seem haphazardly thrown together and ultimately misguided. That description might be a bit overboard, but it roughly fits the scenario(s) that Josh Marshall and David Fishback have woven together concerning Trump and the the Republican delegate selection rules in place for next year.

That scenario goes something like this:

1. Trump has the support of a quarter to a third of the Republican primary electorate.²
2. Trump wins and/or wins a good amount of delegates from the carve-out states and those primaries and caucuses that follow during the proportionality window (March 1-14).
3. Trump wraps things up once the proportionality window closes and states can allocate delegates in a winner-take-all fashion.³
4. Trump is the Republican nominee.

Look at that sequence again. With or without the proportionality window, this is roughly the sequence in which any Republican presidential candidate is nominated. All that Marshall and Fishback have done is add Trump's name to the formula; the "frontrunner's" path to the Republican nomination. It is the 50-75 Rule FHQ discussed at Crystal Ball earlier this year. Some candidate wins some delegates early, creates a small lead (around the point at which 50% of the total number of delegates are allocated) and then widens it (around the time that 75% of the total number of delegates are allocated). That established lead is usually either enough to clinch the nomination or put it well enough out of reach for other candidates to force their withdrawals.

Other than the much sexier, but less likely brokered deadlocked convention scenario, this is the other most widely talked about path by which someone gets to the nomination. Marshall and Fishback have filled in the blank with Trump.

So what? It is a storyless doomsday story that is typical of the summer period before a presidential election year.

See, I told you the scrutiny phase scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it gets to the rules.


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¹ Hey, some of us are bored/boring enough to write about those rules almost exclusively.

² This glosses over deeper questions about whether the support Trump now enjoys will actually translate to votes once Iowa kicks things off next year.

³ To be clear, not all states on or after March 15 are winner-take-all. If 2012 is a baseline and North Carolina and Ohio are added to the mix, that is still only eight winner-take-all states. Granted, most of those are huddled around March 15 or in the last half of March. But not all of the states are winner-take-all once the proportionality window closes at the end of March 14.

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