2000 Presidential Primary Results

[majinkoola]

I don't know how many people have seen this, but the results of the last Republican presidential primary was eye-opening to me. Most of the non-caucus results are here:
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/2000presprim.htm

Key numbers here:

20,717,198 Republican voters in 42 states, DC, and Puerto Rico (excludes Iowa, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Wyoming, and Nevada). I'd say including those other states, that's 25,000,000 Republican voters, tops. Probably a good bit less as none of those states are very large. And even though the population of the US has been increasing, a majority of that isn't people who vote Republican. So with the low perceived quality of the Republican candidates, their lack of fundraising, and the large amount of support for Hillary/Obama/Edwards, I'll bet the number of total Republican primary voters this year doesn't exceed 25,000,000.

115,606 votes won NH for McCain.

305,998 votes won SC for Bush.

650,805 votes won MI for McCain.

516,263 votes won FL for Bush.

It does not take state-wide name recognition to win a primary. Simply put, not that many people vote in a primary election. We do not need the MSM on our side if the grassroots efforts are strong enough, and RP's HQ raises enough money to make his name known to enough people.

 

[Pedrique]

ok dumb question here.

what actually determines who advances past the primary and becomes the nominee of the party? Is it a plurality of states that you win or a plurality of total votes received across all states?

 

[CodeMonkey]

ok dumb question here.

what actually determines who advances past the primary and becomes the nominee of the party? Is it a plurality of states that you win or a plurality of total votes received across all states?

Each state has its own system to determine who the delegates will be for each party, then those delegates go to the national convention and vote. Winner of that is typically the nominee.

That's my limited understanding of it.

 

[stalcottsmith]

How It Might Go Down -- Pay Attention

ok dumb question here.

what actually determines who advances past the primary and becomes the nominee of the party? Is it a plurality of states that you win or a plurality of total votes received across all states?

Each state has a number of delegates to the national nominating convention. The delegates then go to the convention to cast their votes. As I understand it, for the first three votes, they are pledged to vote for the candidate who received the plurality of votes in their home state. Then they are free to vote their "conscience." A number of votes are taken while the convention progresses to get a "sense" of how things are and of course to give the operators time to figure out their strategy to affect a palatable result within the rules of the game should the people in their home states vote for the "wrong" guy.

In most cycles for the last few decades, they have tried to engineer things to have a clear victor going into the convention, as this leads to party unity, however, unless the result of the state presidential preference (primary) elections is overwhelming, it is possible that the nominee can be decided at the convention itself. In this type of situation, which we have not had in a long time, there will be tons of speech-making, negotiating and back room dealing and procrastination as they try to exhaust the first three votes and make the delegates free to vote their individual "conscience."

That is why it is important to infiltrate the party machinery and have as many people in there as delegates to lobby for Ron Paul. It is rigged to work against an insurgent campaign but when such a campaign succeeds, it theoretically would result in a stronger party due to the debate and soul searching that happened. Or of course the party could fall apart.

Unless Ron wins the primary in a landslide, this is likely to be a knock down, drag out fight -- a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. This is not just screwing around and winning a popularity contest. We are seriously trying to change the direction of a party.

Be prepared and study up on it now. Make sure everyone in your meetup understands.

 

[Pedrique]

thanks for the info. One clarification please regarding the "first 3 votes".

So say Florida sends 10 delegates to the convention.

Are you saying that 3 of the delegates must vote for whoever won the state, and the rest can vote their conscience?

Or are you saying that each delegate gets 4 votes, the first three default to the winner of their state, the last one goes to whomever they want.

Thanks

 

[Silverback]

They (all the delegates) keep voting until one candidate gets a majority.

 

[USPatriot36]

thanks for the info. One clarification please regarding the "first 3 votes".

So say Florida sends 10 delegates to the convention.

Are you saying that 3 of the delegates must vote for whoever won the state, and the rest can vote their conscience?

Or are you saying that each delegate gets 4 votes, the first three default to the winner of their state, the last one goes to whomever they want.

This is saying the first 3 times that they vote, they have to vote for whoever won the state (in Georgia it is 2 times). Generally, there is only 1 vote and one candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes and that person wins. But if say Ron Paul gets 45 percent of the delegates. Giuliani gets 30 percent of the delegates and Romney gets 25 percent then there would be no winner and they would vote again and again. This is where backroom deals are made between votes. Romney backs out and tells his delegates to throw there support to Giuliani.

So if after 3 votes, noone has more than 50 percent of the delegates, the delegates in your state would be free to vote as they think best.