The ILLINOIS RESULTS to watch (links to all results INCLUDING DELEGATES RESULTS)

[Southerner]

Proof once again that not everything is a conspiracy.

 

[parocks]

Here's something. CD 13 has 61 precincts not reporting yet. 90%. Every other CD has 99% or 100% reporting. Fraud! Earlier today it was said that CD 13 was our best CD in Illinois.

 

[parocks]

Not only that, you might expect the campaign to actually attack Romney instead of the only guy capable of stopping him from getting the magic number....

What could be happening (I don't know, I don't know everything Ron Paul says) is that Ron Paul could be attacking Romney, and the media, who is for Romney 100%, simply is reporting it.

Attack Goldman Sachs.

The Bailout BILLIONS that were given to AIG, went right to Goldman Sachs. If AIG wasn't bailed out, Goldman Sachs wouldn't have gotten money from AIG. Therefore, bailout. Goldman Sachs is the biggest backer of Romney.

*****************************
Goldman Sachs Got Billions From AIG For Its Own Account, Crisis Panel Finds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/26/goldman-sachs-aig-backdoor-bailout_n_814589.html

Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress.

*********************************
How Goldman Sachs gained from bailout of AIG

Documents given to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission show Goldman made $2.9bn on proprietary trades from AIG's bailout cash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jan/27/goldman-sachs-received-aig-bailout-cash

*************************************

 

[PauliticsPolitics]

Let's see how many additional CD delegates Santorum (or Gingrich) would've gotten if we realized that we weren't at all close to likely to get in Illinois.

I'm up for the challenge.

For CDs 1,2,3,6,8,9,10,11,14
If EVERY Paul voter voted for Santorum delegates, Romney would still win all the delegates.

For CDs 4,5,7,13
Santorum did not even have delegates for us to vote for. We actually came in second in three of these. Regardless, Romney had more than Paul and Gingrich combined in all of these.

For CDs 12,15,17
Santorum won these anyway.

CD 16 & 18 are the only two districts where (if Paul voters all voted for Santorum delegates) there would be a change. This would move 5 delegates from Romney to Santorum.

But, since people are not psychic, it was impossible to know these two districts would be the ones to have the close margin. So the only way to go about your strategy would be for EVERY Paul voter, state-wide, to vote for Santorum. In Illinois this would have given Santorum 5 delegates.

Since not every Ron Paul voter reads your post, it is impossible to even implement such a strategy. In Illinois, 85,000 people voted for Ron Paul. How would you get a message to all of them to say, "vote for Santorum"?

The only way to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum would be for Ron Paul to drop out and endorse Santorum. Actually, then people still wouldn't vote for Santorum. AND ALSO, THEN WE ARE DONE!!!!

Bottom line, it is unrealistic to assume that the "vote for Santorum" strategy could ever be implemented, without a MASSIVE million dollar ad campaign telling Ron Paul voters to vote for Santorum. We have enough trouble getting people to the voting booth to vote for Paul. I think we will have worse luck getting our people to the polls for Santorum. And any strategy big enough to make a difference would make Ron Paul look like he is dropping out and endorsing Santorum. The media and public would see it this way at least.

Telling people to vote for Santorum is unrealistic because you could never reach enough people to make that strategy effective. All you might do is knock .01% off of Ron's beauty contest vote, and make a bunch of people feel guilty for voting for Ron Paul.

 

[parocks]

I'm up for the challenge.

For CDs 1,2,3,6,8,9,10,11,14
If EVERY Paul voter voted for Santorum delegates, Romney would still win all the delegates.

For CDs 4,5,7,13
Santorum did not even have delegates for us to vote for. We actually came in second in three of these. Regardless, Romney had more than Paul and Gingrich combined in all of these.

For CDs 12,15,17
Santorum won these anyway.

CD 16 & 18 are the only two districts where (if Paul voters all voted for Santorum delegates) there would be a change. This would move 5 delegates from Romney to Santorum.

But, since people are not psychic, it was impossible to know these two districts would be the ones to have the close margin. So the only way to go about your strategy would be for EVERY Paul voter, state-wide, to vote for Santorum. In Illinois this would have given Santorum 5 delegates.

Since not every Ron Paul voter reads your post, it is impossible to even implement such a strategy. In Illinois, 85,000 people voted for Ron Paul. How would you get a message to all of them to say, "vote for Santorum"?

The only way to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum would be for Ron Paul to drop out and endorse Santorum. Actually, then people still wouldn't vote for Santorum. AND ALSO, THEN WE ARE DONE!!!!

Bottom line, it is unrealistic to assume that the "vote for Santorum" strategy could ever be implemented, without a MASSIVE million dollar ad campaign telling Ron Paul voters to vote for Santorum. We have enough trouble getting people to the voting booth to vote for Paul. I think we will have worse luck getting our people to the polls for Santorum. And any strategy big enough to make a difference would make Ron Paul look like he is dropping out and endorsing Santorum. The media and public would see it this way at least.

Telling people to vote for Santorum is unrealistic because you could never reach enough people to make that strategy effective. All you might do is knock .01% off of Ron's beauty contest vote, and make a bunch of people feel guilty for voting for Ron Paul.

Here's my math.

Districts flipped to Santorum from Romney

2 - 3 delegates (close on the final one)
16 - 3 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 2 there)
18 - 4 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 3 there)

total of 8 delegates from Romney to Santorum, max of 10 delegates.

You say "Since not every Ron Paul voter reads your post, it is impossible to even implement such a strategy. In Illinois, 85,000 people voted for Ron Paul. How would you get a message to all of them to say, "vote for Santorum"?"

You wouldn't need to communicate with all of them. The strategy just has to be made known. It works to the extent that it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We got NO DELEGATES without using this strategy. If we did use this strategy we could've possibly made the difference with the closest race between Santorum and Romney. And they we could've said "hey, we helped. Look, we can be helpful." Also, the Santorum people would be made aware that everywhere Santorum has delegates, we're voting for Santorum's delegates. Maybe, Santorums people will think "well, my guy doesn't have delegates, and Ron Paul is being helpful, maybe I'll vote for Ron Paul's delegates."

You say "The only way to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum would be for Ron Paul to drop out and endorse Santorum. Actually, then people still wouldn't vote for Santorum. AND ALSO, THEN WE ARE DONE!!!!"

Well, there's no reason to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum. Just make it known that we understand that Romney <1144 is necessary for Paul, Santorum, Gingrich. And that we are willing to unilaterally work to make that happen.

We benefit from this strategy on the 99th ballot in Tampa, when people say "hey, Ron Paul helped my guy, Santorum, get here. Why not vote for him right now?"

About this: "it is unrealistic to assume that the "vote for Santorum" strategy could ever be implemented". Well, you might have a point there. We have trouble enough getting Ron Paul supporters to vote for Ron Paul.

You seem to assume though that we have to have all Ron Paul supporters vote for Santorums delegates (but not in the beauty contest) in order to have an impact. If we switch just 1 delegate from Romney to Santorum, that's 1 more delegate Romney has to get to get to 1144. Santorums people would know that we're doing this, and that is in his benefit and ours to keep Romney <1144. We're showing that we're trying to keep Romney <1144, not showing that we can get all of our voters to know that we're doing this.

We have a lot of futile efforts coming up. We might as well do something productive.

I'll go find how few votes would be needed to switch one and then edit.

District 18 - to get one extra delegate for Santorum
Romney #3 - 34,930
Santorum #2 - 32,446
Paul #1 - 7,549

so, if 1/3 of the people voting for the top Ron Paul delegate in CD 18 voted for Santorum, Santorum would've gotten that delegate.

District 16 - to get one extra delegate for Santorum
Romney #2 - 27,546
Santorum #2 - 26,762
Paul #1 - 8,109

If 1/10 of the people ... 784 of 8,109

District 2 - one extra
Romney #3 - 8,139
Santorum #1 - 7,009
Paul #1 - 1,809

Here it would take 2/3ds of the RP voters for the top delegate to switch it to Santorum

 

[PauliticsPolitics]

Here's my math.

Districts flipped to Santorum from Romney

2 - 3 delegates (close on the final one)
16 - 3 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 2 there)
18 - 4 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 3 there)

total of 8 delegates from Romney to Santorum, max of 10 delegates.

...
Sure, you can stretch it that way, and you know you are stretching it for the sake of argument.
Now please tell me how you get 85,000 people Ron Paul lovers in Illinois to vote for Santorum?

Are you thinking a primetime TV buy with Ron Paul telling all his supporters to vote Santorum?
Are you thinking he goes on CNN every day telling people to vote Santorum.

Any strategy that gets 100,000s of Ron Paul voters to vote for Santorum is a mass event that would also mean the end of Ron Paul.

But if you have a brilliant idea, please do share.

 

[parocks]

...
Sure, you can stretch it that way, and you know you are stretching it for the sake of argument.
Now please tell me how you get 85,000 people Ron Paul lovers in Illinois to vote for Santorum?

Are you thinking a primetime TV buy with Ron Paul telling all his supporters to vote Santorum?
Are you thinking he goes on CNN every day telling people to vote Santorum.

Any strategy that gets 100,000s of Ron Paul voters to vote for Santorum is a mass event that would also mean the end of Ron Paul.

But if you have a brilliant idea, please do share.

I've been editing my post, so, see above. About "mass event" right, agreed.

 

[umichmed]

Here's my math.

Districts flipped to Santorum from Romney

2 - 3 delegates (close on the final one)
16 - 3 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 2 there)
18 - 4 delegates total - Santorum looks like he'll win one - so 3 there)

total of 8 delegates from Romney to Santorum, max of 10 delegates.

You say "Since not every Ron Paul voter reads your post, it is impossible to even implement such a strategy. In Illinois, 85,000 people voted for Ron Paul. How would you get a message to all of them to say, "vote for Santorum"?"

You wouldn't need to communicate with all of them. The strategy just has to be made known. It works to the extent that it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We got NO DELEGATES without using this strategy. If we did use this strategy we could've possibly made the difference with the closest race between Santorum and Romney. And they we could've said "hey, we helped. Look, we can be helpful." Also, the Santorum people would be made aware that everywhere Santorum has delegates, we're voting for Santorum's delegates. Maybe, Santorums people will think "well, my guy doesn't have delegates, and Ron Paul is being helpful, maybe I'll vote for Ron Paul's delegates."

You say "The only way to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum would be for Ron Paul to drop out and endorse Santorum. Actually, then people still wouldn't vote for Santorum. AND ALSO, THEN WE ARE DONE!!!!"

Well, there's no reason to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum. Just make it known that we understand that Romney <1144 is necessary for Paul, Santorum, Gingrich. And that we are willing to unilaterally work to make that happen.

We benefit from this strategy on the 99th ballot in Tampa, when people say "hey, Ron Paul helped my guy, Santorum, get here. Why not vote for him right now?"

About this: "it is unrealistic to assume that the "vote for Santorum" strategy could ever be implemented". Well, you might have a point there. We have trouble enough getting Ron Paul supporters to vote for Ron Paul.

You seem to assume though that we have to have all Ron Paul supporters vote for Santorums delegates (but not in the beauty contest) in order to have an impact. If we switch just 1 delegate from Romney to Santorum, that's 1 more delegate Romney has to get to get to 1144. Santorums people would know that we're doing this, and that is in his benefit and ours to keep Romney <1144. We're showing that we're trying to keep Romney <1144, not showing that we can get all of our voters to know that we're doing this.

We have a lot of futile efforts coming up. We might as well do something productive.

I'll go find how few votes would be needed to switch one and then edit.

strategic voting is a terrible idea. will just marginalize paul further. not worth it. nobp.

never vote strategically. look how we got mccain and bush.

 

[PauliticsPolitics]

You say "Since not every Ron Paul voter reads your post, it is impossible to even implement such a strategy. In Illinois, 85,000 people voted for Ron Paul. How would you get a message to all of them to say, "vote for Santorum"?"

You wouldn't need to communicate with all of them. The strategy just has to be made known. It works to the extent that it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We got NO DELEGATES without using this strategy. If we did use this strategy we could've possibly made the difference with the closest race between Santorum and Romney. And they we could've said "hey, we helped. Look, we can be helpful." Also, the Santorum people would be made aware that everywhere Santorum has delegates, we're voting for Santorum's delegates. Maybe, Santorums people will think "well, my guy doesn't have delegates, and Ron Paul is being helpful, maybe I'll vote for Ron Paul's delegates."

You say "The only way to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum would be for Ron Paul to drop out and endorse Santorum. Actually, then people still wouldn't vote for Santorum. AND ALSO, THEN WE ARE DONE!!!!"

Well, there's no reason to convince all future voters to vote for Santorum. Just make it known that we understand that Romney <1144 is necessary for Paul, Santorum, Gingrich. And that we are willing to unilaterally work to make that happen.

We benefit from this strategy on the 99th ballot in Tampa, when people say "hey, Ron Paul helped my guy, Santorum, get here. Why not vote for him right now?"

I guess I don't know what "making it known" means if you need lots of people to know, but you don't want to do it in a massive way. I bet it would be hard to even make this whole forum know something and agree on something, and we are a MINISCULE portion of the Ron Paul voter base.
Just saying I think it is unrealistic and, in the end, probably does more bad than good.

I generally agree with your realism in other respects, (hard GOTV, etc.) but I think this "vote Santorum" meme is unrealistic, and is only interesting in retrospect after you can look at a state like IL after voting and say "Oh look, if ALL of the Ron Paul voters in CD2 voted for Santorum, we would have been able to block 3 delegates from Romney." That's interesting, but not necessarily applicable.

Even if you were to make this half successful, I think Ron Paul consistently pulling 2% in future states would make a lot of people lose interest.

In the end, I think the 3rd place finish with 9.3% in Illinois (a non-Paul friendly state) is better than a 2% finish in last place, even if it means a handful of delegates end up with Romney instead of Santorum. The 9.3% shows that we are still on the map, and we are not 100% ruled out in the public mind.

Of course, at a caucus, where all the voting members are present and can discuss, then strategic voting could be come relevant - deals can be struck, etc. But a primary? No way.

 

[parocks]

strategic voting is a terrible idea. will just marginalize paul further. not worth it. nobp.

never vote strategically. look how we got mccain and bush.

How did strategic voting lead to Bush? Bush raised so much money in the summer of 2000, that the other candidates with national stature all dropped out by mid fall.
McCain, who was pretty much unknown (compared to Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, Lamar Alexander) then got in the race when those 3 were getting out. I don't recall any strategic voting re McCain.

NOBP leads to "fine, F off, don't you usually vote Libertarian anyway?"

We have an objective - Romney <1144. This type of strategy increases the likelihood of Romney <1144.

 

[parocks]

I guess I don't know what "making it known" means if you need lots of people to know, but you don't want to do it in a massive way. I bet it would be hard to even make this whole forum know something and agree on something, and we are a MINISCULE portion of the Ron Paul voter base.
Just saying I think it is unrealistic and, in the end, probably does more bad than good.

I generally agree with your realism in other respects, (hard GOTV, etc.) but I think this "vote Santorum" meme is unrealistic, and is only interesting in retrospect after you can look at a state like IL after voting and say "Oh look, if ALL of the Ron Paul voters in CD2 voted for Santorum, we would have been able to block 3 delegates from Romney." That's interesting, but not necessarily applicable.

Even if you were to make this half successful, I think Ron Paul consistently pulling 2% in future states would make a lot of people lose interest.

In the end, I think the 3rd place finish with 9.3% in Illinois (a non-Paul friendly state) is better than a 2% finish in last place, even if it means a handful of delegates end up with Romney instead of Santorum. The 9.3% shows that we are still on the map, and we are not 100% ruled out in the public mind.

Of course, at a caucus, where all the voting members are present and can discuss, then strategic voting could be come relevant - deals can be struck, etc. But a primary? No way.

Well, "unrealistic". Listen, you don't have to tell me this. I'm not saying "this is something that will happen". I'm simply typing out what should be done, as I have been doing for months and did for months 4 years ago (I think that's what my posts were 4 years ago).

We're talking about building a little good will for Tampa. Our delegates are likely to come from states where the people have voted already, and we'll get them after fighting in conventions. If we do something having to do with our voters, and keeping Romney <1144, we could see less fighting, less attempts to screw us in conventions. Maybe, maybe not.

To some degree, yes, you're right too about people losing interest. There are opportunities for delegates in future states.

What is likely to happen, though, is that we're likely to see the - less votes, less money, less votes spiral either way, unless something happens.

We have a "delegate strategy" Ron Paul is talking about getting votes not on the first ballot. He said this on the Tonight Show. We are going to have to persuade people who currently support another candidate.

Are we in a better position if we have 500 Ron Paul supporters as delegates and 2300 delegates who really hate us, or are we in a better position if we have 300 Ron Paul supporters as delegates, 1143 delegates who really hate us, and the rest who like the fact that we worked to keep Romney <1144?

We are going to have to persuade a lot of delegates who don't currently support Ron Paul to vote for Ron Paul in Tampa. This will probably not happen, but helping to keep <1144 will help to persuade. And NOBP does not help persuade in any way that I've ever heard.

The socon block is bigger than ours, and they can say No One But Santorum if they want to.

We have to be looking at persuading a lot of delegates in Tampa.

And this is a way to do that. And there could be a lot of other ways. But that's where we're at.

I'm reading where people are talking about having volunteers call 12 million Texans, and I'm reading where it might be good to have billboards in order to provide a creative outlet for the grassroots. I'm clearly not on the same wavelength as many, and this is something I'm definitely aware of.

 

[PauliticsPolitics]

parocks: I understand the <1144 premise, no need to explain it. For better or worse, I do not believe that a global state-by-state agreement can be made by the grassroots of Paul, Santorum, Gingrich. Sure, if the 3 official campaigns came out and said:
"Attention all our voters: we are going to stop Romney together. You should vote for Ron Paul in Montana because he is polling second to Romney there. You should vote for Gingrich in Louisiana because he is polling best there. You should vote for Santorum in Wisconsin because he is polling best against Romney there. Let's ban together and split up these last states one-on-one versus Romney."
If all three official campaigns came out and said that, then maybe the strategy would have legs.
I promise you, this will not happen.

 

[PauliticsPolitics]

Also, you just have to understand that there are people in Illinois who worked really hard to get Paul what we did. Myself and about a dozen others spent most of the day in the 4th and 5th districts. We were convincing Santorum voters to vote for Paul delegates (since Santorum had no delegates on these ballots). We were offering incentives to people on the street and dragging people to the polls for Paul. I believe that me and my team were personally responsible for getting the Ron Paul delegates something like 500 last-day votes in these areas. There was another team of people doing something similar in the 7th. The Ron Paul delegates ended up receiving a cumulative 25%,19%, and 18% respectively in those districts (well above Paul's 9% state-wide average). I know there were also people working UofI to pull what we could of out of the 13th (ended up with a cumulative 20% for the delegate votes there). And all this does not even include targeted face book ads in these areas which I almost 100% self-funded. It is impossible to know if what we did made a significant difference, but the end numbers show that there was at least a good reason to make the shot.

So when you come here right after all that and rag on us for not strategically voting for Santorum, it is at best bad taste.

 

[parocks]

parocks: I understand the <1144 premise, no need to explain it. For better or worse, I do not believe that a global state-by-state agreement can be made by the grassroots of Paul, Santorum, Gingrich. Sure, if the 3 official campaigns came out and said:
"Attention all our voters: we are going to stop Romney together. You should vote for Ron Paul in Montana because he is polling second to Romney there. You should vote for Gingrich in Louisiana because he is polling best there. You should vote for Santorum in Wisconsin because he is polling best against Romney there. Let's ban together and split up these last states one-on-one versus Romney."
If all three official campaigns came out and said that, then maybe the strategy would have legs.
I promise you, this will not happen.

Oh, I'm not going to argue that what I'm suggesting will happen. I think we're probably on the same page here. Predictions? 2008 part 2 is the most likely outcome. Death spiral. Fewer votes, less money, fewer votes, less money. That's the most reasonable prediction. Super Tuesday came and went without a victory. Oops, we're fked. Based on the outcomes of those races - caucuses that we could focus on when others were focused on places like Ohio - and no "wins" there, there is really no reason to think that there would be a "win" in the future. So, a rational predictor is going to say that we're going to see 9,8,7 in turn. No reason to think that we'll turn this around. All of our strategies though, are based on getting votes from voters, and any other strategy seems impossible to most. Heck, even getting votes from voters is not what we want to do. We just really want to yell "Ron Paul".
A strategy with votes from voters is just going to be costly and futile (except, as you rightly mentioned, possibly in Montana). We need to control 5 delegations. We could get 5 from the caucus states. We could add Montana, but I don't think that there's anything else we really can do to get one of those 5. We can pick up delegates here and there, but that's likely to become increasingly difficult.

So, what do we do? Romney is still <1144 and will likely remain so until late May or June. Getting votes from voters is not going to work. We have to look more closely at the delegate strategy and what it might look like.

The disadvantages we have might be seen as opportunities. Possibly. Maybe. Because there are no other options. Instead of targeting voters now, we're targeting the tba delegates who will be making decisions on a 2nd ballot a 99th ballot. What do they want? Well, we have to have them like us a little more than they do now. And rip Romney to shreds. The Goldman Sachs stuff. And someone posted something about Romney's foreign policy advisors. If those names are true, we can use that. Could make and run some vicious vicious ads, cheaply, using google ads. Those wouldn't be contrast ads, those would just be brutal attacks.

You know there's an official money bomb in 2 days.

I also want to add that no global agreement would be necessary.

 

[parocks]

Also, you just have to understand that there are people in Illinois who worked really hard to get Paul what we did. Myself and about a dozen others spent most of the day in the 4th and 5th districts. We were convincing Santorum voters to vote for Paul delegates (since Santorum had no delegates on these ballots). We were offering incentives to people on the street and dragging people to the polls for Paul. I believe that me and my team were personally responsible for getting the Ron Paul delegates something like 500 last-day votes in these areas. There was another team of people doing something similar in the 7th. The Ron Paul delegates ended up receiving a cumulative 25%,19%, and 18% respectively in those districts (well above Paul's 9% state-wide average). I know there were also people working UofI to pull what we could of out of the 13th (ended up with a cumulative 20% for the delegate votes there). And all this does not even include targeted face book ads in these areas which I almost 100% self-funded. It is impossible to know if what we did made a significant difference, but the end numbers show that there was at least a good reason to make the shot.

So when you come here right after all that and rag on us for not strategically voting for Santorum, it is at best bad taste.

Fair enough. This is what will likely be repeated in state after state. Hard work, and falling short. Not because of a lack of grassroots effort, but the effect of not winning. I should add that the things you did seem like the right things to do.

Did you find that any of your efforts were particularly successful? Can you point to a specific tactic and say "that worked surprisingly well"? Something repeatable elsewhere? I see words that I really like, like incentives, dragging and UofI. So, it seems like we're on the same wavelength there.