Showing posts with label winner-take-most rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winner-take-most rules. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Trump and the 2024 Delegate Allocation Rules

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • South Carolina is unique among states with state-run and funded presidential primaries. In some ways that helped elevate the Palmetto state to the first slot on the 2024 Democratic primary calendar. But quirkiness presents some challenges as well. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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Gregory Korte had a nice piece up at Bloomberg the other day concerning the delegate allocation rules and how the Trump campaign's efforts to massage them in 2020 may pay dividends for the former president in 2024. As he notes, however, there will not be a complete picture of the state-level delegate allocation rules until October 1. That makes it tough to game out the impact of the rules for next year. 

Moreover, the various campaigns are doing the same thing. They are currently trying to plan this out, but they are also simultaneously trying to affect what those rules are to lay the groundwork for advantageous allocation rules next year. And that makes for some potential, if not likely, cross-pressures with which state-level party officials/committees/conventions making these decision will have to deal. Together that makes for a challenging decision-making environment. FHQ talked about this in setting the 2024 Republican delegate allocation rules baseline back in March:
If decision makers in state parties across the country cannot see a clear advantage to an allocation change one way or the other, then it is more likely that the 2020 baseline method survives into 2024. That theoretically helps Trump. ...if he is the frontrunner. But if Trump is not the frontrunner once primary season kicks off, then any shift away from the 2020 baseline -- a baseline with the knobs turned toward incumbent defense (or frontrunner defense) -- may end up helping a candidate other than the one intended. 

Another factor adding to this uncertainty is how decision makers view a change playing with rank and file members of the party. If elected officials or other elites in the party are wary of endorsing one Republican candidate or another, then they may also be less willing to make an allocation change for fear that it would be viewed as helping or hurting Trump. In other words, it looks like they are putting their thumb on the scale one way or the other. That is the sort of view that augurs against change. And again, the status quo likely helps Trump (if current conditions persist). 

Basically, the bottom line is this. Allocation changes are tough. They are tough to make because there is uncertainty in the impact those changes will have. It is much easier to see the potential impact of moving a primary to an early date for example. It could help a favorite son or daughter candidate. But an earlier primary or caucus definitely better insures that the state influences the course of the nomination race. If a contest falls too late -- after a presumptive nominee has emerged and clinched the nomination -- then that contest has literally no impact. Some impact, no matter how small, is better than literally zero impact. The same is true with respect to the decision to conduct a primary election or caucuses. There are definite turnout effects that come with holding a primary rather than caucuses. And greater participation in primaries typically means a more diverse -- less ideologically homogenous or extreme -- electorate.

Things are less clear with allocation rules changes. 
There is much more in that post. FHQ will be drawing from it throughout the remainder of the invisible primary if not into primary season in 2024. Go read it. But in the meantime, a couple of additional things:
  1. Yes, more truly winner-take-all states help Trump at this time. But they would help any frontrunner. These are, after all, frontrunner rules. They help build and pad a delegate lead once the RNC allows winner-take-all rules to kick in on March 15, entering 50-75 rule territory.
  2. But Team Trump is likely looking toward (and looking to maintain) the other rules changes from 2020 for an earlier-on-the-calendar boost. An earlier (technical) knock out for a 2024 frontrunner may come from states earlier than March 15 with winner-take-all triggers. If a candidate wins a majority of the vote statewide and/or at the congressional district level, then that candidate wins all of the delegates from that jurisdiction (or all of a state's delegates available if the delegates are pooled). Alternatively, if no other candidates hit the qualifying thresholds (set to their max of 20 percent in most proportional states in 2020), then the winner is allocated all of the delegates in some states even if they do not have a majority. And the name of the game here is not necessarily winning all of the delegates, but maximizing the net delegate advantage coming out of any given state. All of the Republican campaigns are asking how much they can improve on a baseline proportional allocation, and picking spots on the map and calendar where they can do. Well, campaigns are doing that if they know what they are doing anyway.

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In the travel primary, former Vice President Mike Pence will be back in New Hampshire on Tuesday, May 16. And it looks at if a super PAC has formed around his before the end of June presidential launch. The interesting thing is less the formation of an aligned super PAC and more about some of the staff primary hires the new group has made. There are folks from the orbits of a former Republican presidential nominee (Scott Reed, former campaign manager of the 1996 Dole campaign), a once talked-about possible 2024 aspirant who declined to run (Mike Ricci, former spokesman for former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan) and a still-talked about possible 2024 candidate who says he is not running (Bobby Saparow, former campaign manager for current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp). In total, that makes for an interesting mix of old school Republican politics and new school Trump resistance within the party. That may not represent a winning path in the Republican nomination race, but it is indicative of a unique course forward for Pence relative to his competition.


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Endorsement Math. Yesterday, FHQ raised the sizable number of Iowa state legislative endorsements Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rolled out before his weekend trek to the Hawkeye state. And on Monday, Never Back Down, the super PAC aligned with DeSantis, released another 49 new endorsements from fellow early state, New Hampshire. [That is 51 endorsements minus the previously revealed support of New Hampshire House Majority Leader Jason Osborne and the double endorsement -- of both Trump and DeSantis -- from Juliet Harvey-Bolia.] Three of those DeSantis endorsements in the Granite state are from representatives who have supported Trump in the past.

But the math is different across both of those waves of DeSantis endorsements from Iowa and New Hampshire. The 37 state legislative endorsements from the Hawkeye state accounted for more than a third of all of the possible Iowa Republican legislators -- House and Senate. In New Hampshire, those 50 endorsements, all from members of the state House, register differently. They make up just a quarter of the total number of possible endorsements from the lower chamber alone. Yes, that may be splitting hairs, but it is also a long way of saying the pool of endorsements is bigger in New Hampshire. Others will be vying for the support of the remaining 150 Granite state House members. 


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On this date...
...in 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace, a day after being shot campaigning in Maryland, won primaries in the Old Line state and in Michigan

...in 2000, long after becoming the presumptive nominees of their parties, George W. Bush and Al Gore won the Oregon presidential primary.

...in 2019, long shots, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rocky de la Fuente, respectively entered the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination races. 



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Saturday, May 13, 2023

[From FHQ Plus] About the California Republican Party Delegate Rules for 2024

The following is a cross-posted excerpt from FHQ Plus, FHQ's new subscription service. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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Seema Mehta at the LA Times had a nice piece up today on Republican delegate allocation in California for 2024. The premise was that the winner-take-all by congressional district rules would grant greater voice to the small number of Republican voters in large urban areas compared to the more conservative areas of the state.

And sure, under the Republican National Committee (RNC) delegate apportionment scheme every congressional district — red, blue or purple — counts the same: three delegates each. As Mehta put it:

It doesn’t matter if it’s former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based district, home to 29,150 registered Republicans, … or current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s district centered in Bakersfield, where 205,738 GOP voters live.

Mathematically speaking, it makes some strategic sense for campaigns to chase the districts with the smaller number of partisans. Very simply, the return on investment is greater. And there was some evidence of this in the 2016 race as FHQ noted in Invisible Primary: Visible earlier this year

But here is the thing: California will have a Super Tuesday primary next year. And that March 5 date is prior to March 15 when the winner-take-all prohibition under RNC rules ends. As a result, California Republicans utilizing a winner-take-all by congressional district delegate allocation method before March 15 would be in violation of those national party rules and cost the party half of their 169 delegates under Rule 17(a). 

How did it come to this? Is the California Republican Party deliberately flaunting RNC rules? It does not really look that way. 

To start, the baseline set of national convention delegate allocation rules is a winner-take-all by congressional district method. That has not changed in recent years. What did change in 2019 was that the party adopted a set of allocation rules that were more proportional for 2020 and complied with RNC rules for that cycle. But they sunset in 2021.1 That means that the baseline winner-take-all by congressional district rules are the rules for 2024. 

…for now.

But that will likely change and FHQ bases that on a couple of factors. First, nothing dealing with national convention delegates was even on the March state convention agenda with respect to bylaws changes. Of course, nothing had to be. There is a baseline set of allocation rules in place already that snapped back into action once the 2020 rules expired. 

Second, however, this is setting up just like 2019 when California Republicans faced the same dilemma heading into September ahead of their fall state convention that year. Staring down the prospect of RNC penalties if the party did not change the winner-take-most rules, California Republicans at the late September 2019 state convention adopted the proportional allocation scheme that sunset in 2021, a more proportional set of rules

And California Republicans have a September 2023 state convention lined up right before the RNC deadline to submit rules for the 2024 cycle to the national party on or before October 1. 

The question that emerges from this is why did the 2020 California allocation rules have to expire at all? It makes sense from the state party’s perspective to sunset the proportional rules if there is even an outside shot that the RNC would change its requirement for proportional rules during the early part of the calendar. But the RNC held steady and mostly carried over the same 2020 rules to the 2024 cycle when it finalized the rules package in April 2022. There is no evidence that the national party has subsequently made any additional changes (and could not after September 30, 2022 anyway under the restrictions on further rule amendments in Rule 12).

Look, San Francisco Republicans may dream of a bigger voice in 2024, but they are unlikely to get it if the state party wants to have its full voice at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in summer 2024.



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Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Winner-take-most, please

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) continues inching toward a presidential bid. No decision is on the horizon in the near term, but initial hiring has taken place and super PAC infrastructure is taking shape. Former Senate colleague, Cory Gardner (R-CO) heads one such entity, and Rob Collins, who was involved with the super PAC, Future 45, during the 2016 cycle, is in the fold as well. Future 45 often gets pegged as a Trump-aligned group but most of the money it took it in was spent against Hillary Clinton rather than for Trump in that cycle. In the staff primary of 2024, Collins' support of Scott is noteworthy but it seems more like just that -- Scott support -- rather than a defection from Team Trump.


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Douglas Schoen has an op-ed up at The Hill assessing the state of the Republican presidential race. And that is fine. But this section violated a major pet peeve of FHQ's:
The design of the Republican Party’s winner-take-all delegate system also inherently benefits a candidate like Trump, whose devoted base comprises roughly 35 to 40 percent of the primary electorate. This is far from a majority but is enough to carry him to the nomination, as it did in 2016.
Technically, this is right. There is a "winner-take-all design" to the Republican presidential nomination process. But when one describes it in this manner without all the important caveats, it just ends up perpetuating the myth that the Republican allocation process is ALL winner-take-all. It is not

Look, it takes a lot to explain all of the caveats. Truly winner-take-all rules, where one candidate can win all of a state's delegates if he or she wins a small plurality even by just one vote, are prohibited before March 15. But states can be proportional with a winner-take-all trigger, where if a candidate wins at least a majority of the vote statewide, he or she wins all of the state's delegates, before March 15. And states after March 15 can still adopt a variety of rules. They are not all winner-take-all after that point. 

The answer to this should be pretty simple. So, for 2024, call the Republican delegate allocation process winner-take-most and be done with it. Winner-take-most encompasses the full range of proportional (winner-take-more), hybrid and winner-take-all rules without having to get down in the weeds about the caveats to all the different plans. This holds when comparing the Republican process to that of the Democrats as well. The latter mandates proportional rules while the former allows a variety of winner-take-most rules. 


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Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein has a good one on how an organized Trump campaign in 2024 might be able to exploit the divorce between delegate allocation and selection in the Republican process and use it to his advantage even in the event he doesn't win a majority of allocated delegates. A few things on this one:

1. There may be some tinkering at the margins that brings some delegate allocation in line with the allocation process on the state level, but it is probably too late in the 2024 process to mount a full scale effort to change the rules. The national party rules are already locked in for the cycle and have been since April of last year. But there may be some efforts on the state level to alter state rules on the matter. 

2. Still, there is reason to think that those efforts will be limited. As Bernstein notes, delegates on the Democratic side have to meet the approval of the candidates/campaigns they will represent at the national convention. That is not necessarily the case on the Republican side. But there was an attempt to add candidate approval to the rules that were to come out of the 2012 Republican National Convention. Here is the FHQ dispatch from Tampa at the time and the relevant excerpt from a proposed rules change that did not make the cut: 

Proposed Rule 15(b):
For any manner of binding or allocating delegates permitted by these Rules, no delegate or alternate delegate who is bound or allocated to a particular presidential candidate may be certified under Rule 19 unless the presidential candidate to whom the delegate or alternate delegate is bound or allocated has pre-certified or approved the delegate or alternate delegate.

Analysis of Change:
This is the rule that has drawn so much backlash from Paul supporters, Santorum supporters and other state party officials and has threatened to throw the convention into a floor fight. Honestly, this change has the potential to be the proportionality requirement of of 2016: an overhyped rule with no real impact on the process. At the heart of the conflict is the notion that delegates being approved by candidates is a power grab at the expense of a state party's right to choose how it allocates its delegates. Further, it takes a grassroots activity meant to build the party and turns it over to the candidate or candidates. FHQ gets the rationale, but I struggle to see what fundamental impact the change will have.

Actually, I do see the impact it will have. Together with Rule 15(a) the candidate approval mechanism altogether ends the possibility that a statewide vote can be overturned in subsequent steps in a caucus process by enthusiastic and organized supporters of a candidate that did not comprise a majority or plurality of the statewide vote. We can call it the Ron Paul issue. It isn't a problem because the Paul folks and their supporters were behaving well within the confines of the rules laid out for the 2012 cycle. It is, however, perceived as a problem by the national party. It takes what has been an orderly process and leaves the order up to chance every cycle; opening the door to discord within the party and a less than cohesive national convention that could hurt the presumptive nominee for the party.

The backlash was pretty severe and was seen as another in a series of power grabs by the national party orchestrated by Ben Ginsberg who was running the show for the Romney team on the convention Rules Committee at the time. I mean, conversations about the Ginsberg power grab and the true grassroots of the party took place among RNC members for years after this. State parties are loathe to make changes that shift the balance of power away from them. Most will resist efforts to change the linkage (or lack thereof) between the delegate allocation and selection processes. 

The bottom line here is that Trump has in 2023 an institutional advantage that he and his campaign did not have in 2015. That is important.


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On this date...

...in 1988, it was Super Tuesday. Well, not only was it Super Tuesday, it was Southern Super Tuesday, the first real concerted effort at a regional primary date. I have put 3/8/88 into a lot of datasets a lot of times over the years. It is burned into that gray matter.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

What's the Baseline for 2024 Republican Rules Changes at the State Level?

The Washington Post reported last week that the Trump campaign has been doing its due diligence of late, attempting to get a jump start on an often hidden aspect of the invisible primary: the battle over delegates. Or in this case, the battle over the state-level rules that will define the ways in which candidates will receive delegates based on primary and caucus results across the country in 2024. 

While Trump running for a second term after losing a previous bid is unusual in the post-reform era, it is not out of the ordinary for a candidate and his or her campaign to flex its muscle early like this. After all, this is a candidate and a campaign that have done this before. And this is a campaign that may not be as dominant as it was four years ago, but is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was eight years ago. And tending the garden on the state level in an attempt to reap a harvest of delegates down the road is clear evidence of that. 

Moreover, that touches on a theme Jeff Greenfield highlighted late last year in a piece at Politico:
But if you really want to know whether Donald Trump is ascendant or in free fall, you might do better to focus on what might seem like a recipe for narcolepsy: the Republican Party’s delegate-selection process across the 50-plus states, territories and commonwealths. Over the next year and a half, there will be no better clue to the strength and weaknesses of Trump and his competitors. Why? Well, for one thing, the way that delegates are chosen by state primaries, conventions and caucuses are far more important than a dozen debates and tens of millions of campaign dollars. And how the GOP state parties decide how their convention delegates are selected may also tell you whether these state parties are out to hobble the former president — or put him on a glide path to another nomination.
Look, as a rules person, the expectation is that FHQ is going to agree with that assessment. I do. ...in part. The rules are important, but they are just a piece of a larger matrix of variables -- polls, endorsements, fundraising, etc. -- that provide observers with a sense of the former president's strength during the 2024 invisible primary. And again, the early signs are that Trump is behind where he was in 2019 but ahead across the board on each of the above metrics compared to where he was in 2015. The Party Decides showed that endorsements matter. They demonstrate a measure of institutional support for a candidate. But if the bulk of elected officials and other elites within the Republican Party network waver in making 2024 endorsements of any candidate as they did during the 2016 cycle, then this rules tinkering in 2023 may serve as a proxy of that institutional support. 

But the thing about both the Washington Post article and Greenfield's opinion piece is that they lack context. The Post reports that the Trump campaign is attempting to make inroads and Greenfield speculates that Trump-aligned and Trump-opposed forces may make rules changes to aid their specific candidate or candidates. But from where are the states starting? What moves might they make? How common -- or uncommon -- is such tinkering on the state level in the first place? 

In other words, what is the baseline? 

The story of where states begin 2024 starts in 2019
To the extent there was any discussion in 2019 about efforts on the Republican side to craft rules for Trump's reelection, it mostly revolved around the canceling of a handful of primaries and caucuses. But that belies the bulk of what went on behind the scenes in the 2020 Republican invisible primary. Yes, the cancelations got spun as efforts to protect Trump against a challenge. However, Trump got from Bill Weld and Joe Walsh and March Sanford the sort of challenge that President Biden will get from Marianne Williamson in 2024: a token challenge. Trump's grip on the 2020 Republican nomination was never threatened, so the cancelations were less about protecting the nomination and more about protecting his dominance in winning the nomination. 

But the state-level contest cancelations were just the tip of the iceberg and that has implications for 2024.

The Trump team was unusually active in nudging state parties toward changes for 2020 that 1) made it easier for Trump to gobble up delegates as the nomination process moved through the calendar of contests and 2) made it much more difficult for multiple candidates to win delegates. Bear in mind that there were minimal changes to the 2020 rules at the national level and that trend has largely held as 2020 transitions into 2024. There have been national rules changes, but they were aimed at cleaning up small problems from the past or to accommodate a July convention. Or to add a debates committee back into the rules

However, in 2019, there were changes made in 30 states and territories (out of 56 total). And it was not just the cancelations of a primary in South Carolina or of a preference vote at caucuses in Alaska. Take the Massachusetts example WaPo provided:
For his 2020 reelection campaign, Trump advisers Justin Clark and Bill Stepien worked for more than a year to change party rules to ensure he would not face a challenger at the nominating convention. In Massachusetts, for example, the Trump campaign changed the delegate selection plan to winner-take-all based on the primary result to prevent moderate Gov. Bill Weld (R) from being able to seat potential allies at the convention.
Now, Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and Maeve Reston mischaracterized the nature of the change, but it is indicative of the moves made by Trump's reelection effort. Massachusetts Republicans retained their previous proportional manner of allocating delegates based on the results of the presidential primary in the Bay state, but upped the qualifying threshold from 5 percent in 2016 to 20 percent in 2020. That meant that for a candidate to have received any delegates, he or she would have needed to clear 20 percent of the vote statewide, the maximum qualifying threshold allowed under Republican National Committee (RNC) rules. 

Furthermore, the state Republican Party in Massachusetts added a winner-take-all threshold in 2020. If a candidate cleared 50 percent of the vote statewide -- a level that a largely unopposed incumbent president should easily clear under most circumstances -- then that candidate would win all of the delegates from Massachusetts. That is not winner-take-all. Functionally, it is in a cycle with a popular incumbent. But in reality, it is the same proportional plan Massachusetts Republicans have used for years with the knobs turned toward "protect the incumbent's dominance." And those two thresholds are the keys. The qualifying threshold was set to its maximum and the winner-take-all threshold was set to its minimum (50 percent under RNC rules). 

And the moves in Massachusetts were indicative of the changes other state Republican parties made for 2020. Of the 26 states in 2020 that could have a qualifying threshold -- those with some form of proportional rules -- 18 of them set it to the maximum 20 percent. Just ten states of the 31 that could have a qualifying threshold had the maximum in 2016. The 20 percent maximum was by far the modal qualifying threshold for states in the 2020 cycle. 

Of course, that was just one type of tinkering that took place. Among his speculative allocation changes for 2024, Greenfield describes another:
By contrast, suppose New York Republicans are firmly in Trump’s corner. Trump might be confident he can win a significant portion of voters — but not a majority. So in a state like New York, his campaign might press to drop the 50 percent threshold and fight for a winner-take-all by plurality standard.
Well, New York Republicans already did that. The legislation that the New York State Assembly passed in 2019, codifying the delegate selection process for both state parties for 2020, shifted the Republican delegate allocation method back to winner-take-all in the Empire state for the first time since 2008. New York was not alone in adopting truly winner-take-all rules -- rules where a plurality winner statewide wins all of the delegates at stake -- for the 2020 cycle. There is a prohibition on truly winner-take-all allocation in the Republican process for states with contests before March 15, but of those states with contests after that point in 2016, just nine were truly winner-take-all. Collectively, those nine states accounted for 391 total delegates (or nearly 16 percent of the total number of delegates at stake in the process). 

The number of truly winner-take-all contests in 2020 ballooned to 19 states, more than double the number of that type of contests from four years prior. And those states represented 764 delegates, almost 30 percent of the total 2550 delegates at stake in 2020.

Finally, there were other moves that were also beneficial to an incumbent president seeking to portray a certain dominance in the nomination process. The number of states that pooled their delegates, combining the separate pools of at-large and congressional district delegates, increased from 25 in 2016 to 37 in 2020. The above shift toward truly winner-take-all methods explains a lot but not all of that. The subset of states that pooled their delegates and had a winner-take-all trigger -- as was the case in the Massachusetts example above -- doubled from six in 2016 to 12 in 2020. Those contests became functionally winner-take-all no matter where they were on the calendar, whether in the winner-take-all window or before it in the prohibited zone. That is a subtle change, but a meaningful one. 

And in total, all of that can be neatly filed into one category: incumbent defense, or this case, incumbent domination. Trump got that, and in the process, set the baseline from which any changes will be made for 2024. 


How common is rules tinkering on the state level in the Republican process anyway?
That depends.

Rarely does a cycle go by where some state party does not make some change, however small, to its delegate selection and allocation process. Although, often it is less about delegate allocation and more about positioning contests on the primary calendar. And that is a change that is initiated not by the state party but in the state government, the state legislature to be more precise. That entails quite a bit more wrangling on a playing field that potentially involves partisan division if not partisan roadblocks.

And some of those same obstacles seep into the delegate allocation process as well. At least that is the case in states where state law defines delegate allocation stemming from a state-run presidential primary. The 10 percent qualifying threshold New Hampshire Republicans use, for example, is one defined in state law. 

But on the whole, most of that is set by state parties. And more often than not, state parties are loath to change delegate allocation rules. They are averse to straying from traditional methods because it is difficult to game out the impact those possible changes will have a year or so into the future when conditions may be completely different. It is one thing to project what a shift toward winner-take-most or winner-take-all rules will have in a cycle when an incumbent president is running for renomination as Trump was in 2020. Those rules are intended to and often do help incumbents. But in a competitive cycle with some measure of uncertainty, that is a more difficult call. 

As Greenfield noted, Ohio Republicans shifted toward a truly winner-take-all plan in 2016 with Governor John Kasich (R) in mind. And Kasich did win the primary in the Buckeye state six months later. The change panned out. But with a favorite son involved, there was perhaps a bit more certainty among state party decision makers in how the move would play out once primary season went live. The less a sure thing it is, the more likely it will be that the status quo delegate allocation method will persist into the next cycle. 

That is an important point. If decision makers in state parties across the country cannot see a clear advantage to an allocation change one way or the other, then it is more likely that the 2020 baseline method survives into 2024. That theoretically helps Trump. ...if he is the frontrunner. But if Trump is not the frontrunner once primary season kicks off, then any shift away from the 2020 baseline -- a baseline with the knobs turned toward incumbent defense (or frontrunner defense) -- may end up helping a candidate other than the one intended. 

Another factor adding to this uncertainty is how decision makers view a change playing with rank and file members of the party. If elected officials or other elites in the party are wary of endorsing one Republican candidate or another, then they may also be less willing to make an allocation change for fear that it would be viewed as helping or hurting Trump. In other words, it looks like they are putting their thumb on the scale one way or the other. That is the sort of view that augurs against change. And again, the status quo likely helps Trump (if current conditions persist). 

Basically, the bottom line is this. Allocation changes are tough. They are tough to make because there is uncertainty in the impact those changes will have. It is much easier to see the potential impact of moving a primary to an early date for example. It could help a favorite son or daughter candidate. But an earlier primary or caucus definitely better insures that the state influences the course of the nomination race. If a contest falls too late -- after a presumptive nominee has emerged and clinched the nomination -- then that contest has literally no impact. Some impact, no matter how small, is better than literally zero impact. The same is true with respect to the decision to conduct a primary election or caucuses. There are definite turnout effects that come with holding a primary rather than caucuses. And greater participation in primaries typically means a more diverse -- less ideologically homogenous or extreme -- electorate.

Things are less clear with allocation rules changes. 

Look at the last four cycles -- 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. In particular, take note of the doughnut graphic in the corner of each map charting the distribution of delegates by allocation type. Those are four different cycles run under different conditions and with different rules. But look at the combined share of the distribution that the hybrid and proportional with winner-take-all trigger states comprise.1 Despite the differing conditions and despite the differing rules, somewhere between 51-53 percent of the total number of delegates were allocated in one of those two hybrid fashions. The states changed some at the margins, but the percentage of delegates allocated in that manner remained virtually unchanged. 

And the only reason for the spike in proportional states in 2012 was the RNC's institution of the (truly) winner-take-all ban for the first time that cycle. States overreacted in response and were more proportional than necessary under the 2012 rules. But states parties adapted over time, learning the nuances of the winner-take-all ban and moving over the 2016 and 2020 cycles toward methods that conditionally triggered a winner-take-all allocation.


What changes might state parties make for 2024?
The above exploration of the minefield that state party decision makers wade into when considering allocation rules changes is a cautionary tale. It suggests that, while there may be some changes, there are reasons to think that they will be minimal. And the Washington Post story buttresses that view. If Team Trump is having powwows with state party officials and sending envoys out to them, then that is most likely to preserve what they have in place. As of right now, the 2020 baseline rules help Trump. That could change but such a shift may not occur until after a decision on the rules has already been made (before October 1). 

But just as in the legislative process, uncertainty breeds conflict. Conflict leads to indecisiveness. And indecisiveness yields to the status quo. The same is true in rules changes. Actors, therefore, are going to be more inclined to move toward certainty; changes that yield more certain impacts. Trump opponents are reportedly playing catch up on these matters and may not hit the ground running either effectively and/or quickly enough to make a dent in allocation rules changes. 

But if Trump and Trump allies are looking to shore up their defenses, it may not be in the realm of delegate allocation rules. Instead, they may train their sights on the primary versus caucus decision. And there are some unique opportunities on that front. For the most part, state parties may balk at transitioning out of a state-run primary for a party-run contest of some type. The latter is funded out of state party coffers and that money may be better spent elsewhere. 

Still, some states may be conflicted. Take Michigan. The WaPo story notes how the Michigan Republican Party is stuck between a rock and a hard place. And they really are. Democrats in control of state government moved the primary to a spot on the primary calendar that is sanctioned under new DNC rules but is noncompliant under RNC rules. One logical alternative is for Michigan Republicans to schedule caucuses at a compliant point on the calendar. That is a potentially messy route. But it could be done. And that smaller, more extreme electorate is likely to tip more toward Trump than to his opponents. 

Likewise, there is no indication that any of the states at the end of the calendar are making any moves, not even the Republican-controlled states. And all of those June contests are noncompliant under RNC rules on timing. One alternative may be for the state parties to opt out of the late and noncompliant primaries in those states and conduct earlier caucuses. Similarly, the Trump campaign is reportedly not enamored with the possible shift to a later primary in Idaho. Seeing a pattern here? Shift to an earlier caucus. And Maryland is likely to change the date of its primary because it conflicts with Passover in 2024. If Democrats in control of state government move the contest too early (before March 15), then Old Line state Republicans would be unable to keep the winner-take-all allocation method the party adopted for 2020. And if winner-take-all allocation is that important to the party, then they, too, could opt to hold caucuses in a spot on the calendar that preserves it. 

And that offers a kind of double whammy. A switch to a caucus and a preservation of (or move to) winner-take-all rules in those states. Admittedly, those are paths with a lots of twists and turns. But they are all examples of states that because of one conflict or another may be forced into those decisions. There is still some path dependency there, but the likely impacts are more certain for decision makers. 

But to be able to look ahead, one needs a baseline. And as the 2024 invisible primary kicks into high gear and changes are considered in the coming months, this baseline is going to be important. 


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1 In the 2008 and 2012 graphics, the hybrid and proportional with winner-take-all trigger states are rolled into one big category of states that were not truly winner-take-all nor truly proportional. 

Thursday, October 3, 2019

Georgia Republicans Nudge Delegate Allocation in a Winner-Take-All Direction

Back in May 2019, the Georgia Republican Party gathered in Savannah for its state convention. Coming out of the weekend, the biggest of headlines was the election of David Shafer as state party chair, but that was not all Republican delegates to the state convention considered.

No, there were also changes considered and made to the rules of the Georgia Republican Party, including some tinkering with the party's process for selecting and allocating delegates to the Republican National Convention. The main change on that front was the insertion of a new section into Rule 7.3 of the Georgia Republican Party rules. That new section plus a new preface to the original section defining delegate allocation in the state created a contingency based on when the presidential primary is scheduled.
B) If the Presidential Preference Primary shall occur on March 15 or thereafter in the year in which a Republican National Convention is held, the Republican Presidential candidate receiving the highest number of votes in the Presidential Preference Primary in each Congressional District shall receive all votes of such Congressional District Delegates and seated Alternates to the Republican National Convention. The Republican Presidential candidate receiving the highest number of votes in the Primary statewide shall receive all statewide (State at Large) Delegate and seated Alternate votes to the Republican National Convention, and such Delegates and Alternates shall file a qualification oath as required by O.C.G.A. $ 21-2-196.
Given the national party rules restricting the usage of winner-take-all allocation methods prior to March 15, the Georgia Republican Party basically created an allocation method for primaries scheduled on either side of that line of demarcation in the Republican presidential primary calendar.

The rules in the event of a pre-March 15 primary are the same as they were in Georgia in 2016: proportional under the broader Republican National Committee definition of the term with a 20 percent qualifying threshold (statewide and in each the congressional districts) and a winner-take-all trigger if a candidate wins a majority in each unit (statewide and in each the congressional districts). None of that has changed.

However, the new section B to Rule 7.3 accounts for a March 15 or later presidential primary. And it shifts Georgia Republican delegate allocation back to a method the party reliably used before 2012: a winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district method. A candidate who wins a plurality statewide would win all of the statewide/at-large delegates. Any candidate who wins a plurality in any of the 14 congressional districts would win the three delegates from that district.

And that will be the method Peach state Republicans use in 2020. A month after the Savannah state convention, Secretary of State Raffensperger (R) set the Georgia presidential primary date for March 24. Georgia, then, will have a more winner-take-all flavored allocation method for 2020 than it has in any cycle since 2008.

While this may be treated by some as some advantage for President Trump, it should be noted that there were already winner-take-all triggers both statewide and at the congressional district level in the plan Georgia Republicans used in 2016. An incumbent president, popular within his own party, very likely would have/will hit those majority thresholds that would have tripped the winner-take-all triggers.

In any event, Georgia will be more winner-take-all in 2020 than it has been in recent cycles.


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Thursday, September 26, 2019

Earlier Primary in Place, California Republicans Make Delegate Allocation Changes

Earlier this month when the California Republican Party converged on Indian Wells for the party's 2019 state convention it was a rules-based change in reaction to a new Golden state law prohibiting ballot access to presidential candidates for not disclosing their tax returns that grabbed the headlines.

And that change is not without import. If a nationally recognized candidate is denied access to the ballot, then under the new rule, the CAGOP state central committee or executive committee would meet after March 15, 2020 -- more than a week after the Super Tuesday primary in California -- to determine which candidate would select a slate of delegates to represent them at the national convention in Charlotte.1

There is an important assumption in that rule. Only one candidate would receive delegates from California. More than anything, that is a nod to the other allocation-based changes the party adopted at the convention. In recent cycles, the California Republican Party has used a winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district delegate allocation scheme. A candidate who wins statewide is awarded all of the at-large delegates and winners within each of the Golden state's 53 districts would receive three delegates from a won district.

However, given the 2017 presidential primary date change in California, that method of allocation was no longer compliant under Republican National Committee rules. The primary, set for Super Tuesday, is early enough on the primary calendar to fit within the proportionality window the party established for the 2012 cycle, requiring early states to have a proportional allocation plan in place. California Republicans had to make a change.

And that is something the California Republicans at the state convention addressed. Proposal 10 highlights the changes in language within the rule from 2016 to 2020. Gone are the winner-take-all elements, at least as the default. In their place is a proportional scheme consistent with RNC rules. Candidates who receive more than 20 percent of the vote either statewide or in congressional districts will qualify for a proportional share of the delegates within those units. And that is where the aforementioned assumption comes into the picture. Again, the ballot access workaround notes that the committee will determine which candidate -- not candidates -- who would name and slate delegates from the state. CAGOP seemingly is of the opinion that that 20 percent bar -- the highest allowed by the RNC -- is sufficient enough to keep other candidates from qualifying (and thus allow President Trump and his campaign the ability to name a slate of delegates from California).

That is one change instituted, but was not the only one. In addition to the new high qualification threshold, the party also adopted a winner-take-all threshold. That, too, factors into the assumptions the party is making in the newly adopted ballot access rule. Should a candidate win a majority of the vote statewide, then that candidate would win all of the delegates from the state. That is another threshold that President Trump could likely easily hit in the primary should his name appear on the ballot.

But in the end, it is clear that these rules were adopted with the idea of the president winning and naming all of the delegates to the national convention from the state in mind. And the sunset provision is a pretty clear indication the changes were made to ease Trump's path to the nomination. Add California to the list of states, then, that have upped their thresholds for this cycle.


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1 This provision, while adopted by the state convention, is only in effect for the 2020 cycle. It expires on January 1, 2021.



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Wednesday, September 4, 2019

California Republicans Face Decision on 2020 Delegate Selection

Heading into their state convention this weekend, California Republicans are staring down an October 1 deadline under RNC rules to finalize delegate selection plans for the 2020 cycle. And due to the 2017 move of the presidential primary from June to March for 2020, a change in the way delegates are allocated is necessary.

For years, California Republicans have used a winner-take-most allocation system in the presidential nomination process, doling out (at-large) delegates to the plurality winner statewide and to the plurality winner in each of the Golden state's congressional districts. But unlike past cycles when California held an early (February or March) primary, the contest now falls in the proportionality window the Republican National Committee adopted for the 2012 cycle, tweaked ahead of 2016 and kept for 2020.

That overlap -- a primary in the proportionality window and a winner-take-most allocation scheme -- means California Republicans have to make some changes or face sanction from the RNC (50 percent delegate reduction). And this coming weekend's state convention is one of the last opportunities for the party to make those changes before the RNC deadline at the end of the month.

California Republicans, then, are one of the few state parties that will have a less incumbent-beneficial plan in 2020 as compared to 2016. A handful of states have made subtle maneuvers in 2019 to award more delegates to majority winners (which incumbent presidents typically are) in primaries and caucuses. Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Ohio have all either altered their delegate selection rules from 2016 or moved primaries or caucuses to retain or create more incumbent-friendly allocation rules (read: winner-take-all).

So what will California Republicans do?

There is no draft of what the California Republican Party Rules Committee will tackle during their Saturday evening meeting, but the path of least resistance -- the one that alters the status quo the least -- is a proportional allocation system set up with either or both of a maximum 20 percent qualifying threshold on statewide and district results and/or a 50 percent winner-take-all trigger applied to both statewide and district results. That would likely retain the winner-take-most elements in a contest with an intra-party popular incumbent president seeking renomination.

Time, however, will tell that tale. But a change does have to occur for California Republicans to remain in compliance with RNC rules.



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Thursday, June 2, 2016

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: CALIFORNIA

This is part forty-nine of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

CALIFORNIA

Election type: primary
Date: June 7
Number of delegates: 172 [10 at-large, 159 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: winner-take-most primary

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Changes since 2012
The opening of the Section 3 summary of the California Republican Party delegate selection rules in the party's 16F filing with the Republican National Committee says it all:
California rules have not changed from those applicable to the 2012 convention.
And that is true. The primary still falls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June as it did four years ago. The delegates are allocated by a winner-take-most formula. Additionally, those delegates are chosen by the candidates and their campaigns rather than in caucuses/conventions that give the candidates less control over who is bound to them.


Thresholds
Since California Republicans use a winner-take-all by congressional district method of awarding delegates, there are no thresholds candidates must meet in order to qualify for delegates. The plurality winner(s) is/are allocated all of the delegates either statewide or within the congressional districts.


Delegate allocation (at-large and automatic delegates)
The 13 at-large and automatic delegates are allocated to the winner of the statewide contest. Relative to other winner-take-most states like South Carolina or Wisconsin, California's is a rather modest winner's bonus. Winning South Carolina meant winning just over half of the total number of delegates to be allocated. In Wisconsin, the at-large delegates comprised more than a third of the total number of delegates. That much more closely resembles a true winner's bonus.

Another way to look at it is that a challenger to the statewide winner would find it difficult overcome the deficit created by a loss statewide in the congressional districts. That is not necessarily the case in California, where the at-large (and automatic delegates) only make up a little less than 8% of the delegates the state has to offer. Theoretically, a challenging candidate could overcome the winner's bonus deficit by winning five more congressional districts (in a pool of 53) than the statewide winner. That is a scenario where the statewide winner's support would be concentrated in a smaller number of districts with a greater number of votes/voters.

There is, then, a path by which a candidate other than the statewide winner could win the delegate race in California. However, while that path looks good on paper, the allocation rules have not tended to work that way in practice in the Golden state.

Take 2008. The California primary was in early February, concurrent with a number of other states and at a much more competitive point on the primary calendar. Furthermore, John McCain's victory statewide was by about 7.5 percent over Mitt Romney. That is not necessarily close, but not a landslide either. McCain got the 10 at-large delegates, and that statewide win was nearly uniformly distributed across the 53 districts. Romney took just four of them for 12 delegates.

The takeaway, as has been the case with other winner-take-most states, is that the statewide results would have to be really close for the winner to be imperiled in any way in the delegate count coming out of the state. That is less true in smaller (and/or more Republican states using the allocation method) than in California where there are more opportunities/districts. Yet, even in California, that has not tended to occur.

Some of that has to do with how late the primary is; typically after the a presumptive nominee has emerged.


Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
The allocation in the 53 congressional districts is simple enough: win the district, win its three delegates. The difference for California is that its congressional districts alone account for more delegates than are available in any other state.


Binding
As mentioned above, the candidates and their campaigns form a slate of delegates ahead of the June primary. The results of the primary determine which delegates -- from which campaign -- will head to the national convention. At the convention, those delegates "shall use his or her best efforts at the convention for the party’s presidential nominee candidate from California to whom the delegate has pledged support until the person is nominated for the office of President of the United States by the convention, receives less than 10 percent of the votes for nomination by the convention, releases the delegate from his or her obligation, or until two convention nominating ballots have been taken." Unless any of the other conditions are met, then, the California delegation is bound through the first two ballots at the national convention.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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Saturday, April 30, 2016

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: INDIANA

This is part forty-four of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

INDIANA

Election type: primary
Date: May 3
Number of delegates: 57 [27 at-large, 27 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: hybrid primary

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Changes since 2012
In 2012, Indiana was a kind of reverse of Pennsylvania in 2016. District delegates were allocated in a winner-take-all fashion to the victor in each congressional district. However, the at-large delegates were selected at the state convention and remained unbound at the national convention.1 Unlike Pennsylvania, though, the sort of plan Indiana Republicans used in 2012 does not cut it under the Republican National Committee delegate rules for 2016.

The difference?

The Pennsylvania congressional district delegates are directly elected on the primary ballot while the Indiana at-large delegates were selected at a state convention and left unbound in 2012 despite a statewide primary election. The former is a loophole, but the latter is not.

The solution the Indiana Republican Party arrived at for 2016 was to streamline the process; to yield to a more Wisconsin method of allocation. That is to say, the party shifted to a winner-take-all by congressional district method of awarding delegates. The winner of the congressional district continues to receive all three delegates. And now the statewide winner is allocated all at-large and automatic delegates.


Thresholds
As the Indiana plan mimics Wisconsin and others like it, the delegates are all given out to the winner statewide or in the nine congressional districts. There is no threshold.


Delegate allocation (at-large and automatic delegates)
Winning statewide in Indiana means taking 30 at-large and automatic delegates. That is a large bonus on top of any congressional district delegates won. The Hoosier state joins South Carolina as the only other winner-take-all by congressional district state where there are more at-large delegates on the line than congressional district delegates. All the others are blue states that lack the bonus delegate-inflated at-large totals that Indiana and South Carolina have.2


Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
Win the district, win the three delegates. That is the same as 2012 and has carried over to 2016.


Binding
Under the party rules in Indiana (Rules 10-2 and 10-6), all at-large and congressional district delegates are bound on the first ballot at the national convention. That binding holds as long as the candidate(s) to whom they are bound is still an active candidate at the national convention.

That binding rule does conflict with state law -- Indiana Code 3-8-3-11 -- with respect to the at-large delegates. However, despite the conflict, the RNC rules give precedence to the state party rule.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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1 Actually, delegates were directly elected on the May primary ballot to attend the state convention and ratify the selection of those at-large delegates.

2 Missouri would have been in this category, but the party shifted a couple of at-large delegates to each congressional district, greatly diluting the at-large pool of delegates.

3 Given the December RNC memo, that at-large total includes the three automatic delegates as well.


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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

2016 Republican Delegate Allocation: MARYLAND

This is part forty-one of a series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation rules by state. The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2016 -- especially relative to 2012 -- in order to gauge the potential impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. For this cycle the RNC recalibrated its rules, cutting the proportionality window in half (March 1-14), but tightening its definition of proportionality as well. While those alterations will trigger subtle changes in reaction at the state level, other rules changes -- particularly the new binding requirement placed on state parties -- will be more noticeable. 

MARYLAND

Election type: primary
Date: April 26 
Number of delegates: 38 [11 at-large, 24 congressional district, 3 automatic]
Allocation method: winner-take-most/winner-take-all by congressional district
Threshold to qualify for delegates: n/a
2012: winner-take-most primary

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Changes since 2012
The basic structure of how Maryland Republicans will select and allocate delegates to the national convention in 2016 is similar to 2012. How many delegates Maryland was apportioned by the Republican National Committee changed as did when the allocation will occur.

First of all, since 2012, Maryland voters elected a Republican governor. That increased the size of the Maryland Republican delegation from 37 in 2012 to 38 in 2016 under the apportionment formula the Republican National Committee utilizes.

Additionally, unlike four years ago, the Maryland primary is scheduled for the fourth Tuesday in April, a delay of three weeks as compared to 2012. The original motivation behind the move was to avoid an overlap between early voting ahead of a then-April 5 primary and Easter weekend. However, the originally called for one week delay would have created a conflict between the final certification of the primary vote two weeks later and the end of Passover. That forced a move of the primary back even further to the fourth Tuesday in April (which technically would fall during Passover week but would not delay the certification process). 

That new date had the added benefit of clustering the Maryland primary with a number of other mid-Atlantic and northeastern contests on the same day. While that in part shifted the Maryland primary from one smaller subregional cluster with Washington, DC in 2012 to another with more contests in 2016, Maryland will have been the most (bound) delegate-rich in each cluster.1

The result is that there are some changes in Maryland for 2016, but not with respect to the method of allocation (relative to 2012). It has more to do with the whens and how manys instead.


Thresholds
The Maryland Republican Party splits the allocation of its 38 delegates between the results both statewide and in the eight congressional districts. And since the plurality winner statewide and in the individual districts is allocated all of the delegates in that unit, there is no threshold to qualify for delegates.


Delegate allocation (at-large and automatic delegates)
Maryland is like Wisconsin and South Carolina in using the winner-take-most method of delegate allocation. That maintains a winner-take-all element to the allocation but requires a broader level of support statewide (across each of the congressional districts). Though the rules are the same the Badger and Palmetto states are a study in contrasts for how these rules tend to work. Trump enjoyed plurality support to varying degrees across South Carolina and parlayed that into a sweep of the delegates there. Cruz, on the other hand, won a plurality statewide, but found most of his support in and around Milwaukee. But he did not sweep the state as Trump overtook him in the 3rd and 7th districts to claim six delegates. In both cases, the statewide winner won the vast majority of delegates, but no winner under a winner-take-all by congressional district plan is not necessarily guaranteed all of them.

This is important when considering the at-large and automatic delegates allocated based on the statewide results. That group of delegates -- 14 in the case of Maryland -- basically serves as a (plurality) winner's bonus, one that gets tacked onto the delegate total amassed in the various congressional district races. And in a state with an even number of districts, that bonus can serve as a tiebreaker in the delegate count.


Delegate allocation (congressional district delegates)
As is the case statewide, the plurality winner in each of the congressional districts wins all three delegates in that district.


Binding
The Maryland Republican Party rules bind delegates to the statewide and/or congressional district winner(s) until:
  1. the candidate who has won those delegates releases them; 
  2. the candidate who has won those delegates receives less than 35% of the vote in the nomination vote at the national convention;
  3. or through two ballots at the national convention. 
One factor that makes Maryland different from South Carolina and Wisconsin is that the selection process is different. All three share a method of allocation, but in Maryland, the congressional district delegates and alternates are directly elected on the primary ballot (like in Illinois). Those delegate candidates have the option of filing as affiliated with a particular candidate (and to have the presidential candidate's name adjacent to the delegate candidate's name on the ballot), but that does not affect the binding in the Old Line state. Congressional district delegates, regardless of that affiliation, will be bound to the plurality winner of the congressional district unless or until one of the three conditions above is met.

At-large delegates contrarily are not directly elected. Rather, those 11 delegates are elected by the Maryland Republican Party state convention. Whereas the campaigns can directly facilitate the filing of congressional district delegates aligned with the campaign, those same campaigns do not necessarily have the same direct input or influence over the selection of the at-large delegates in Maryland.


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State allocation rules are archived here.


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1 Pennsylvania has nearly twice as many delegates as Maryland, but more than three-quarters of them are unbound.

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