I am a little confused by the coverage of the primaries so far. If you have been following the Republican Primaries, then you know that Huckabee won the Iowa Primary, and McCain won the New Hampshire primary. Many political commentators are saying Romney must win Michigan, or pull out of the race. Some have even said it is time for him to pull out of the race now.
An important point to remember: the Republican Presidential nominee may not be decided by the number of states he wins. Most states split their delegates in proportion to how the primary goes in that state. For example, while Huckabee won Iowa, he doesn't get all 40 Iowa delegates. Instead, Iowa has assigned its delegates as follows: Huckabee gets 17, Romney gets 12, McCain and Thompson both get 3, and Paul gets 2. I believe the remainder are "unpledged delegates". These delegates can vote for whichever candidate they wish too.
New Hampshire's primary was won by McCain, but once again, the winner doesn't get all of the votes. And here is one more piece of information you may not have heard: Wyoming has already had it's primary. Guess who won it: Romney. If you are keeping score at home, the current delegate count (including unpledged) is as follows: Romney (30), Huckabee (21), McCain (10), Thompson (6), Paul (2), Giuliani (1). So currently Romney is actually winning the Republican race!
There are still a lot of states left to vote. Some of them divide out their delegates and some don't. In order to win the Republican nomination, a candidate has to get 1,191 delegates. Things can change between now and September when the Republicans will actually nominate their candidate, but keep the points in mind as you watch the coverage this election season. I have no idea why the points aren't talked about more often. However, feel free to return here periodically to see what the current score is.
4 comments:
Good point. I was reading something similar (only more so) about the Democratic primary and their superdelegates.
Yeah I thought it was kind of funny how all the pundits were saying Hillary won NH but if you actually look at the delegates Hillary and Obama actually tied. (unless that changed when I looked only 97 percent of the precints had reported in but I don't think 3% would have swung a delegate).
It's similar too making the statement that Gore won the popular vote (if the chads hang the right way) but Bush won the electoral college which is what really matters.
Interesting... I have heard a few reports from the MSM that Romney might be bailing out of the race. Sneaky MSM is not reporting things exactly right, surprise, surprise, surprise! Is there the remote possibility that they are trying to influence who is chosen as each parties nominee??
We still have a long way to go before any candidate wins the nomination, but I think it is safe to say we can't trust how the media covers it.
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