Posted on 03/08/2012 2:59:32 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Newt Gingrich stands to gain more than 50 delegates in the Republican presidential race, thanks to his overwhelming victory in Tuesday’s Georgia primary.
.....If the totals hold, Rick Santorum would fall about 3,500 ballots shy of reaching 20 percent of the statewide vote. Failing to meet that threshold means Santorum was shut out of a share of 34 delegates awarded based on the statewide vote. Only Gingrich and Romney met that minimum percentage.
Based on his vote total alone, Gingrich stands to win 16 statewide delegates; Romney 8. Under the state GOP rules, the remaining 10 statewide delegates are awarded one-by-one to both Gingrich and Romney, which would give Gingrich a total of 21 statewide delegates and Romney 13.
The other 42 state delegates are awarded by the result in each of the state’s 14 congressional districts. By winning a majority of the vote in the 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, 13th and 14th districts, Gingrich wins all three delegates in each. He also finished first, but without a majority, in six other districts, each of which gains him two delegates. Romney finished first in the 5th and 6th and second in three others. A second-place finish earns a candidate one delegate.
Based on the delegate allocation rules written by the Georgia Republican Party, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimates that Gingrich will win 53 of the state’s 76 delegates, Romney 20 and Santorum 3.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Odd that.
NO NEWT IS GOOD NEWT!
BUT RICK SANTORUM PRESSES ON TOWARD THE GOAL!!!!!!!!!!...GO RICK!
Good Morning CW-
Looks like the Rick supporters are declaring war on Newt and are hellbent to contest the Southern states ...after Newt held back and didn’t compete in the Midwest.
Foolish move on their part that will end up getting Romney nominated ...plus they are driving away people, like myself, who had been open to considering Rick if Newt should drop out. Dumb move on their part.
That seems to be the pattern, sadly.
Way to go Newt!!!! Now on to AL, MS and LA.
GOOD NEWT IS GOOD NEWT!
You can’t win the Presidency while skipping large parts of the country. It’s hilarious how some Gingrich supporters actually try to argue that GIngrich’s inability to compete in the midwest was actually a strategy to help Rick Santorum beat Romney.
Gingrich himself bragged about how those states were meaningless to him, mocking Santorum for even trying to win them.
Now Gingrich is skipping Kansas. He’s going to compete for 2 more states, giving him a total of 8 states he will have tried to win so far (Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi).
If only 3500 Gingrich supporters had instead voted for Santorum, Romney would have only gotten 14 delegates instead of 20. That was supposed to be the important thing, keeping Romney from getting delegates.
Gingrich ran robocalls attacking Santorum. If those Robocalls caused only 3500 voters to switch from Santorum to Romney or Gingrich or Paul, they gave Romney 6 delegates in the process.
If you are going to give up on Santorum because he actually wants voters in Alabama and Mississippi to vote for him, then you were never going to support him, because that is what is expected of serious candidates for office — that they will compete for every primary.
Given that Santorum was in first place in the polls in Alabama last week, and Newt was in 3rd, you can’t even argue that Santorum is doing so badly that he HAS to quit Alabama to clear the way for the leader. That argument would instead suggest Gingrich should stay home. I’m not saying he should, but it’s absurd to argue that the leader in the polls should cede a state to the 3rd-place polling candidate because somehow it would “help” beat Romney.
What would have helped beat Romney is if 3500 Gingrich supporters in Georgia voted for Santorum, and if 12,000 Gingrich supporters voted for Santorum in Ohio, and if 500 Gingrich supporters in the Alaska Caucus voted for Santorum. A switch of only 16,000 voters would have cost Romney 6 Georgia delegates and two state victories.
Oddly, some Gingrich supporter yesterday instead argued that Santorum should have given up over 32,000 votes in Georgia so that Gingrich could get above 50% in all the districts, denying Romney 8 delegates.
I did what I said I’d do. I voted for him here. I fear that unless he wins Texas, Alabama and Mississippi we are left with the very distressing choice of Santorum or Romney - both northern RINOs of some caliber or other.
This is a bit selective. Many voters moved to Gingrich in Ohio in congressional districts where Rick had NO delegates slated. Rick Lost Ohio because of Rick, not Newt.
We have months to go and a long way to get there.
Smile!
You got a link to that poll? The only poll that I've seen so far showed Newt in first place for Alabama that was published on Feb 24th.
The pollster likely started polling in mid Feb the low point in the Gingrich campaign. However, despite that, Gingrich still led in Alabama, which makes it highly likely that Gingrich still leads in Alabama now.
I see now see 2 new polls that have just got published on Real Real Politics in the last 24 hours. The latest one published today shows this: Romney 31, Santorum 22, Gingrich 21, Paul 7. I see the numbers add up to 81%, which likely means 19% are undecided. It’s anyones game in Alabama.
I think he’s following this polling — by Alabama Ed Assoc and Alabama State.
You obviously never accepted that strategy nor did Rick. My mistake was to believe that Santorum and his supporters might be trusted to do what was best for the Republic. I won't make that mistake from here on out.
Ala Ed Assoc poll...Romney 10 pt lead...GOP primary approaches(Myth 31.2, Santo 21.6, Newt 21.2)
The numbers are very far apart from that Santo poll showing him in first place now in Breaking News.
Newt Gingrich isn’t giving up any votes he had any chance to get. That’s now how you run elections.
VOTERS play games. The candidates try to win every contest. Wouldn’t be real candidates if they didn’t.
The Voters aren’t really playing the game right either, but there’s no controlling the voters.
However, I will leave you with one REAL-LIFE example, as opposed to all the rampant speculation about what one candidate or another might or might not do, which have little resemblance to reality.
In 2008, Mitt ROmney was poised to win the West Virginia caucuses. He had a plurality of the vote in early polling. McCain was a distant 2nd, and Huckabee 3rd.
Huckabee, wanting to stop Romney at any cost, instructed his caucus leaders to tell all his caucus voters to switch their votes to McCain. They did so, and McCain eeked out a victory.
That actually happened. So we know that candidates can do that. Now, look at Alaska. It wasn’t a “winner-take-all” caucus of course. But there is a great psychological difference between winning and coming in 2nd, even if the delegate counts aren’t too much different.
And because it is a Caucus, you have complete control over the voters. They are all in the meeting, and you can tell a few of them, or the lot of them, what you want them to do.
If Gingrich had simply called his Alaska Caucus captains in the caucuses where he was weak, and asked them to throw their support to Santorum, just 426 votes, Santorum could have WON the Alaska primary. And likely, Gingrich wouldn’t have dropped enough to lose the delegates he got. Romney would have lost a couple of delegates though.
Now, I’m not saying GIngrich SHOULD have done this. He’s trying to win, trying to get delegates. He worked hard in Georgia to beat down Santorum so much that Santorum didn’t hit the 20% threshold — that got Gingrich 4 more delegates, and got Romney 4 more delegates, than they would have gotten if Santorum had 4000 more votes.
What I AM saying is that it is clear Gingrich is not doing “whatever he can” to stop Romney, because in the Alaska Caucus, we KNOW he could have thrown support to Santorum to stop Romney from winning — because Huckabee did so in 2008 — but Gingrich didn’t do that.
So, with all due respect, I reject your notion that Gingrich is playing some special version of the game and somehow Santorum is cheating by trying to win Alabama.
If Gingrich wins Alabama and Mississippi, Gingrich won’t win the nomination, but it will almost certainly mean Santorum won’t either.
And when it comes to the big later states, the voters aren’t going to vote to cause a brokered convention, they are going to vote to get it over, and they are going to vote for Romney, because neither Santorum nor Gingrich will have enough delegates to come close to winning.
Of course, that’s just my speculation. And frankly, I think we are at the tipping point now. But I’m not asking anybody to drop out, or to stop fighting. I’m just saying it’s absurd to attack Santorum for trying to actually win the nomination.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.