Florida may prove crucial to Donald Trump’s presidential hopes if the Republican nomination race goes to a contested convention.
Under the state’s GOP rules, all of the 99 delegates Trump received when he won Florida’s March 15 primary must vote for him through the first three nominating ballots at a contested convention.
That makes Florida unique.
Thirty-one states and territories require Republican delegates to support the winner of a given primary or caucus only for the first ballot, according to the Republican National Committee. Seven require delegates to back the primary or caucus winner for the first two ballots. The remaining 19 don’t bind their delegates at all or let them make their own choice once the candidate they were tied to either withdraws from the race or releases them to vote for someone else.
That means Florida, the most important swing state in the November election, also could play a key role buttressing Trump at the July convention in Cleveland if he doesn’t secure the necessary 1,237 delegates before then, which seems increasingly likely.
It also means Florida’s 99 delegates initially will play no significant role at what could be the most tumultuous party convention in decades.
#1: Tooconservative To: A K A Stone (#0)
On the first ballot, something like 30% of all delegates are unbound (states like PA and CO have part of their delegates unbound and a few like ND are completely unbound or mostly unbound and most state party officials are unbound too).
But on the second ballot, 80% of the delegates are unbound because about half the states only bind delegates for the first ballot.
On the third ballot, a hair under 90% of the delegates are unbound.
So on the fourth ballot when Florida's delegates become unbound, they will constitute only 4% of the total number of delegates. And that will only count if they aren't under Bush's or Rubio's or Cruz's influence.
Still, that's 4% of the delegates that can't desert Trump on the second ballot and go for Cruz.
The only real potential here is that some of the Trump-slot delegates will stab him in the back on the fourth ballot. It would be interesting to know who these delegates are and who they really support.
Successful delegate managers compile dossiers on everything that can be learned about delegates and their families. Everything. I heard Joe Trippi talking about how they did this way back in the Eighties and Ed Rollins was nodding right along, confirming this as a routine convention preparation. And Trump has started playing that game very late with only one manager.
Tooconservative posted on 2016-04-09 23:02:42 Reply Private Reply