This post by Soren Dayton is really a nice primer on the Republican road to the nomination. Every candidate running for president war games out the primary process, building their case out of their home region. Giuliani certainly has regional strength in the North East and could easily win New Hampshire as a way to build the buzz for later states. I’m still not sure how a Republican candidate not named McCain can make it past the early February wall of states.
Having said that the process of war gaming a nomination is usually actually something Democrats do as Republicans tend to crown their nominee early. It’s just something that hasn’t happened in recent history and there’s no reason to believe that save for a candidate of the religious right (their activists), McCain can actually be stopped once the primary process starts out in full force.
1 Response to “Republican Electoral Math”
Something to say?
Dayton’s Giuliani spoiler theory sounds interesting in a Democrats in ‘72 or Democrats on The West Wing kind of way.
I guess I’d like to see more polls from Rust Belt states showing Giuliani with enough of a lead to play out him scoring major delegates. Dayton’s premise is that there are a number of winner-take-all states that Giuliani could win and that strong showings in some other moderate-friendly states will put him in position to bargain his delegates for a VP spot.
For the sake of simplicity – and because this could conceivably be gamed out for other candidates in other regions – we should call this the 2 + 3 > 1 Theory.
Left by Matt Browner Hamlin
December 27, 2006 at 9:52pm