2016 Republican Delegate Allocation Rules by State

Convention: State will bind delegates to the national convention at a state/territory convention. Other conventions will leave the delegation unbound.

Proportional: State will proportionally allocate delegates based either on the statewide primary/caucus vote or on the combination of the statewide and congressional district votes.

Proportional with Trigger: State will follow above proportional rules but allows for a winner-take-all allocation if a candidate wins a majority of the vote statewide or at the congressional district level.

Hybrid: State will follow some form of winner-take-most plan (i.e.: winner-take-all by congressional district) or directly elects delegates on the primary ballot.

Winner-take-all: State will award all delegates to the plurality winner of the primary or caucus.

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October 1 came and went with little fanfare. But that was the deadline for states to have finalized and submitted delegate selection plans to the Republican National Committee for approval. Most of the rules have been adopted by state parties at meetings and conventions throughout 2015. That gave the RNC a chance to green light most of them as they became available.

Some plans, however, are more available than others as FHQ found when trying to put together a "what do we know now about delegate allocation rules" post over the course of this week. Thankfully Zeke Miller at Time came along and filled in a number of those gaps.

I will make some broad comments now and revisit this on a state-by-state basis as 2016 approaches (more specifically in October and November). What should we focus on? Here are a few things:

1) Which states have new rules since 2012?

Most of the changes cycle-over-cycle are from formerly non-binding caucus states that, due to a change in the RNC rules, had to adopt a binding plan. Iowa, Minnesota, Maine and Washington to name a few developed differing sets of binding rules. Two other states, Montana and Nebraska traded beauty contest primaries with non-binding caucus/convention systems for winner-take-all primaries. Others like Ohio made a switch to winner-take-all rules to advantage one candidate or another. 

2) For (proportional) states in the proportionality window and out, is there a threshold that will limit which candidates will qualify to be awarded delegates?

This is a big one that will very likely aid the winnowing of this atypically large field of Republican presidential candidates. Candidates will very likely be separated into at least four groups: 

a) those who win contests
b) those who lose contests
c) those who win delegates
d) those who do not win delegates

The candidates who fall into categories b or d are going to feel pressure in various ways to drop out of the race. The saving grace for those candidates in category b is if they are winning delegates, but staying in striking distance.

3) For other (proportional) states in the proportionality window and out, is there a winner-take-all trigger [see striped states above]?

In other words, can a candidate win all of the delegates or all of the either statewide/at-large or congressional district delegates if they win the state or the congressional district? There are a lot of these trigger states on the calendar in the proportionality window. Their impact -- as potential winner-take-all states -- very much depends on the size of the field and competition among the candidates at the point that a contest is held. As FHQ pointed out in 2011 and again this year, the smaller the field is, the more likely it is that a backdoor winner-take-all contest will be triggered. It is difficult to see that with 15 candidates involved now, but the field will winnow and the calculus will change. 

4) What else is there to know?

Lots. There are rounding schemes and recalculations of delegate allocations and other sliding rules that are conditional. As always this process is a patchwork of rules in 50 states. There is a lot of variation; a lot of caveats. FHQ will be doing a tour through all 50 states as we did in 2012 and the additional territories where rules are available and state party officials willing to talk to fill in gaps. Updates will come often over the next couple of months and will be archived here for future reference. 

And here is the full report on delegate allocation rules from the RNC.

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Kansas Republicans Set Delegate Allocation Rules for 2016

Despite reports that the Kansas Republican Party set its caucus date at its midyear convention on Saturday, July 25, the real headline came from changes to the party's delegate allocation process.

The Lawrence Journal-World ran a story late Saturday that Kansas Republicans had set the date of their 2016 caucuses for March 5 at their Saturday meeting. However, that decision was tentatively made back in January and formalized thereafter. Party chair, Kelly Arnold, testified before a Kansas legislative committee considering a bill to permanently cancel the perpetually cancelled Kansas presidential primary in March (2015) that the party would hold caucuses on March 5.¹ The party website also reflected that decision at that time.

The question about the caucuses was less when on Saturday than it was how. As in "How will Kansas Republicans allocate delegates to candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination process?" There were two main differences in the plan adopted that are departures from the delegate allocation plan the Kansas Republican Party utilized in 2012.

First, due to the tighter definition of proportionality that the Republican National Committee has in place for contests within the March 1-14 proportionality window in 2016, Sunflower state Republicans had to alter the manner in which its congressional district delegates will be allocated. Whereas it was fine in 2012 to allocate those congressional district delegates on a winner-take-all basis (while the statewide/at-large delegates were proportionally allocated) while remaining compliant with the proportionality rules, in 2016 it will not be. Those congressional district delegates now have to be allocated proportionally as well.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Kansas Republicans lowered the threshold for receiving delegates -- congressional district or at-large -- from 20% to 10%. Strategically, that lowers if not eliminates the need for the party to make rules accounting for the possibility that no candidate crosses the threshold to receive delegates. Scheduled over a month after the Iowa caucuses are likely to be held, the March 5 Kansas Republican caucuses will see a field winnowed from the 16 candidates who have formally announced runs (as of July 2015).

Functionally, though, the lowered threshold means that more candidates are likely to qualify for delegates in 2016 than was the case in 2012. Only Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney cleared the 20% threshold the 2012 caucuses. Under the newly adopted 2016 rules, however, both Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul would also have been allocated delegates in 2012. The loser in the change -- if the 2016 rules had been used in 2012 -- would have been Rick Santorum. Instead of a 33-7 Santorum to Romney delegate distribution, Santorum likely would have claimed roughly 23 delegates to 8 for Romney, 5 for Paul and 4 for Gingrich.

And that difference is a direct reflection of both of those rules changes for 2016: 1) proportionally allocating congressional district delegates and 2) lowering the threshold for qualifying for delegates.

There is one more factor to note in closing on this discussion of the Kansas Republican caucus rules for 2016. The three automatic delegates -- the party chair, national committeeman and national committeewoman -- are all still allocated to the statewide winner of the caucuses. That portion of the allocation rules is unchanged; a tiny winner-take-all remnant that carries over to 2016.


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¹ Arnold made it clear that the caucuses "will" take place on March 5 in that testimony, separating that distinction/decision from the caucuses planning that was still ongoing at that point.

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Kansas Republican to Caucus on March 5

The Kansas Republican Party has settled on March 5, 2016 as the date of the party's presidential caucuses.

Coming off the state convention in late January, Kansas Republicans announced that they had tentatively set the date of the 2016 caucuses for March 5. In the time since, what the party described then as "will probably" changed to "will" be on March 5 by the time Kansas Republican Party Chairman Kelly Arnold testified in favor of legislation canceling the 2016 presidential primary in the Sunflower state. The date has subsequently been added to the party's calendar of upcoming events.

March 5 caucuses for Kansas Republicans means that both parties in the state will share the same delegate selection date for the first since Kansas last held a presidential primary in 1992. The first Saturday in March date is also the same date Kansas Republicans used four years ago. This time the party will be competing with more than just distant US territories. As of now, the Louisiana primary also shares that date (on the Republican primary calendar) with Kansas.

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March 1 a Go for Colorado Democratic Caucuses in 2016

A few weeks ago, the Colorado Democratic Party released a draft of its 2016 delegate selection plan.¹ Following the failed attempt at the close of the 2015 state legislative session to switch from a caucus/convention system to a more open primary system, both parties were essentially locked into caucuses and Colorado Democrats have selected March 1 for the date on which to hold their "first determining step" caucuses.

Parties in Colorado have two possible dates on which they can conduct precinct caucuses (with a presidential preference vote): the first Tuesday in February or the first Tuesday in March. The former is an option added for the 2008 cycle to allow the state parties the latitude to opt into a date that would be early enough to at the very least keep the Colorado caucuses in line with the logjam of states holding contests on February 5, Super Tuesday in 2008. As 2012 approached, the February option remained in state law, but the March option was pushed up a couple of weeks from the third to first Tuesday in March.

That meant that the second, later option was in line with the earliest date allowed on the informally coordinated calendar structure the national parties had devised for the 2012 cycle; the first Tuesday in March. It also meant that the caucuses date choice allowed by Colorado law was basically an optionless option. The national party delegate selection rules in 2012 prohibited February contests (with some loopholes and nose-thumbing states). Colorado Democrats settled on the March option in 2011 and have done so again in 2015 for the 2016 presidential election cycle.

Though non-binding caucuses technically allowed Colorado Republicans to hold February 7 caucuses in 2012 without penalty from the Republican National Committee, the new 2016 rules requiring the binding of delegates (based on the earliest, statewide vote) limits Republicans in the Centennial state in a way they were not in 2011. It also means that Colorado Republicans would be vulnerable to the more severe penalties the RNC introduced for 2016. Still, the option exists, but it is a decision for another time.

For now, Colorado Democrats are headed for March 1 caucuses. That places Colorado caucusgoers behind only Nevadans on the calendar in western state voting.

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¹ The above link is to the plan from the Colorado Democratic Party site. FHQ will also keep a version of the plan here.

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Utah Republicans Are Preparing for March 22 Presidential Caucuses

The Utah Republican Party this past weekend completed a meeting in which the framework for the 2016 election cycle was set. One tweet of note that caught FHQ's eye coming out of the meeting was from Utah state Senator Todd Weiler (R-23rd, Davis, Salt Lake):

The 2016 #utgop caucus and presidential primary will be held on March 22. #utpol #utleg

— Todd Weiler (@gopTODD) May 30, 2015

Utah Republican Party Executive Director, Julian Babbitt confirmed that the party will in fact caucus during March 22 neighborhood meetings across Utah (like Beehive state Democrats), but that the online voting portion of that process will begin a week earlier on March 15, giving voters ample opportunity to cast presidential preference ballots.

Both the start point for the online voting on March 15 and the final, in-person voting opportunity during the March 22 caucuses will fall outside of the Republican National Committee proportionality window. That allows Utah Republicans to continue with a truly winner-take-all allocation of delegates to the winner of the combined preference vote. Asked whether there were any plans to change course on that allocation method, Babbitt referred to section 7.0B of the state party bylaws -- the description of the winner-take-all method -- and offered that there was no effort underway to alter anything with the allocation of national convention delegates.

Utah Republicans can now be slotted into the March 22 slot on the 2016 presidential primary calendar but with a caveat. We also know that Utah will be another truly winner-take-all primary in mid-March to join Florida.

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