There has been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of a brokered convention later this year when the GOP meets in Tampa Bay this summer. This post will give you a bit of explanation of what a brokered convention is and what it may mean for the presidential race.
A Definition
A convention is considered “brokered” if the delegates who represent the candidates do not come to a majority consensus on their candidate.
That is to say a vote is taken and if a candidate does not get more than 50% of the vote – in this case it is 1,144 delegates – the convention is brokered. If that happens, many of the delegates will be “unbound” to their candidate. So a delegate who was representing a vote for Mitt Romney could change their mind and vote for Ron Paul, or vice versa.
In this case, the candidates can appeal to these delegates to try and get more votes in favor of themselves. The voting process will be repeated until a single candidate gets the 1,144 votes. At that time he will then be the GOP nominee for the presidency.
Delegate Count
This is why the news covers how many delegates each candidate has.
However, the current number of delegates each candidate has we see in the news is not the actual number. These are estimates based off the votes the candidates earned in each state. In caucus states, the final delegation will not be announced until a few months after the general vote has been conducted. See my previous post on caucus states for more on that.
There are a few states that have some other weird rules too. For example, in Tennessee, Rick Santorum earned 29 delegates, having won the state with 37% of the vote. However he did not have any confirmed delegates in the state, which means the state appoints the delegates. Some of them may not end up voting in the convention for Santorum.
Right now the projected delegate count is as follows:
Mitt Romney: 495
Rick Santorum: 252
Newt Gingrich: 131
Ron Paul: 48
Again, take all this with a grain of salt. For example, insiders in the Paul campaign believes they have over 200 delegates. So these numbers are estimates at best.
The Big Picture
Getting back to the convention and the politics of it, you may be asking yourself “Why do I care about all this?” Well, this is where we get into some deeper politics.
The GOP wants to have a convention in which the party appears united behind their nominee. This will make the party look stronger, which will help them get the undecided voters in the coming election. If the convention is brokered, it will make the party appear fractured and weak, detracting potential voters.
The goal for the party between now and August is to decide which candidate they want to support. If they can come to a consensus before the convention, the meeting will be one big celebration of the Republican Party and allow them to use the media coverage there to prepare for the battle between their nominee and President Obama.
Currently it doesn’t look like the party is aligning themselves behind one candidate, which could spell trouble for the eventual nominee. The President is already in a position of power and will be hard to beat in a general election, but if his competition is a controversial figure within the GOP, the likelihood he will be reelected is pretty high.