The Republican primary process has an interesting wrinkle to it. Because most Republican primary states allocate delegates based on congressional districts, a relatively small number of Republican voters in heavily Democratic districts can have an outsized effect on the outcome.
Michigan provides a perfect illustration. The most Democratic congressional district in the state, the 13th, which includes the City of Detroit, had just 26,306 Republican primary voters on Tuesday. It produced two delegates for Rick Santorum. By contrast, the 11th,, which includes parts of suburban Detroit, had 93,754 Republican primary voters Tuesday. It also produced two delegates – this time for Mitt Romney.
Michigan is not the only state in which such a small number of voters can have a big influence. Nationally, there are 51 Congressional districts in which John McCain received 25 percent or less of the general election vote in 2008.
To show how screwy this allocation system is consider New York’s 16th, a Bronx district in which John McCain received just 8,437 votes in the 2008 general election. Obama got 158,671 votes. Given past turnout for primaries, even fewer Republicans are likely to vote in this year’s primary. In the entire borough, of which the 16th is just a part, only 5,122 votes were cast in the 2008 Republican presidential primary and only 2,728 votes were cast in in the 2010 gubernatorial primary. That means around 1,000 Republican voters in New York’s 16th district will be represented by as many Republican delegates – two -- as were allocated to the statewide winner in Michigan. In fact, those two delegates ended up being split between Romney and Santorum, proving that while the media talked endlessly about Romney winning Michigan, what they were tracking, the Michigan statewide total was, between the top two contenders, a meaningless beauty contest.
Here’s another way to think about the influence of Republican voters in outlier districts: If those districts composed a single state they would probably be third of all the states in terms of delegate allocation.
These districts and the crazy allocation system also provide an interesting opportunity for mischief-makers in open primary states, meaning states that don’t require voters to be a registered member of a political party. Because it takes so little to affect the outcome, non- Republicans have a good shot in these districts at what I believe should be their goal – keeping delegates away from Mitt Romney. In fact, Michigan is one such state and some mischief may have contributed to Santorum’s win in the 13th.
On Super Tuesday there are five such districts: Georgia’s 4th and 5th, Ohio’s 11th, Tennessee’s 9th, and Virginia’s 3rd. Virginia is simple. Only Romney and Paul are on the ballot so if you want to take delgates away from Romney, vote for Paul.
In the other districts, the multi-candidate field makes it harder for non-Republicans to figure out how to play it. In the Ohio 11th, Santorum is clearly the guy because he’s polling so far ahead of his opponents; a win for him here takes delegates directly away from Romney. In Georgia 4 and 5, Santorum is probably the right vote at the moment. The winner of each district takes two delegates and the runner-up gets one. Based on current polling, Gingrich should win easily so there’s no point voting for him. The contest is for the one runner-up delegate and Santorum seems a better bet than Paul. Tennessee’s 9th is even more complicated. It takes two-thirds of the vote to win all the delegates. Otherwise, the delegate allocation is winner-take-most; the winner gets two delegates and the runner-up gets one. Santorum seems to be on track for a big win there but without getting to two-thirds. That means second place is where the action is, and the right Romney-denying vote is Gingrich.
A few mischief-making opportunities exist after Super Tuesday too, including Wisconsin’s 4th and Texas’ 9th, 18th, 30th.
The Republicans seemingly didn’t construct this system deliberately. The problem is that they have so few delegates, just 2,287. (The Democrats have almost twice as many delegates to their convention.) That leaves Republicans little room to play around in terms of allocating at the Congressional district level. Whatever the cause, the result is that if one candidate doesn’t blow up, a tiny number of voters and minuscule margins will rule the day. In Michigan Rick Santorum won four districts and eight delegates by a combined 4,800 votes. In coming contests, even smaller numbers and margins could dictate the outcome. As we saw in New York’s 16th and Michigan’s 9th, one Republican vote in the Bronx may be worth 100 times one Republican vote in Bloomfield Hills.