The Republican Primaries

I blogged on the Democratic race yesterday, so here's how the Republican race is shaping up.

To win the Republican Party’s nomination for to run for President, a candidate must receive a simple majority (1,191) of the party’s 2,380 delegates to its National Convention.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) allocates delegates to the 50 US States as well as the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the United States Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Delegates are awarded to states in the following manner:

3 for each congressional district
10 additional delegates for the state (regardless of population)
3 party delegates (2 RNC delegates and the chairman of the state-level Rep party)

States also get bonus delegates for:

having Republican Senators/ Governors of the state
sending a majority of Republican Representatives to Congress
maintaining partial/ total Republican control of he state
casting a majority of their 2004 electoral vote for George W. Bush

With no mandate to use a proportional system of allocating delegates to candidates depending on their vote level, some states give all their delegates to the winner in the state or congressional district while others do use a proportional system.

In similar fashion to the Democratic race, the Republican Party punished states for bringing forward their primaries before Super Tuesday. It did not punish Iowa (3 Jan) or Wyoming (5 Jan – convention) as their delegates will not be chosen prior to 5 Feb. New Hampshire (8 Jan), Michigan (15 Jan), South Carolina (19 Jan) and Florida (29 Jan) have been punished by halving their delegation to the Convention.

Some 21 states go to the polls on 5 Feb, with a total of 1,081 delegates to be pledged by the end of the day. Following this quasi-national primary, we should have a fair idea of who the Republican nomination for President will be.

Similar to the Democratic contest, if no candidate makes it over the threshold after the primaries, what is known as a “brokered convention” will occur, where the party will attempt to thrash out a deal between candidates and emerge with a single person to nominate at the end of the event.

Here’s how it looks so far, with seven candidates (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson) remaining in the race:

3 Jan: Iowa – Huckabee 30, Romney 7
5 Jan: Wyoming – Romney 8, Thompson 3, Hunter 1
8 Jan: N.Hampshire – McCain 7, Romney 4, Huckabee 1
15 Jan: Michigan – Romney 23, McCain 6, Huckabee 1
19 Jan: Nevada – Romney 17, Paul 4, McCain 4, Huckabee 2, Thompson 2, Giuliani 1, Hunter 1
19 Jan: South Carolina – McCain 19, Huckabee 5

Which leaves the Republican race finely poised:

Mitt Romney – 59
Mike Huckabee – 39
John McCain – 36
Fred Thompson – 5
Ron Paul – 4
Duncan Hunter – 2
Rudy Giuliani – 1