The GOP is all about denying Donald Trump a majority of delegates right now, and the next voting day (Saturday, March 5) may very well be the best day of the calendar for that goal. Four states are voting—Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine—and none has the sort of rules that have allowed Donald Trump (and Ted Cruz in Texas) to lead the way in accumulating delegates so far. In fact, a few states have quirks that are likely to flatten the delegate count considerably.
Let’s review what makes March 5 a day of potential flattening. As always, The Green Papers have provided invaluable help in parsing through the nuances of each state’s rules.
District proportionality: KS (12 district delegates), LA (18 district delegates)
Kansas and Louisiana allocate some of their delegates according to the result in each congressional district; each district distributes 3 delegates. But neither state follows the example of those that allocate those on a winner-take-all basis (in SC, the winner in each district received all 3 delegates) or a winner-take-most basis (in AL, AR, GA, TN, TX, the district’s winner gets 2 delegates, and the runner-up gets 1). Instead, they allocate district delegates proportionally.
What this means is that a candidate needs to receive more than half of the vote in order to get two delegates from a district—a very difficult threshold, though one we cannot rule out entirely. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent, then a district’s delegates will be split 1-1-1 between the top 3 candidates, no matter the margins between them.
Oklahoma used this rule on Super Tuesday. As a result, the state’s 15 district delegates were allocated evenly between Trump, Rubio, and Cruz: 5 delegates each. Minnesota used this method as well, but here Rubio managed to receive 2 delegates from districts around the Twin Cities because he received more than half of the qualified vote (i.e. the total vote received by candidate who crossed the state’s 10 percent viability threshold.)
Update/Correction: Kansas uses different rounding rules than Minnesota or Oklahoma did, and as a result it is not at all as hard for a candidate to get 2 delegates from a district. The Kansas rule, according to the GreenPapers, is that the remainders during the calculation of the proportional allocation be rounded up (to the next whole number), starting with the district’s winner. As a result, it would only take a district’s winner receiving a third of the district’s qualified vote (rather than 50% as in Oklahoma and Minnesota) to receive 2 out of 3 delegates.
uncommitted delegates? LA (28 at-large delegates)
Louisiana distributes its 28 at-large delegates on a proportional basis with a 20 percent threshold. In most other states, the delegates are allocated based on the share of the qualified vote a candidate gets, the share of the vote among only viable candidates. What this effectively means is that the delegates that unviable candidates would have received are split among the viable candidates.
But Louisiana does not do this. It allocates delegates to viable candidates based on their share of the total vote; and then it leaves the delegates that unviable candidates would have won uncommitted.
So there will be no repeat of a scenario like Alabama’s, where Trump got 69 percent of at-large delegates because only he and Cruz crossed the 20 percent viability threshold; or Texas’s, where Cruz got 64 percent of at-large delegates for the same reason.
Instead, if one or more of Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich fail to reach 20 percent, it would (1) not boost Trump’s delegate totals whatsoever, and (2) it would leave the delegates they would have won uncommitted.
Statewide proportionality: KS (28 at-large delegates), KY (46), ME (23)
Kansas, Kentucky, and Maine allocate their at-large delegates (in Kentucky and Maine’s case, that’s all of them) proportionally on a statewide basis. They all use relatively low thresholds, however: 10 percent in Maine and Kansas, 5 percent in Kentucky.
This doesn’t guarantee a flattened distribution, it just means that a candidate needs to actually get close to 50 percent of the vote to get close to 50 percent of delegates. (Trump was able to that so in Massachusetts, where he received 49 percent of the vote and therefore 22 of 42 delegates despite the state’s 5 percent viability threshold.)
One last wrinkle: A candidate gets all of Maine’s delegates if they receive more than half of the votes. Can Trump meet that threshold? His Massachusetts total and Governor Paul LePage’s endorsement suggest that he could; but it will be hard given that Maine’s vote is a closed caucus.
And coming up on Sunday (March): Puerto Rico (23 delegates)
Puerto Rico is voting Sunday to distribute its 23 delegates proportionally. There is a 20 percent threshold—but the more interesting number to watch for could be 50 percent: If a candidate gets more than half of the vote, they get all delegates. In 2008, John McCain received 90 percent of the vote; in 2012, Mitt Romney received 82 percent of the vote.
You can follow the state-by-state delegate breakdown from states that have already voted, and from these upcoming states as the results come in, here.