Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Some GOP candidates already have 2012 delegates in their column

I came across this interesting site that is keeping track of Super/Automatic delegates for each GOP candidate.

What is a super or automatic delegate?

They are uncommitted delegates usually made up of current or former party officials that are not committed to any particular candidate. Each state and American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands all have three super delegates (by my count, 56 x 3 =168 total Automatic delegates). All other delegates are awarded by states to candidates based on who wins a particular states primary or caucus.

Why could these delegates be important?

If it is a long and drawn out primary, where candidates are fairly close on the delegate count of delegates they have won in primaries and caucuses, these automatic delegates could play an important roll because they vote for who ever they want.

According to the site Democratic Convention Watch, Romney already has 10, Perry and Santorum have 1 each.

Here is the list at this point. These automatic delegates have been informally awarded based on their official endorsement of a particular candidate. So I guess it is assumed, come the convention, they will vote for that person

Mitt Romney:

Richard Bennett ME
Jan Staples ME
Louis Pope MD
Joyce Terhes MD
Ron Kaufman MA
Holly Hughes MI
Saul Anuzis MI
Zori Fonalledas PR
Joseph Trillo RI
Betsy Werronen DC

Rick Perry:


Henry Barbour MS

Rick Santorum:

Kim Lehman IA

You can see the super delegate by state HERE.


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think that they are awarded based on their endorsements. I think they are chosen based on their position in the party. If I remember correctly, most are state party chairs, co-chairs, and RNC representatives. Some of them may stay with a particular candidate regardless of anything else, but most will probably vote for the winner of their states or someone who at least came close to winning. Of course, if we get down to counting individual delegates, each vote may be important.

Ben said...

"I don't think that they are awarded based on their endorsements."

This post doesn't say that.

The RNC gives these out to each state and territory. They go to party officials who are not bound to vote for anyone other than who they please.

Revolution 2012 said...

I hope this is intentional on Romney's part.

While the others sleep, He's already getting delegates behind him.