The New York Times-20080128-Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates
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Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates
Full Text (1642 words)The presidential campaign is entering a new phase as Democratic and Republican candidates move beyond state-by-state competition and into a potentially protracted scramble for delegates Congressional district by Congressional district.
The shifting terrain is influencing the strategies of candidates from both parties -- though decidedly more so for Democrats -- as they move from early state contests to the coast-to-coast contests on Feb. 5, when 41 percent of Republican delegates and 52 percent of Democratic delegates will be chosen.
It is the first time in over 20 years in which the campaign has turned into a possibly lengthy hunt for delegates, rather than an effort to roll up a string of big-state victories.
This development reflects the competitive races in both parties, with neither a Republican nor a Democrat yet able to claim front-runner status. It has forced the campaigns to master complex delegate-allocation rules as they make a series of critical decisions about how best to allocate campaign resources to produce the greatest return of delegates.
Many of these decisions involve as little as a single delegate.
We are going to compete in all 22 states; you can't ignore states, said David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. But you want to get as many delegates as you can. At the end of the day, this is a delegate contest.
Carl Forti, the political director for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts Republican, said: There's two things going forward at this point. One is momentum; but two, it's about delegates.
For Republicans, this means, for example, turning to approximately 10 heavily Democratic Congressional districts in California where there are relatively few registered Republicans, making it easier, and less expensive, to win a district and its three delegates. Both Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mr. Romney are heading there on Wednesday.
For Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Mr. Obama, it means investing resources -- mailings, telephone banks and candidate visits -- in Congressional districts where there are an odd number of delegates at stake, creating an opportunity to pick up an extra delegate.
Under Democratic rules, two candidates who do well in a Congressional district are likely to end up evenly dividing the delegates; where there is an odd number of delegates, the extra one goes to the candidate who wins more votes.
It's all about the delegates! Mr. Obama said the other day, shouting his words to a crowd of supporters. His itinerary this week includes a visit to California but also to smaller states that his aides said offered opportunities for picking up delegates, whether or not he can win the state itself: Arizona, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.
This new dynamic is not only challenging the way the candidates are approaching the contest, but is also throwing into confusion how the results of these contests should be judged, by the campaigns and by the news media that report on them.
Given Democratic rules, it is entirely possible for one candidate to win a majority of Feb. 5 states, and enjoy the election night ratification that comes with a TV network map displaying the geographic sweep of that person's accomplishment, while his (or her) opponent ends the night with the most delegates.
On the Republican side, it is possible for one of the candidates to win the overall popular vote in California, but end up with fewer delegates than a rival, since most of the delegates are awarded in winner-take-all Congressional district races.
This race requires everyone to sort of throw away their old assumptions and start thinking anew, said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. The important thing to measure on Feb. 5 is where we are in terms of delegates. My guess is one of us will be ahead, but not decisively, and one of us will be behind, but not decisively, and this will go on for some time.
Democrats had a preview of this in the Nevada caucuses when Mrs. Clinton won the actual vote of people who attended the caucuses, but Mr. Obama won 13 delegates to her 12, leaving the two sides squabbling over who had prevailed.
The fight was renewed Sunday when aides to Mrs. Clinton argued that the Florida primary on Tuesday -- in which no delegates are at stake, because the state held its primary earlier than allowed by the Democratic National Committee -- should nonetheless be viewed as a measure of the strength of the candidates.
Mr. Obama's advisers ridiculed the argument, given that the primary is purely a beauty contest.
The possibility of a long-term slog is real for Democrats, given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama appear evenly matched in resources and political talent.
It is less certain on the Republican side, pending the outcome of the party's primary here on Tuesday. Aides to Mr. Romney and to Mr. McCain said they were putting off many crucial decisions, in particular where to go and how to invest resources, based on who wins in Florida.
McCain campaign aides said that if Mr. Romney lost here on Tuesday, it would clear the road for Mr. McCain to win the nomination by traditional rules: sweep enough state contests on Feb. 5 to rally the party around him as the presumptive nominee.
Still, McCain aides said they were making decisions about how to approach Feb. 5 based on what would net them the most delegates, looking first and foremost at a handful of states where the winner gets all the delegates, either statewide or district by district.
It's triage, said Rick Davis, campaign manager for Mr. McCain. But winner-take-all states have got to be the top priority. The cost per delegate is so much lower.
For Democrats, 2,025 delegates are needed to win; for Republicans, the number is 1,191.
The sheer number of states in play -- indeed, the sheer number of Congressional districts in play -- has presented an extraordinary tactical challenge to these candidates at a time when they are running low on resources. It is prohibitively expensive to poll in all these states and districts to determine where to spend money. It is also prohibitive to run voter identification operations or advertise everywhere a candidate might be competitive.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton and to Mr. Obama said they had tried to compensate for that by building models, based on past voting history and even consumer data, to pinpoint Congressional districts where voters would seem particularly open to their candidate.
Beyond that, the delegate rules for Democrats and for Republicans are different and, within each party, often vary from state to state. For example, the Republicans have some states where the statewide winner gets all the delegates, providing an obvious target for a candidate who might seem strong there. Among them are Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Utah.
But there are other states where the delegates are allocated by Congressional district, sometimes winner-take-all, and sometimes proportionally.
By contrast, Democrats eliminated the so-called winner-take-all rules. Instead, delegates are allocated depending on the percentage of vote each candidate gets in a Congressional district, under very expansive rules that, generally speaking, mean the candidates divide the trove evenly assuming they get more than 30 percent of the vote. There are also some delegates allocated statewide, again proportionately.
That rule, aides to both campaigns said, has the effect in a race that seems so closely matched of making it extremely hard for anyone to pull far ahead.
It's going to be really hard -- I'm not saying it's impossible -- it's going to be very difficult for someone to pull out way ahead in a delegate count, said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant and an expert on his party's nominating rules. If you have two candidates who are getting 30 percent of the vote, and that is the scenario that is developing now, they are going to pretty much split the delegates.
Republican rules reward bonus delegates to states with a Republican voting history. This means that it might make more sense to invest time in Missouri than the more populous larger state of New Jersey; there are more delegates to be won in Missouri because it voted Republican in the 2004 presidential race, and it is a much cheaper place to campaign.
By contrast, someone like Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who has long argued he would win by a slow accumulation of delegates, has banked on winner-take-all rules helping him sweep up large number of delegates in states like New York, New Jersey and Delaware. That said, his viability in those states will to no small extent be determined by how well he does here Tuesday.
[Illustration]PHOTOS: TENNESSEE: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton visiting a church. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. A1); GEORGIA: Senator Barack Obama during a flight to Alabama (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. A1); FLORIDA: Rudolph W. Giuliani at a synagogue in Boca Raton. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP LITHERLAND FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. A1); FLORIDA: Mitt Romney at a youth center event in Sweetwater. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. A1)CHART: CHOOSING DELEGATES ON SUPER TUESDAY: The voting on Super Tuesday has been called a national primary, but the rules for selecting delegates vary widely from state to state. Some are chosen by caucus, others by primary. Some are chosen in proportion to the percentage of the vote each candidate gets, some by a winner-take-all system.; The following chart shows how many delegates are at stake in each state, how many are apportioned statewide or by district, and how many are unpledged, not committed to any candidate on the first ballot of the convention. (Sources: Republican National Committee; Democratic National Committee; The Green Pape) Chart showing the selection of delegates and how the process varies from state to state.