The Georgia Republican Party is trying its hand again in allocating delegates proportionally. We’ve been a winner-take-all state for a while, but that changed with the ’12 election since everyone wanted to move their elections earlier and earlier. The RNC put the brakes on that and drew a line in the sand to say if a state holds its presidential preference primary election before a certain date that the state’s GOP has to allocate delegates proportionally (of course, this doesn’t apply to South Carolina). We allocate our delegates proportionally, but a very popular candidate could potentially make a clean sweep of Georgia’s delegates.
GAGOP General Counsel Anne Lewis typed up a good little summary for the AP explaining how the GAGOP will allocate delegates. Here’s the breakdown:
- Georgia has 76 total delegates to the Republican National Convention. 42 of those delegates are chosen at the congressional district conventions in April. The remaining 34 are at-large and chosen at the state convention in June.
- Congressional Districts are separate from the at-large delegates. Each congressional district gets 3 delegates and 3 alternates. Their allocations are based upon the winner in each of Georgia’s 14 congressional district.
- For Congressional districts: If one candidate receives a simple majority (50% + 1) in a congressional district, they will all three delegates (and matching alternates). If no one receives a majority, the person who receives the most votes in a district will win 2 of that district’s delegates. The runner-up will receive the remaining delegate (alternates are paired up with the delegates).
- If a candidate receives a majority (50% + 1) of the vote statewide, that candidate will win all of the statewide at-large delegates
- There is a 20% floor for a candidate to being included in the allocation of at-large delegates. Examples of allocations can be seen in Anne’s write-up linked above.
- Each of the at-large delegates will be paired with an alternate except for the state chairman, national committeman, and national committee woman. Those three don’t receive alternates, so there will only be 31 at-large alternates.
- Speaking of the state chairman, national committeeman, and national committeewoman, they will be the first to be allocated to the winner of the at-large delegates.
She mentions the different thresholds (e.g., no one receives 20%, it drops to 15%, if not 15%, then 10%), but looking at the latest polling, that doesn’t appear to be an issue. Could one person run away with the state? It’s a possibility, but I don’t think one candidate will win the entirety of Georgia tonight. My friend and fellow District Chairman Joseph Brannan (GA-02) ran a hypothetical scenario of how Georgia could go tonight using poll averages from RealClearPolitics.
You have until 7p to vote. We’ll see how the chips fall after the polls close.