Serious talk about a brokered convention
Brokered convention
The Republican party would be signing a suicide
note if there is a brokered convention
The brokered convention. It’s sort
of the white whale of politics. Exciting,
extremely rare, and honestly, pretty unlikely
to happen.
But whether it happens or not, understanding
how it works is key to understanding the primaries.
A brokered convention happens when one candidate
fails to get support from more than half the
delegates in the convention’s first round
of voting.
Right now, the candidates are crisscrossing
the country in the hopes of winning a bunch
of state primaries.
Because those victories translate into more
delegates at the party convention.
For example, take Iowa. The winner of the
caucuses there gets more Iowa delegates the
bigger their margin of victory
And even candidates who don’t come in first
place in Iowa can still get a share of the
state’s delegates.
But take Florida. The winner of that primary
gets all of that state’s delegates...no
sharing required.
Once the delegates from all the different
states have been counted up, we could have
a situation where no one candidate has 51
percent majority. Then we’d have a brokered
convention.
Neither party has had a brokered convention
in decades. But here's an example of how it
played out in the past, for Republicans in
1948
In the first round of voting, Thomas Dewey
got the biggest share...but he was still short
of a majority.
Dewey’s supporters went to the delegates
who had supported other candidates in the
last round and basically said
Why don’t you join the winning team and
vote for Dewey?”
It worked. By the third round of voting, Dewey
clinched the nomination.
In recent years, there haven’t been many
surprises at conventions because so many primaries
are early in the year. That means the winners
get momentum early, the losers drop out, their
delegates pledge to other candidates, and
the need for a convention fight goes away.
But this year really is different. The possibility
of Trump or Cruz as a republican nominee is
scaring the hell out of the republican establishment,
who know both of those candidates are unlikely
to win in the general election.
But with Trump and Cruz polling so strong,
a divided convention might be the only hope
for an establishment candidate like Rubio,
or Kasich.
So who knows? Maybe this year, the myth will
become reality. If that happens, we'll definitely
be there.
