News Agencies Need to Keep up with the Intelligence of their Audience: Why Michigan Should Not Have Been Called for Romney

SANTORUM SCORES MAJOR UPSET, TAKING 8 OF 14 CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS FROM ROMNEY'S HOME TURF.


(What the headlines should read.)

I’m no brilliant political analyst, but the utter ineptitude of the news media in calling Michigan for Romney surpasses all understanding. Victory in Michigan is not founded on popular vote, but on delegate distribution, according to congressional district. Calling Michigan on the basis of the popular vote is like claiming that the baseball team with the most hits won a game, without regard to runs scored. This is not rocket science, and it is akin to counting electoral votes in the general election. One need only to count the votes in each congressional district to determine delegate distribution. But instead, the news media, despite all their expertise and resources, couldn’t sort this out, and ended up falsely declaring Romney the winner based on the meaningless popular vote.

In fact, when Charles Krauthammer was confronted with this reality, he naively replied that the delegate count would not matter, since any difference between Santorum and Romney would only amount to a couple of delegates out of over a thousand necessary to win the election. True enough, but still those two delegates (probably more like 4 or 5 delegates) are nonetheless infinitely more significant than the 2% margin of victory for Romney in the popular vote. What is 30,000 votes out of the millions that will have been cast come convention time? Besides, no statistician will even care to log this number in any ledger at the convention. But the delegate count will be of supreme importance.

 

The congressional districts were evenly split, with 7 for Santorum, and 7 for Romney: 14 delegates each. By any standard of measurement, if this holds, this means that Michigan is tied. Here’s what the map looks like:

Looks like Michigan is Santorum country to me.

Why does it all matter? Mostly because of bragging rights and momentum. The very fact that this race was close at all makes it a win for Santorum anyway. He was outspent 4-1 (perhaps even 6-1), and this was Romney’s native state, his home turf which should have been an easy victory. Prior to Santorum’s surge, the Romney campaign probably projected that $200 in campaign expenditures and a token rally or two would bag this race. The fact that it was a real squeaker does much to make Santorum an obvious viable alternative to Romney. These facts in themselves make Santorum the real winner here, and should give Santorum a pre-Super Tuesday bounce, including an additional financial boon. But the delegate count legitimizes it as a Santorum win. The news media should at least pretend to understand the facts of this, and announce accordingly.

Also underreported is that Arizona has broken GOP rules about delegate distribution. Since it held its primary prior to GOP rules, not only is it penalized by half its normal delegate count, but it cannot be a winner take all state. The Santorum campaign may very well challenge Arizona's winner-take-all delegate allocation, and if GOP rules are followed, a number of delegates will be stripped from Romney and awarded to Santorum (and the other two candidates).

To add insult to injury, the latest news is that Michigan GOP officials met in a midnight, unpublicized session and changed the rules so that the two at large delegates were both awarded to Romney, instead of evenly divided. News on this can be found here: http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/03/01/after-the-fact-romneys-supporters-in-michigan-seemingly-rewrite-the-delegate-rules/