Ok, I learned something interesting yesterday and today about my own state's voting system. Here in PA we cast seperate votes for the candidate and the convention delegates. Delegates are selected by Congressional district. For example, my home congressional district (PA-8) is allocated 4 delegates for this years convention. So when I go vote on April 24th, not only will a vote for my choice of President, but I will be picking 4 delegates (out of 14 running)..

Now, I thought the delegates were pledged to vote the way the congressional district voted. However, it turns out I was incorrect about that. It seems that our Presidential primary vote is non-binding. Now as a matter of course, the delegates will usually committ to voting the way their district does but they do not have to. This changes a lot of what I have said above.

Why did I post this here though. Because one of the things I have heard is this will effect Santorum the most here. While he may win the state's popular vote (which I still doubt), he may well not end up with the delegates. The state party establishment is mostly supporting Romney and if the delegates what a future in politics they will follow the party line. Here is an article that discusses that.

What's the point of holding a non-binding primary ?

To undermine democracy?

rickyp wrote:Santorum has double digit leads in polling in Pennsylvania... I think you can count that one safely for Santorum.

Latest Franklin & Marshall poll has Santorum up by only 2 points in PA. That's a 15 pt drop in one month with still about a month to go before the election. Further, we are only just starting to see the campaigns in the last week or so.

Still feel safe about the above claim?

danivon wrote:To undermine democracy?

Perhaps to provide the appearance of democracy while giving up as little power as possible.

arch

Still feel safe about the above claim?

Nope. Especially since most of the polls are only 500 or so respondents.
F&M actually do inperson interviews.... Doesn't say how they garnered their respondents... but it does say they were done on campus That resulted in the following regionality of respondents :
2% Philadelphia
12% Northeast
4% Allegheny
8% Southwest
9% Northwest
41% Central
23% Southeast
Knowing the state as well as you do, is there perhaps a regional bias from this geographic representation?

rickyp wrote:Knowing the state as well as you do, is there perhaps a regional bias from this geographic representation?

Yes. There is the old joke about Pennsylvania being Philadelphia at one end and Pittsburgh at the other and Alabama in the middle. The urban/suburban areas tend to call the central parts of the state Pennsyltucky. The less obnoxious and insult description is usually the "T". The central part of the state up the middle and across the top tends to be more socially conservative then the Phila metro area of the southeast and the Pittsburgh metro area of the southwest.

The "T" area would be more favorable to Santorum while the Metro areas would be more favorable to Romney. So based on the percentages it looks like 62% of those surveyed come from areas that would be more Santorum country and about 37% come from the more socially liberal Metro areas.

I think that might make Santorum's 2 point lead in the state even weaker then it might appear.

Just as an aside, I am not sure how F&M gets there respondents but the school is located in Lancaster County right on the borders of Lancaster City. I believe they are also right down the street (maybe about 10 miles) from the local large mall (Park City Mall). Pack City is a major source of employment for the 3 area colleges (Millersville State University, Elizabethtown College and F&M). So they probably get there respondents from F&M campus and Park City which may explain the possible over sampling of people from the central region (41%) which is greater then the sampling of the more populous metro areas combined (37%)

rickyp wrote:Just wondering how "committed delegates" are enforced at convention.

It's a matter of GOP rules, and I posted them before. Nothing is bound after the first vote. That means if nobody gets 1144 bound delegates, it goes to a second vote, and that's the idea of a brokered convention. Sometimes the first round is a formality--delegates bound to candidates no longer running, etc. But I don't expect that to be the case this time.

If nobody can be declared at 1144, the primary votes mean nothing. It's then about which candidates have the most delegates.

This wasn't what I was asking Guapo. I get the rules on delegates. What I'm asking is how you actually vote at the convention and whether or not commitments are policed or enforced.
I seem to remember, watching a convention that mattered, that each state has its delegates turn in their ballots to their delegation chief, as they sit in the great hall. The ballots are then counted by the chief, who announces them in the state roll call.
If this is so, then even committed delegates could switch their ballots privately.
I remember someone at Humphreys convention switching an expected committed vote from Humphrey to Wallace....
I just wondered how the actual process happens at the convention and how the commitment is actually enforced.

Given that there have been 'dissident' votes in the actual Electoral College for the Presidential elections, which are supposedly totally locked in, I'm not sure we can be sure that committed delegates can be assumed to be guaranteed.

Russell suggests that they may end their political careers for doing it. Not everyone who goes will necessarily see that as a real threat, particularly if the ballots could be private within delegations.