Wyoming's GOP Delegate Selection Process

[TheCalvinator24]

Most convoluted I know of.

What happened today is that 12 of the 23 counties selected a Delegate to the national convention. The other 11 (plus one of the 12 above) chose an Alternate to the convention.

Laramie County, which is not where Laramie is located, rather Cheyenne, gets to select a Delegate and Alternate each Presidential year. The other 22 counties are paired up and alternate cycles. For example, Natrona County (where I live now) is paired with Albany County (which is where Laramie is). 4 years ago, Natrona selected a Delegate, and Albany selected an Alternate. This year, that is flipped. That's why Natrona County in the graphic above is shown as going to Rubio, despite the fact that nobody supporting Rubio even ran to serve as our Alternate.

Today, the 12 Delegates and 12 Alternates allotted to the Counties were selected. The state convention next month will select 14 at large Delegates to go with the 3 "super delegates" (Governor and RNC Committeeman and Committeewoman). The state convention will also select 17 additional Alternates.

I was selected as a Delegate to the Wyoming Republican State Convention, and I am hoping to be selected to attend the Republican National Convention as a Delegate.

[silverscreenselect]

How does Wyoming, which is the smallest state in terms of population, get so many delegates? Ohio, which has nearly 20 times the population, only gets a little more than twice the number of delegates.

[MarleysGh0st]

I was selected as a Delegate to the Wyoming Republican State Convention, and I am hoping to be selected to attend the Republican National Convention as a Delegate.

Congratulations! That's impressive, given that you've just recently moved to Wyoming.

[geoffil]

Congrats! Very exciting.

[SportsFan68]

How's life in the bakery business? Will you take the Wyoming bar?

[Spock]

How does Wyoming, which is the smallest state in terms of population, get so many delegates? Ohio, which has nearly 20 times the population, only gets a little more than twice the number of delegates.

Just an absolute total guess here-but the state totals may be weighted to reward historical voting pattern-maybe, how they voted in the last couple of elections or so.

[TheCalvinator24]

How does Wyoming, which is the smallest state in terms of population, get so many delegates? Ohio, which has nearly 20 times the population, only gets a little more than twice the number of delegates.

Some is based on hoe heavily a state voted Republican in the prior Presidential election.

Also, Bonus delegates are awarded for having a Republican Governor, both houses of the state legislature controlled by GOP, and entire Congress/Senate delegation being GOP.

[TheCalvinator24]

How's life in the bakery business? Will you take the Wyoming bar?

We didn't buy the bakery. That was back in 2012-13, but the bank wouldn't do the financing a way I was willing to take on.

I was admitted to the Wyoming Bar in December last year. I'm still looking for employment.

[silverscreenselect]

I was admitted to the Wyoming Bar in December last year. I'm still looking for employment.

Being a delegate to the convention has to be a plus in terms of potential employment. Good luck on getting to the national convention.

If Trump doesn't have this wrapped up by the time of the national convention, I've read that it may boil down to old fashioned politicking of the individual delegates, many of whom may be bound to a candidate for one (or more) ballots but don't necessarily support that person.

Has there been any vetting of potential delegates to see if they will really stick with their candidate or if they may bolt? (I'm not trying to find out your personal preferences or intentions. I'm just curious what the process in general might be.) The longer this race goes on, the more likely such a scenario becomes.

[Jeemie]

I was admitted to the Wyoming Bar in December last year. I'm still looking for employment.

Being a delegate to the convention has to be a plus in terms of potential employment. Good luck on getting to the national convention.

If Trump doesn't have this wrapped up by the time of the national convention, I've read that it may boil down to old fashioned politicking of the individual delegates, many of whom may be bound to a candidate for one (or more) ballots but don't necessarily support that person.

Has there been any vetting of potential delegates to see if they will really stick with their candidate or if they may bolt? (I'm not trying to find out your personal preferences or intentions. I'm just curious what the process in general might be.) The longer this race goes on, the more likely such a scenario becomes.

If Trump can take Florida or Ohio, he's going to be hard to stop. And he's leading big in Florida, and the last polls I saw only had him down five in Ohio. And I, personally, think left-wingers are idiots- I think disrupting Trump's protests are helping no one but Trump. He should be ignored like the bad joke that he is...but left wingers can't help but keep taking the bait.

If he takes both, he almost certainly gets to 1,237.

[jarnon]

And I, personally, think left-wingers are idiots- I think disrupting Trump's protests are helping no one but Trump. He should be ignored like the bad joke that he is...but left wingers can't help but keep taking the bait.

Maybe the left-wingers want Trump to be the Republican nominee.

[silverscreenselect]

And I, personally, think left-wingers are idiots- I think disrupting Trump's protests are helping no one but Trump. He should be ignored like the bad joke that he is...but left wingers can't help but keep taking the bait.

Maybe the left-wingers want Trump to be the Republican nominee.

While a lot of left-wingers may well want Trump to be the Republican nominee, this is Bernie Sanders supporters doing this disruption, and they don't realize they are playing right into the Republican talking points in the general election. When I look at Bernie Sanders, I see the second coming of George McGovern. Like Sanders, McGovern was a decent, honorable, sincere, principled man who largely ran on a single issue in which he truly believed. He had a lot of enthusiastic supporters among the young (this was the first time 18-year-olds could vote in most of the country) and the liberal celebrity crowd. He got the Democratic nomination against other candidates who either were revealed to have a lot of baggage or, like Hubert Humphrey, were tied to LBJ, a politician the young despised because of Vietnam.

McGovern got the nomination and proved woefully weak as a general election candidate and got torn to bits by Richard Nixon. There wasn't an internet, but there were lots of right-wing newspaper columnists who called McGovern the candidate of "amnesty, abortion, and acid" and the label stuck.

Sanders polls well right now because Hillary won't go after him on a number of issues and certainly isn't going to bring up the issue of socialism. And so far the Republicans haven't for the same reason they hadn't gone after Obama in the early stages of 2008. But the Republicans will turn their attention more and more to Bernie, and who knows how many other gotcha videos there are of Sanders making statements that can be spun as outlandish. He won't be able to bring the election around to his issues because he'll be on the defensive the entire time about being a pinko commie socialist Fidel- and ISIS-lover. And if his supporters pull disruptive stunts, that's going to make things a lot worse. They can't win by disrupting a hundred Trump rallies, because Trump can just go into a TV studio or radio booth and get somebody like Sean Hannity to feed him powder puff questions to enhance his talking points.

[TheCalvinator24]

I was admitted to the Wyoming Bar in December last year. I'm still looking for employment.

Being a delegate to the convention has to be a plus in terms of potential employment. Good luck on getting to the national convention.

If Trump doesn't have this wrapped up by the time of the national convention, I've read that it may boil down to old fashioned politicking of the individual delegates, many of whom may be bound to a candidate for one (or more) ballots but don't necessarily support that person.

Has there been any vetting of potential delegates to see if they will really stick with their candidate or if they may bolt? (I'm not trying to find out your personal preferences or intentions. I'm just curious what the process in general might be.) The longer this race goes on, the more likely such a scenario becomes.

If Trump can take Florida or Ohio, he's going to be hard to stop. And he's leading big in Florida, and the last polls I saw only had him down five in Ohio. And I, personally, think left-wingers are idiots- I think disrupting Trump's protests are helping no one but Trump. He should be ignored like the bad joke that he is...but left wingers can't help but keep taking the bait.

If he takes both, he almost certainly gets to 1,237.

The potential upside if Trump were to win both would be that it should clear the field to get us to Trump-Cruz head-to-head. There are still enough delegates available after today for Ted not only to get ahead of Trump but to reach 1237 himself.

However, I agree with you that if Trump wins both, that hill to climb is mighty, mighty steep.