Caucus math is hard. So I made a spreadsheet to deal with it. This is based on the 2004 rules, and can’t deal with every situation. At some point I will probably make a web form to do it.
Interesting thing about caucus math:
There are situations where it will be in your group’s interest to send people to someone else. If you can make a minor candidate viable in your precinct, there is about a good chance that your making them viable will rob your opponent of a delegate instead of you.
I realize this is not exactly Democratic, but it is exactly the kind of crap that I love. 🙂
5 Comments
this happened in my precinct in 1988
The first time I was old enough to vote, I caucused for Illinois Senator Paul Simon. In my precinct only three candidates were viable: Simon, Dukakis and Babbitt. We had the largest group. When people broke into preference groups, it looked like Simon was going to get 3 delegates, Dukakis 2 and Babbitt 1.
The Dukakis and Babbitt people got together and realized that if some people switched fromd Dukakis to Babbitt, it would change the math (Simon was a greater threat to Dukakis than Babbitt).
So even though no one defected from our Simon group, our precinct ended up allocating 2 delegates each to Simon, Dukakis and Babbitt.
I was really mad!
desmoinesdem Thu 1 Mar 10:24 PM
I have seen this backfire too.
At my 2004 caucus, the Kerry people shifted some votes to Edwards, thinking that it would cost Dean a delegate, but they miscounted, and the new Edwards delegate came from Kerry, not Dean.
corncam Fri 2 Mar 10:09 AM
I think I used your spreadsheet in '04
I was a Dean precinct captain. I brought a spreadsheet that the local coordinator (can’t bring his name up right now, tall lanky guy, curly blonde hair, smart as hell) gave me. I had one kid doing head counts of the other groups as I plugged in numbers. It saved us a couple of delegates as we scrambled to deal with the Little Big Horn moment, i.e. where the hell did all those Kerry supporters come from?
Invaluable tool. Don’t nead a laptop either. If you have a PDA with Windows CE you can use it from a handheld.
cman Fri 2 Mar 4:01 PM
Web Form
Eventually I’ll make it with a javascript web form, so it should be usable from any web-enabled cell phone. 🙂
drew-miller Fri 2 Mar 4:41 PM
PHP
Actually PHP would make more sense since I could do it server side. yo.
drew-miller Fri 2 Mar 4:41 PM