The New Republic

With former senator Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential
race, Republicans now have at least three candidates who could have
the money and votes to compete, if necessary, through the end of
the primary process. And they might have to do so. In fact, when
the Republicans meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September 2008 to
choose their nominee, they might be looking at a brokered
convention.Of course, dire prognostications of brokered conventions are made
nearly every election, and the GOP has had multiple strong
candidates before--in 1980, for instance, in 1988, and even in
2000. But the structure of the election has changed this year. The
old schedule of primaries and caucuses was designed to winnow the
field. Invariably, only two candidates were left standing by March,
one of whom would eventually capture enough delegates through the
remaining contests to win the nomination. By contrast, the 2008
schedule concentrates more than half of the primary and caucus
votes in the first month, which ends February 5. If there is no
clear frontrunner by then, the race will probably continue on into
June and perhaps even up until the convention.

According to current estimates, Republicans will send 2,517
delegates to the September convention. By the time polls close on
February 5, 1,358 of them will have been selected from states that
include not only old standbys Iowa, New Hampshire, and South
Carolina, but also mega-states California, New York, Florida, New
Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois.

Front-loading large Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western states
like this will probably benefit the current front-runner, moderate
Rudy Giuliani. But GOP convention rules that benefit more
conservative states will aid his opponents, thus encouraging
stalemate. Next year, the Minneapolis convention will grant
additional delegates to states that voted for the Republican
presidential nominee in the last election; states that have elected
Republican senators, representatives, and governors; and states
that have Republican legislatures. This system will increase the
influence of Southern and prairie states at the expense of more
liberal states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. New Hampshire,
for instance, which went "blue" in 2006, will send eight fewer
delegates to the 2008 convention than it sent to the 2004
convention.

Using state polls, I tried to estimate how the leading candidates
would do in the 24 states that are scheduled to hold primaries or
caucuses through February 5. If I couldn't find polls from late
August or early September, I gave Thompson, who has risen recently
in national polling and should maintain his standing, a boost in
the polls. I also assumed that former Massachusetts governor Mitt
Romney would get at least a slight bump from winning the Iowa
caucus and New Hampshire primary. When I couldn't decide who would
prevail in a winner-take-all primary, I allocated the delegates
equally between the two leading candidates. Where polls did not
exist, or were too old to be trustworthy, I made assumptions about
the regional strength of the candidates: Romney can be expected to
do well in New England and the Mormon West; Thompson in the South;
and Giuliani in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states.

This methodology produced the following results: After February 5,
Giuliani would be in the lead with 459 delegates, followed by
Thompson with 380, Romney with 300, Senator John McCain with 131,
and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee with 33. I wouldn't put
any stock in these specific numbers, but, even if the order is
wrong--say Thompson or Romney are on top, or McCain makes a
miraculous comeback--it is unlikely that any of the candidates will
amass a significantly larger lead than the one I estimated for
Giuliani. What, then, are the front-runner's chances of winning the
nomination by June, when the primaries and caucuses end?

To convert this (hypothesized) advantage into the nomination,
Giuliani would have to win 800 of the remaining 1,159 delegates.
Unless one of his main rivals drops out after February 5, that
would be extremely difficult. Many of the states friendliest to
Giuliani, like New York and New Jersey, vote in the first round of
primaries and caucuses. Of the remaining large states, only
Pennsylvania seems to clearly favor the former New York mayor. The
New England states, including Massachusetts, should go to Romney;
and the Southern states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Virginia, should favor Thompson. None of the candidates currently
has an advantage in Texas. So there is a very good chance that, by
June, none of the Republican candidates will have secured the
nomination.

Normally, a strong party chairman, the White House, or congressional
leaders would force lagging candidates to drop out in favor of the
frontrunner. But, with Karl Rove back in Texas and his own
presidency in the doldrums, George W. Bush doesn't have that kind
of clout. Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez, who
is seen as Bush's man, is a lightweight in party circles. And, in
both the House and Senate, the GOP is in disarray. Moreover, neither
Romney nor Giuliani nor Thompson currently holds office, and none
has close bonds with the current leadership in Washington, reducing
the party's ability to pressure them.

If these three candidates remain standing after June, the struggle
for the nomination would probably move to the GOP convention's
rules committee. To prevent states from racing to hold the first
presidential contest, the Republican Party banned any state from
holding a primary before February 5. It is now threatening to
disqualify some or all of the delegates from states that failed to
heed that decision, including New Hampshire and Florida, which
currently plan to vote on January 22 and January 29, respectively.
Obviously, that could significantly affect the delegate counts.

The nomination battle would then shift to the convention itself. In
the Republican Party, each state makes its own delegate rules. A
few states, like New York, do not require delegates to vote for the
candidate that won the primary; they are "unbound." Most states
require delegates to heed the voters' choice, but only on the first
ballot. After that, they are up for grabs. In addition, when a
candidate drops out, his delegates become free agents. Watching
candidates scrambling for delegates or trying to mau-mau the rules
committee, as happened at the 1976 Republican convention, can make
for exciting television; but the strife could pose difficulties for
a party that wants to use its convention to showcase its nominee. A
protracted nomination battle could also sow discord within the
party itself and squander funds that the candidates might want to
use later.

Democrats seem far less likely to face this sort of challenge next
year. Indeed, Hillary Clinton appears to be putting her competition
behind her, and none of her challengers has a built-in regional
advantage that will ensure a respectable block of delegates. Barack
Obama can probably count on Illinois, but nowhere else. And John
Edwards may not even be able to win the Carolinas.

In fact, the compressed primary schedule could make a stalemate less
rather than more likely for Democrats. In the past, a long-shot
candidate (like Jimmy Carter in 1976) could concentrate on the Iowa
caucus and then use a victory there to raise his profile and to
gather the money necessary to compete in the big states down the
road. But now there probably won't be enough time between Iowa and
the ensuing primaries for a candidate like Edwards, who is focusing
on Iowa, to pick up sufficient momentum and money to carry him
through the mega- state primaries to come.

Obama, for all his celebrity, is still a junior senator who will be
pressured to bow out by his home-state Democrats and colleagues in
Washington if he doesn't look sufficiently competitive after
February 5. And, unless the Democratic electorate shifts
significantly in the next few months, he won't. All of which means
that, while Republicans become ever more fractious as the general
election approaches, Democrats will have already spent months
coalescing around a new leader.

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