Donald Trump will probably win the Louisiana primary on Saturday, but it’s very unclear how the delegates will get parceled out.
Trump is the heavy favorite there. He leads in the two polls this week by about 20 points. This is too large a gap for Cruz to close through a late surge, turnout operations, or a margin of error.
The first question is whether Rubio will reach the 20-percent threshold for him to win delegates from Louisiana. The second question is how the state party will interpret the rules on delegate allocation.
Let’s take a step back and look at the different ways Louisiana’s GOP parcels out its 46 delegates.
18 Congressional District Delegates
Each of Louisiana’s congressional districts has three delegates. They are awarded proportionally. In this race that will often mean each of Trump, Cruz and Rubio will get one delegate per district.
The way the math works out creates a de facto 16.67 percent threshold per congressional district. Any candidate between 16.67 percent and 50 percent in a district will get one delegate. In many or most districts, this will mean that each of the top three gets one delegate.
If Trump gets above 50 percent in a district, he could two delegates, depending on whether he is further above 50 percent than the third-place candidate is above 16.67 percent. If that’s not confusing enough, in the districts that include partial parishes (counties), there will be guesswork for what the candidates’ delegate counts are in each district.
25 at-large delegates
A candidate can’t get any delegates unless he hits 20 percent statewide. Rubio is currently polling at 15 percent statewide. Can he get enough Carson voters or late-breakers to hit the viability threshold? The difference between 19 percent and 20 percent would be the difference between five delegates for him and zero.
How the rest of the delegates are allocated is ambiguous.
As the detailed “Frontloading” blog explains, the rules say:
Presidential candidates receiving more than 20 percent of the statewide vote on Primary Election Day will be allocated the same proportion, rounded by the Executive Committee, of all 23 at-large delegates and alternate delegates…
That means that if Trump got 45 percent statewide, Cruz got 25 percent statewide, and Rubio got 18 percent statewide, then Trump would get 45 percent of the at-large delegates (11 or 12), Cruz would get 25 percent of the at-large delegates (6 or 7), and nobody else would get any — leaving 30 percent (6 to 8) delegates unallocated.
3 automatic delegates
Party chairman Jason Dore told me there is uncertainty over these three delegates. These are three party officials. Will they be lumped in with the 25-at-large delegates, or will they be free to vote as they wish? Dore said that’s not clear.
Bottom Line
Trump’s best-case scenario (exlcluding the question of the automatic delegates) is this: He gets 50 percent statewide, to Cruz’s 25 percent, and Rubio’s sub-20%. Trump also takes 2 delegates in 4 districts, and gets those three automatic delegates, giving him 13 + 10 = 23 of 46 delegates.
Rubio’s best-case scenario is he gets 20% statewide, and one delegate per district, giving him 5 + 6 = 11 of 46 delegates.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
