Ron Paul placed fourth in Michigan far beating out Giuliani and Thompson, of course Giuliani continues to focus on Florida. Romney’s win doesn’t count for too much since the Republican’s cut Michigan’s delegates in half for moving the primary too early.
Meanwhile on the Democrat side, Clinton won, though she and Kucinich were about the only ones on the ballot as Obama and Edwards dropped their name from the ballot. Her win means nothing however since Michigan gets no Delegates in the national convention because their primary was held too early.
Up next: Nevada and South Carolina this Saturday. It seems the Republican’s are focusing in on South Carolina while the Democrats are concerned about Nevada and it’s labor unions… Actually, South Carolina isn’t on that date for the Dems anyhow… For the Dems South Carloina and Nevada come without penalty. Nevada is a Caucus state, so it is non-binding for the Republicans, so it goes without penalty, South Carolina is also cut in half of it’s normal. Then Florida on the 29th, which both parties cut it’s delegate’s in half. Feb 1st gives us Main’s caucus on the Republican side. Then Super Tuesday, the 5th at which point most campaigns may end their runs if they don’t do well. A few others come up, then the last one that probably matters is March 4th when Texas and Ohio have their primaries, after that it is a bunch of small states again.
Since the Republican’s are idiots, it is a winner take all situation in most states so the winner of the state overall gets all the delegates, regardless of how each district voted. The Democrat’s who run it closer to a general election in that the winner of each district gets the delegates of that district. Ideally this is how primaries and general elections should be done. The winner of each congressional district gets the delegate/electoral college vote for that district, with the two additional delegates/electoral college votes being for the winner of the state overall. In the case of primaries, when penalizing a state it looses two additional, and then each of the other delegate’s votes count for only 1/2 a vote. The big problem with primaries is how to separate them well enough to get a good representation and not cost too much at the same time. Ideally it should be Idaho, then New Hampshire then perhaps a two or three other states, one of them being Florida, California, New York in rotation, then Super Tuesday, which needs cut down from being as big as it is this year, but would cover the other two super big states, and in general should represent a very good cross section of the United States. Then on with other primaries.