Much has been written (much less has been understood) about the West Virginia GOP's new convention format for selecting at-large national convention delegates. I won't try to explain the entire process right now, but basically each county (based upon a formula) is allocated a certain number of delegates to the state convention. Those delegates to the state convention, in turn, will meet in Charleston on Tuesday, February 5, 2008 to cast votes for one of the 10 Republican candidates that have elected to participate. The winning campaign will then name 18 individuals to serve as West Virginia's at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention.
For purposes of this post, the important thing to understand about the state convention is that victory will go to the candidate best able to mobilize and turnout its supporters. Fund raising doesn't matter. National polls matter even less.
The winning candidate will identify the number of "public" delegates available to each county, and will find (through e-mail lists, coalition groups, or other networks) enough people to fill those slots. There will likely only be a handful of counties where there are competitive elections in the races for Delegate to the State Convention; in most of the counties, anyone who files to be a delegate will likely be a delegate. In that scenario, whichever campaign recruits delegates to file for the state convention can just rack up those votes. The very serious campaigns will even consider paying the $25 filing fee for their people to run.
In addition, I suspect that most counties will end up forgoing the county caucus process and select county "public" delegates strictly online. In this way, the Ron Paul campaign may have an advantage. It is becoming a recurring storyline through the campaign how Ron Paul is a phenomenon on the Internet; he has a network of very dedicated followers who flood message boards and online polls. If he has enough people in the state to put up some delegates (which is a monumental "if"), I would suspect that he also has enough people to show a significant online presence for purposes of voting.
I have a feeling that we'll have a good idea who will be the winner of this convention on November 30. That's the last date to register to run for delegate, and its the last day to register to vote online. In counties where there is no county caucus (which will likely be most counties), that's the end of the game.
We might just see that this new experiment has provided a golden opportunity for a dark horse.
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