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I am not normally a fan of horserace journalism which focuses on things like polling, fundraising, or endorsements at the expense of talking about important issues. However, I am also a number cruncher, and tomorrow is derby day for Connecticut Democrats, so I have created some spreadsheets to try and get a sense at how much support there is likely to be for candidates at the convention.
As a starting point, I received a spreadsheet which lists the delegates, as well as their congressional, state senate, and state house districts. While it might seem that the number of delegates would be the same for these districts, due to a collection of factors, they are not. Based on my calculations, the first district has 408 delegates, the second and third both have 376, the fourth has 333 and the fifth has 334. That means that an endorsement by John Larson may have much more influence than an endorsement by Jim Himes. Likewise, the 24th Senate District only has 38 delegates while the 2nd Senate District has 65. This means that an endorsement by Eric Coleman may have more weight than other State Senators. For that matter the 24th Senate District is represented by a Republican who is about as far from Democratic values as you can get in the State Senate.
To further complicate things, a delegate may find her State Representative endorsing one candidate, her State Senator endorsing another, and her congresswoman endorsing a third candidate. For that matter, the delegate might end up voting based on criteria completely independent of endorsements. |
| With all of that considered, let's look at the races. At the top of the agenda is the U.S. Senate race. I have not kept close track of the endorsements there, since everyone seems to be endorsing Richard Blumenthal, and no one, other than a handful of delegates are endorsing Merrick Alpert. Based on various reports, Alpert is likely to get a couple dozen delegates, but nowhere near enough to qualify for a primary.
In the Governor's, Dan Malloy has racked up an impressive list of endorsements, including Congressman Larson. Delegates who have representatives endorsing Malloy but not Lamont, outnumber delegates who have representatives endorsing Lamont but not Malloy by a factor of two to one. Those delegates account for 43% of all the delegates, while delegates whose representatives support Lamont account for 22%. Based on this, I expect that Malloy will easily get the nomination and Lamont will easily get the 15% delegates necessary for the primary, and there won't be as much excitement in this race as would otherwise be the case.
The bigger concern is if some of Lamont's supporters will vote for Nancy Wyman for Lt. Governor. I have not seen any endorsements in the Lt. Governor's race independent of the Governor's race. If enough supporters of Lamont go for Wyman, it could push Mary Glassman into the position of needing to petition to be on the ballot.
For Attorney General, George Jepsen has picked up quite a list of impressive endorsements, including most recently, Dan Malloy. This dispels a rumor that Malloy might be considering switching to running for Attorney General. With Bysiewicz out of the race, it appears as if Jepsen should win by universal acclaim, barring any surprise last minute developments.
Likewise, the Treasurer's race should be a universal acclaiming for Denise Nappier.
The two most interesting races to watch will be the Secretary of State's race and the Comptroller's race. In the Secretary of State's race, each candidate has been endorsed by their representative in Congress. Jonathon Harris has been endorsed by most of the Senate Democrats and Denise Merrill has been endorsed by most of the House Republicans Democrats. For delegates from the third congressional district, this means they are likely to have three competing endorsements to consider. Factoring out these, it appears as if 19% of the delegates are represented by elected officials who favor Harris. 16% of the delegates are represented by elected officials who favor Merrill, and Garcia only gets 7%. The rest are represented by officials who haven't made endorsements or where the endorsements conflict. A few more of those that are on the fence with Garcia and one of the other candidates support Merrill over Harris, but not enough to be statistically significant. With that, it is likely that both Merrill and Harris will get the 15% necessary to be on a primary ballot. It is less clear if Garcia will meet that criteria.
In the comptroller's race, there are three sets of endorsements to consider. As with the Secretary of State's race, most of the candidates have received the endorsement from that U.S. Representative. The exception is Michael Jarjura, who is likely to get the 49 delegates from Waterbury, and perhaps a few from surrounding towns, but is unlikely to be a significant factor.
Since Kevin Lembo's congressional district has more delegates than Ken Flatto's or Tom Reynolds, this is a slight, but not particularly advantage to Lembo. In addition, Lembo has been endorsed by the current comptroller. Balancing this out, Tom Reynolds has been endorsed by 85 State Representatives. Unfortunately, the portion of his website that listed these representatives was down last night, so I could not retrieve the list and provide detailed analysis.
It appears as if Reynolds and Lembo should both easily qualify to be on the primary ballot, although it is hard to tell at this point who will come out on top. Flatto has a fairly good chance of qualifying to be on the primary ballot, although that depends on how much weight Himes' endorsement will carry compared to the endorsements of Wyman and State Reps.
Anyway you cut it, it will be an interesting horserace tomorrow.
Update: It has been pointed out to me that I mistakenly put Republicans, instead of Democrats when I was describing the Representatives that support Rep. Merrill. I regret the mistake. |
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