Who would be picked in a contested convention?

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It's hard to sift through the mainstream news to find real information about this. So, if Trump doesn't win 60% of the remaining delegates, he won't get the required delegate count. Ted Cruz has to win 88% of the remaining delegates, so that's not going to happen. Kasich needs 125%, so that's impossible.

I keep hearing Paul Ryan's name thrown around, but right now, isn't he in the Number Three spot? Data on the USS Enterprise, if you will? Wouldn't he already have a good shot at the presidency later on? If he tries for it now and fails (likely, since he would be jumping in late), he would have the taint of failure on him.

Romney has been trying, but no one would vote for him and I'm sure the GOP knows that.

So who would be another possible pick? Does anyone know about this?

Naturally, everything I say here is strictly my own opinion.

Demographics show that ethnic minority voters are increasing at the rate of about 0.5% per year. Another way to put that is that every 4-year presidential cycle minority voters increase 2%. Demographers expect minorities to become the majority population in the US by the 2040s.

So the Republicans are going to have an increasingly difficult time winning the presidency due to their attitude against minorities and any nominee, even a rational one, will be burdened by that attitude. A good example of how this is functioning in practice is the 2012 presidential election which pundits claimed at the time would be an extremely close race but wound up being 53-47 in Obama's favor. I'm guessing that this time because of the new 2% that it will be 54-46 or 55-45 in favor of the Democrats no matter who the Republicans put up. In 2020 the Democratic nominee's margin should increase further.

The only ways that I see for the Republicans to win the presidency in the future is if (a) the Democratic Party fractures internally or if (b) the Republicans do a magnificent job of boosting their image with minority voters. Neither option seems likely in the near future, but who knows?

As for the current presidential election, as the result of the demographic change I've mentioned I think it's a done deal and whoever wins the Democratic nomination is going to win the presidency. Consequently, the only relevance that the Republican nomination has is simply to keep the GOP from collapsing. So if preserving the GOP is the priority for the delegates then it could be Romney after all, or Ryan or any other figure. But the likelihood is that if Trump doesn't win the nomination outright, that some of his delegates will switch to Cruz and if there's enough of them, that could get Cruz the nomination on the second ballot. If not, it's going to be pretty wide open and almost any GOP stalwart nearing the end of his political career could be the GOP's sacrificial lamb in the same way that Adlai Stevenson was the Democrat's sacrificial lamb against an unbeatable Eisenhower back in the 50s. Just my 20 cents (adjusted for inflation).

The only thing I have heard is Paul Ryan or Kasich. They don't want Trump. The problem will be if Trump isn't the nomination and he runs on his own and the same for Cruz - both have said they will not stand behind the nomination if it is not them. If they pick someone that isn't Trump or Cruz, this will be the first year that I will not be voting. I don't understand this contested convention stuff, but I don't see the fairness of nominating someone who isn't even running. The People are speaking of who they want - it's not Kasich and it's definitely not Ryan. It should be very interesting.

Sanders is also wanting a contested convention which if the guy can't win the normal way, why does he think that HE should be the nomination? I just don't get it . I think it should be whoever has the most votes.

And I don't understand this delegate crap - how can delegates switch back and forth between candidates? Can someone explain this to me?

Ohh...I had not known about several of these points you just made. Thank you for the information.

Yeah it kind of looks like whoever gets it will be a throwaway candidate, which is kind of what I think Romney was. I used to work for someone who did a Mormon mission with him when they were both young men. The person I worked for was very Romney-esque- silly, awkward, kind, but an uninformed authority about everything on which he spoke. So I wasn't surprised when Romney's personality turned out to be like that as well.

I wonder why Kasich hasn't done better than he has. He seems likable and his policies are pretty standard Republican. I would think more people would be in his camp.

Core Republican voters are now a permanent minority. The only way for them to score victories is to attract the Independent Voters (voters not bound to a political party). Independents + Republicans > Democrats.

The Independents also are very involved in elections. They get out and vote. The number of Independent voters increase every year because the major parties have both done a bang up job of screwing the Middle Class.

Susan Martinez would be a good pick.

Female + Hispanic

.. or maybe Trump chooses her as his VP

Trump's delegates only have to vote for him in the first round of voting, then they can vote for whoever.

The party bosses hand-pick these delegates, and they are selectively picking ones that hate Trump, so in the event of a contested convention, then most of Trump's delegates could go to someone else.

Pretty much this.

The polls do seem to indicate that the Dems could nominate a 100 pound sack of fertilizer painted with a happy face, and win regardless of who the GOP nominates.

In the last election it was predicted that it would be the Hispanic voter who would rescue the GOP. But what is happening is that it is the angry White voter being whipped up by Trump's nativist xenophobia that is commandeering the party, and leading it away from inclusiveness (and thus away from electability).

Anybody but Trump, the GOP will willingly self destruct to prevent Trump from being president to please their owners.

It sounds like it's in the hands of these delegates. It doesn't seem like a person's vote even counts. And why are there delegates at all? I don't know much about that part.

Delegates have to be able to change to a different candidate, otherwise it would be the same vote total every time.

Who knows, it seems hard to believe that the establishment would unite behind Ted Cruz and there is no way they can give the nomination to Kasich who doesn't even have as many delegates as Marco Rubio. Paul Ryan is the guy the GOP establishment want, they're playing him up as this Shermanesqe savior called to duty by his party the same way they did before he became speaker. I don't know what Cruz or Trump delegates will do. It will be absolute chaos. I would say one of Trump, Cruz, or Ryan will be the nominee. Trump is going to get the delegates on the first ballot or be very close, it will be impossible to deny him the nomination without destroying the party.

That's not entirely true.

The numbers vastly very on the definitions of race/ethnicity the agency in question is using.

Federal agencies such as NCHS, etc... show non-white Hispanics still have the majority of births.
Federal agencies such as NIH and CDC state white people have the majority of births use a different definition for white and Hispanic that the rest of the definition then the other federal agencies.

The CDC has these 4 groups, Hispanic, Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black, and Non-Hispanic Asian counted in demographics.

The NCHS and Census show a massive difference in data


Starting in 2010 the U.S. Census no longer counts Hispanic as a race/ethnicity forcing them to pick a different group with most picking white (it was in the 2010 Census)

The problem with U.S. Demographics is the use of terms Hispanic and Latino with no single definition used.


Right now the main Hispanic definition is anyone who was born in a country that was once part of the former Spanish empire and/or Spain.

In the U.S. these countries count as Hispanic:

Spain (The second most populous Hispanic country)
Andorra
Mexico
All of Central America
All of South America except for Brazil
Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (U.S. Territory) for the Caribbean
Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara for Africa
Philippines for Asia
Micronesia including Guam and NMI people are Hispanic territories.

For some reason the Netherlands doesn't count even though they won their independence from Spain.

The Latino countries including all of the Hispanic countries and the following countries:
Portugal
Brazil
India (yes Indians can claim Latino, because Portugal owned part of India at one point)/
Angola (Africa)
Madagascar
Mozambique (Africa)
Any other territory once controlled by Portugal.

The U.S. has a one drop rule for claiming white. It mean if you have one drop of non Western European blood in you, you aren't White. (like myself).

The majority of the Hispanic and Latino countries outside of Africa and Asia have majority white populations and are reclassified when they come to the U.S., just like those from European countries on the list.

Literally the white population in the U.S. is growing faster than reported, if you let those who see themselves as white claim white instead of forcing them into a different group.

The issue with U.S. demographics is the constant obsession with categorizing everyone into groups with ever changing legal definitions.

If we used the UN demographic definitions on ethnicity, ~80% of the U.S. population would be white and Hispanic/Latino would be no more.

Also Romney, Cruz, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Rick Snyder are on the short list.

There is a rule in the Republican party that the nominee must have won 8 primaries/caucuses. Unless that rule somehow changes, only Trump or Cruz would be eligible.

No way to tell. Those negotiations are determined in back room with party bosses.Since its first convention in 1856, the Republican Party has had ten presidential elections in which no candidate coming into the convention had a majority of delegates.In seven of those conventions, the GOP did not nominate the person who came in with the most delegates. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln's nomination was a contested one.New York Sen. William H. Seward entered the convention as the prohibitive favorite, with 37 percent of the delegates. After three ballots, the convention settled on the distant second-place contender, who had only 22 percent of the delegates. Seward only came into the Lincoln camp because he was promised a position in a Lincoln Administration. He was given the office of Secretary of State.In 1876, Blaine was the frontrunner, with 38 percent of the delegates. Three others ran a distant third with about 13 percent each, and Ohio Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes was in fourth with 8 percent. After seven ballots, Hayes was chosen as a compromise candidate. He lost the general election popular vote (arguably because of black voter suppression in the South), but won a disputed Electoral College vote in the most bitterly fought election in U.S. history.

The US census in 2010, American Community Survey, people counted as "Hispanic" or "Latino" are those who identify as one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the census or ACS questionnaire ("Mexican," "Puerto Rican," or "Cuban") as well as those who indicate that they are "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino." The countries or people who are in the Hispanic or Latino American groups as classified by the Census Bureau are the following: Spain, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Census bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably. Also important to note is that the Census office of the U.S. excludes Brazilian Americans from the Hispanic and Latino American population (Brazil is part of Latin America, but has a Portuguese language culture rather than a Spanish language culture)