Winner Take All - Not Exactly. And, a possible strategy to take Virginia

[FreeMind&Market]

I was under the impression that Virginia was a winner take all state if any one candidate gets > 50% of the vote. According to TheGreenPapers.com, this is not entirely true.

The winner of each Congressional District is awarded 3 Delegates for a total of 33 delegates. 13 delegates are awarded to the statewide winner. Those 13 delegates are the "winner take all", but not the 33 delegates from the congressional districts. In additional, there will be 3 more delegates awarded at the state conventions. So, 33 district delegates, 13 state, and 3 convention delegates.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/VA-R

This makes our efforts that much more important. For kicks, I did an analysis of the 2008 primary vote by congressional district. The source is from the State Board of Elections website. I ran a cross-tab of the votes by district and candidate, then categorized each candidate by "establishment" and "anti-establishment" (assuming voter perception, not reality. And, I know this is debatable and a matter of opinion.) Then, I awarded delegates to either candidate category based on the total votes for that category in each district. Based on that alone, there are more pro-establishment districts than anti-establishment districts.

However, I then looked at the difference in votes for each category in each district. There are a few things to note:
1) Forget about Districts 1, 7, 8, 10 & 11
2) Districts 5, 6, & 9 might be pretty solid
3) Concentrate on districts 2, 3 & 4

The weakness here is the 13 "winner take all" delegates. According to this analysis, we still need to get 40,000 more votes statewide.

Here's a spreadsheet showing the calculations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtVuxHbU0e2GdGFQcUE4Y2FIcHNod25VcUM4U0c5a Wc

[thoughtomator]

Virginia was swept by a HUGE anti-incumbent wave in 2009 and 2010. I believe the general sentiment is a lot harsher to the establishment than you might suspect. I am in district 8 which is as DC-like a district as VA has, and it has been extremely easy to convince people to support Paul around here.

[FreeMind&Market]

Not going to argue with you about that, but my point was that we should concentrate our limited resources on the marginal districts like 2, 3 & 4.

[RonPaul101.com]

I know supporters in MD that are planning to hit CD-2 (The Delmarva). I have a group planned for CD-10, but you think that is a lost cause? After looking over your data it may be better for my group to hit CD-2 with the Marylanders.

Also CD-3 has a grassroots office (in Norfolk) which is also very close to CD-2 and CD-4 (so your data could be spot on.)

My initial big concern is by saying forget about.... you just automatically surrendered 15 delegates to Romney. But after giving it more thought, I guess Romney 15, Paul 31 would be a welcomed whooping.

[FreeMind&Market]

"Forget about it" might be too strong, I'm just suggesting where to prioritize and focus our resources. I'm a numbers guy, so I like to approach strategy using numbers. But, someone else might have better numbers or another approach with different results. I put this up here for consideration and discussion. Someone else might be able to shoot holes through it.

One concern I have is, even if we took more districts, whether we can convert enough voters statewide to get the 13 "winner take all" delegates. Most of the anti-establishment and "swing" districts have lower total votes.

[Aratus]

virginia could go for ron paul
and we might pick up many
of the districts if he sweeps

[RonPaul101.com]

"Forget about it" might be too strong, I'm just suggesting where to prioritize and focus our resources. I'm a numbers guy, so I like to approach strategy using numbers. But, someone else might have better numbers or another approach with different results. I put this up here for consideration and discussion. Someone else might be able to shoot holes through it.

One concern I have is, even if we took more districts, whether we can convert enough voters statewide to get the 13 "winner take all" delegates. Most of the anti-establishment and "swing" districts have lower total votes.

I think the WTA 13 is a different game than the CD proportional delegates. Folks can campaign anywhere in VA and help out of the WTA 13, but you are correct in that we should focus on a certain CD over another one if given the equal opportunity. So Virginians should vote and show their support locally in their own neighborhood, while out of state supporters like myself should target swing districts if possible, since we have no 'home town' in Virginia.

So the only real question is if the voter population will vote like they did in 2008. A lot has changed since then, and it's now a two man race in VA, so it could vary quite a bit -- likely to our favor.