Gather round for the GOP Puerto Rico primary Rubio breaks 70%

In case you missed it, we had another primary race today and it took place in Puerto Rico. We’ll update with results here at the top when they become available.

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6:00: These may trickle in for a while, but it seems to have settled out at:
Rubio – 74
Trump – 14
Cruz – 9
Kasich – Some guy named Gary Kasich. (A coincidence, I’m sure)

Rubio has blown away the 50% trigger for winner take all and will definitely get all 23 delegates from the Puerto Rico delegation. If nothing else, he’s proven that he can win in geographically diverse areas.

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4:00: No final numbers yet, but multiple sources (including here) have it as a win for Rubio well over the 50% needed to trigger winner take all. If so, all 23 delegates go in Marco’s column.

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This contest is a bit of an odd duck, and not only for the lack of media love it attracts. Puerto Rico doesn’t get a voice in the general election in November in terms of delegates, but they do get to play in the primaries for both the Democrats and the Republicans. For the GOP primary, they send 23 voting delegates to Cleveland. Since there are no congressional districts, all 23 of them are bound (on the first ballot) to candidates based on the results of the vote. There is a 50% trigger for a winner take all result, but in the case of a plurality, each candidate surpassing a 20% minimum threshold shares them proportionally. It’s also worth noting that this is a completely open primary where anyone of any party affiliation (or none) can choose to vote in either race.

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In case you wanted a whiff of scandal to go with your primary results, consider this: On Friday a decision was made to allow 6,000 inmates currently serving time in prison to cast absentee ballots in the Republican primary. Local officials were estimating that the turnout today would be around 25K people, so if they dump 6,000 votes from prisoners into the mix it’s going to have a tremendous, statistical impact on the results. And since you don’t have to be a member of any party to vote in this primary, who knows how that will bend the curve?

Just for a bit of history, Mitt Romney swept all the delegates in 2012, winning 82% of the vote. Nobody else came close to the minimum threshold, though Rick Santorum did manage 8%. Sure, we’re only talking about 23 delegates, but if this thing winds up being as close as Hugh Hewitt keeps predicting and is on the edge of going to more than one ballot, that might be enough to tip the scales.

PuertoRico

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