The victor of tomorrow’s Florida primary may significantly advance their campaign standing with a winner-takes-all delegates allocation. But, under the new rules for the Republican primary, the winning candidate will only receive 50 delegates, not the state’s usual 99. 

The amendments made to the GOP primary rules require any primary or caucus held before March 6 to be non-binding – excluding Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Any state that does choose to hold a binding primary, like Florida, forfeits half of their delegates.

A non-binding primary allows delegates to change their vote at any time whereas the winner-takes-all format or proportional allocations require delegates to vote for the candidate they pledged to. After a non-binding primary, a caucus determines the delegates.

So do these non-binding primaries carry any weight? According to Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and senior fellow at the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, these primaries are more of a beauty contest.

“You get to be Miss America and that’s all,” she said in a phone interview. “Candidates decide which contests they want to run…you can forfeit a state. If it’s meaningless, why bother spending limited resources?”

Even so, for some candidates, these non-binding primaries are not entirely pointless.

“The question is why would people want to enter a non binding primary,” Jeffe said. “It’s a question of momentum; if they thought it would help them, it’s another notch on their belt as a successful candidate.”

Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, agreed. 

“Depending on the circumstances, a campaign can still get a political boost from winning a primary even if there aren’t any delegates awarded along with it,” he said in a phone interview. “But it’s certainly not as big of an advantage as if you get both the attention and the delegates.”

The upcoming Missouri primary on Feb. 7th will also be non-binding and county clerks expect a smaller turnout as a result.

“People should still vote,” Phelps County Clerk Carol Bennett told the Rolla Daily News. “One would hope that the results of the primary would influence the results of the caucus.”

The new rules were effected in August 2010, after the Republican party determined from the 2008 Democratic primaries that a longer process creates more attention and voter enthusiasm, Schnur explained.

For the states like Florida that chose to sacrifice the number of delegates, staying with an early primary helps retain political influence as an indicator of the overall outcome. 

Although the state lost half of its delegates, tomorrow’s primary will still hold significant weight as Florida still holds the largest delegate total, a total that the winning candidate will not have to share.

 

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Reach staff reporter Karla Robinson here.