Opinion: Winner take some

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In case you thought the presidential primaries didn’t involve quite enough strategizing, Massachusetts Republicans agreed this week to change their winner-take-all primary to a system in which any contender who picks up more than 15% of the primary vote will pocket a proportionate amount of delegates. (You can read about that in this Boston Globe story.)

California and other states use a similar system, for a variety of reasons. In 2000, Massachusetts gave all of its delegates to John McCain, who lost the delegate battle nationally to George Bush. That meant Massachusetts’ McCain delegates had nothing to do –- and no sway -- at the national convention, until McCain freed some of his delegates to go with the guy from Texas.

One of the inside-baseball stories out of the Massachusetts decision is that some Mitt Romney backers defended the change, the Boston Globe reports, as an insurance policy in case the former guv can’t win his own state. He’d at least be able to pocket some delegates and save face. But other Romney backers pushed to retain the winner-take-all format, a roll of the dice that Romney would win the state. No sense sharing those delegates with the also-rans.

Nationally, what this proportional doling out of delegates does is allow some candidates to last longer. With winner-take-all primaries, big states can quickly give a candidate an insurmountable lead. But if the second, third and even fourth place finishers can pick up some delegates anyway, that gives them a toe-hold –- and enough optimism -– to keep fighting.

Now sit down with your map, calendar and calculator and try to game that one out.

--Scott Martelle