It’s winner-take-all, sort of, in Kansas’ caucuses on Saturday.
Of the state’s 40 delegates, three are given to the candidate who receives the most votes statewide. Another 12 are assigned, three at a time, to the winners in each of the state’s four Congressional Districts. (The only other caucus state to use a form of winner-take-all rules was Idaho).
Kansas’ Third Congressional District is different than the others; it features Kansas City, Kan., along with well-off suburbs like Overland Park that are socially moderate, and it narrowly voted for President Obama in 2008. The suburbs of the Third District have excellent schools and lots of upscale retail stores and are not altogether different from the nicer suburbs anywhere else in the Midwest, like in Oakland County, Mich., or the more well-to-do parts of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, places where Mitt Romney has done well so far.
The other three districts are conservative and solidly Republican. We’ll have more to come on Kansas’ political geography, but the basic takeaway is that Mitt Romney could fairly easily win the delegates in the Third District, while the other three districts and their nine delegates are likely to wind up in Rick Santorum’s hands.
Kansas’ remaining 25 delegates are allocated proportionately, although candidates are required to receive 20 percent of the vote statewide to qualify for their share. Mr. Santorum seems almost certain to meet that threshold and Mr. Romney will probably do so, although he did not meet that standard in the Minnesota caucuses, where he got just 17 percent of the vote; he also got just 25 percent of the vote in the Missouri “beauty contest” primary, despite Newt Gingrich not being on the ballot.
Ron Paul might be something of a toss-up to get his 20 percent of the vote. He got just 12 percent in the Missouri primary although he did much better in the Minnesota caucus, 27 percent.
One reasonable outcome could be something like Mr. Santorum with 45 percent of the vote, Mr. Romney 27 percent and Mr. Paul 18 percent, with Mr. Romney just barely edging out Mr. Santorum in the Third District but losing the other three. That would produce a fairly lopsided delegate allocation of 28 for Mr. Santourm and 12 for Mr. Romney, with Mr. Paul just missing the cut-off for being awarded proportional delegates.
But, as in other recent caucus states, there’s been no polling in Kansas, thus there is an element of unpredictability in the outcome.
The betting market Intrade has Mr. Santorum as a 97 percent favorite in Kansas. I certainly agree that Mr. Santorum is the front-runner there, but that’s an absurd degree of confidence, especially given the poor track record of the betting market in prior caucus states. Intrade saw Mr. Romney as the heavy favorite in North Dakota, for instance, and it had him as nearly certain to win Colorado even after poor results started to come in from Minnesota and Missouri on that same evening. Meanwhile, it showed Mr. Santorum as the favorite in the Washington caucuses until just a few days before the race.
To repeat, Mr. Santorum looks like the favorite in Kansas, but there’s a wide range of outcomes, from Mr. Romney getting an extremely strong turnout in places like Overland Park and narrowly taking the state, to Mr. Santorum holding both Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich below 20 percent of the vote and sweeping all 40 delegates. I wish we did not have to equivocate so much, but prudence dictates that sort of caution given what we have seen in other caucus states.