WASHINGTON — Monday 00:01 am
Nearly 2,500 delegates gather in Milwaukee this week for a roll call vote to select the Republican presidential nominee, formally ending the primaries.
It will be a moment without tension: former president Donald Trump has been the presumed nominee for months, after he managed to secure a majority of the party’s delegates on March 12. However, he will only officially become the party’s standard-bearer after the list of names, when the delegates vote on the nominee.
A large majority of those delegates are already obligated to support Trump, who needs only a majority to win the Republican nomination. However, because of state party rules, at least a handful will still go to former candidate Nikki Haley even after she issued her representatives.
While Democratic representatives technically permitted to deviate from their promised candidate to vote their conscienceRepublican delegates remain bound to their assigned candidate, regardless of their personal positions, meaning party rules all but guarantee that Trump will officially become the nominee this week.
The leader of each state delegation will take turns, in alphabetical order, announcing their results. If a delegation passes when it is their turn, they will have another chance to announce their results at the end of the roll call.
Republicans have not yet announced the date and time of the roll call.
At least 2,268 delegates will support Trump at the Republican Party convention, but his maximum number is even higher.
Most states send delegates to the convention who are “tied” to a particular candidate, meaning that those delegates are obligated to support a particular candidate at the convention. State parties use the results of primaries or caucus votes and smaller party meetings to decide how to allocate those delegates to various presidential candidates.
But at least 150 Republican delegates — including the entire delegations of Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota — are technically “uncommitted,” meaning they could vote for any candidate at the convention. Dozens of those delegates have already confirmed to the AP that they plan to vote for Trump at the convention — a number that’s reflected in the 2,268 delegates who have already committed to Trump. Some of those delegates have also said they expect their colleagues to vote for Trump, though those delegates have not confirmed their intentions to the AP.
Trump will likely be the only candidate to formally seek the nomination, as RNC rules require candidates to win a plurality of delegates in at least five states. Trump is the only candidate to have won five states in the primaries — Haley won only Vermont and Washington, D.C., and no other candidate has won a Republican nomination contest this year. However, individual state party rules dictate whether delegates tied to withdrawn candidates can vote for another candidate, and some require delegates to honor their pledges to their candidate regardless.
A spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, for example, confirmed that Haley’s delegates remain tied to her, according to state rules. She won 12 delegates in the March primary. In New Hampshire, however, state rules say that Haley’s nine pledged delegates are free to vote for another candidate since she formally withdrew from the race, without any requirement that she formally release them.
In Iowawhere four Republican presidential candidates received delegates, a party spokesman confirmed that state rules dictate that all 40 delegates would support the only candidate whose name will be considered: Trump.
