For the GOP, all roads lead to Minneapolis.

With former senator Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential race, Republicans now have at least three candidates who could have the money and votes to compete, if necessary, through the end of the primary process. And they might have to do so. In fact, when the Republicans meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September 2008 to choose their nominee, they might be looking at a brokered convention.Of course, dire prognostications of brokered conventions are made nearly every election, and the GOP has had multiple strong candidates before--in 1980, for instance, in 1988, and even in 2000. But the structure of the election has changed this year. The old schedule of primaries and caucuses was designed to winnow the field. Invariably, only two candidates were left standing by March, one of whom would eventually capture enough delegates through the remaining contests to win the nomination. By contrast, the 2008 schedule concentrates more than half of the primary and caucus votes in the first month, which ends February 5. If there is no clear frontrunner by then, the race will probably continue on into June and perhaps even up until the convention. According to current estimates, Republicans will send 2,517 delegates to the September convention. By the time polls close on February 5, 1,358 of them will have been selected from states that include not only old standbys Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, but also mega-states California, New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois. Front-loading large Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western states like this will probably benefit the current front-runner, moderate Rudy Giuliani. But GOP convention rules that benefit more conservative states will aid his opponents, thus encouraging stalemate. Next year, the Minneapolis convention will grant additional delegates to states that voted for the Republican presidential nominee in the last election; states that have elected Republican senators, representatives, and governors; and states that have Republican legislatures. This system will increase the influence of Southern and prairie states at the expense of more liberal states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. New Hampshire, for instance, which went "blue" in 2006, will send eight fewer delegates to the 2008 convention than it sent to the 2004 convention. Using state polls, I tried to estimate how the leading candidates would do in the 24 states that are scheduled to hold primaries or caucuses through February 5. If I couldn't find polls from late August or early September, I gave Thompson, who has risen recently in national polling and should maintain his standing, a boost in the polls. I also assumed that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney would get at least a slight bump from winning the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. When I couldn't decide who would prevail in a winner-take-all primary, I allocated the delegates equally between the two leading candidates. Where polls did not exist, or were too old to be trustworthy, I made assumptions about the regional strength of the candidates: Romney can be expected to do well in New England and the Mormon West; Thompson in the South; and Giuliani in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states. This methodology produced the following results: After February 5, Giuliani would be in the lead with 459 delegates, followed by Thompson with 380, Romney with 300, Senator John McCain with 131, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee with 33. I wouldn't put any stock in these specific numbers, but, even if the order is wrong--say Thompson or Romney are on top, or McCain makes a miraculous comeback--it is unlikely that any of the candidates will amass a significantly larger lead than the one I estimated for Giuliani. What, then, are the front-runner's chances of winning the nomination by June, when the primaries and caucuses end? To convert this (hypothesized) advantage into the nomination, Giuliani would have to win 800 of the remaining 1,159 delegates. Unless one of his main rivals drops out after February 5, that would be extremely difficult. Many of the states friendliest to Giuliani, like New York and New Jersey, vote in the first round of primaries and caucuses. Of the remaining large states, only Pennsylvania seems to clearly favor the former New York mayor. The New England states, including Massachusetts, should go to Romney; and the Southern states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia, should favor Thompson. None of the candidates currently has an advantage in Texas. So there is a very good chance that, by June, none of the Republican candidates will have secured the nomination. Normally, a strong party chairman, the White House, or congressional leaders would force lagging candidates to drop out in favor of the frontrunner. But, with Karl Rove back in Texas and his own presidency in the doldrums, George W. Bush doesn't have that kind of clout. Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez, who is seen as Bush's man, is a lightweight in party circles. And, in both the House and Senate, the GOP is in disarray. Moreover, neither Romney nor Giuliani nor Thompson currently holds office, and none has close bonds with the current leadership in Washington, reducing the party's ability to pressure them. If these three candidates remain standing after June, the struggle for the nomination would probably move to the GOP convention's rules committee. To prevent states from racing to hold the first presidential contest, the Republican Party banned any state from holding a primary before February 5. It is now threatening to disqualify some or all of the delegates from states that failed to heed that decision, including New Hampshire and Florida, which currently plan to vote on January 22 and January 29, respectively. Obviously, that could significantly affect the delegate counts. The nomination battle would then shift to the convention itself. In the Republican Party, each state makes its own delegate rules. A few states, like New York, do not require delegates to vote for the candidate that won the primary; they are "unbound." Most states require delegates to heed the voters' choice, but only on the first ballot. After that, they are up for grabs. In addition, when a candidate drops out, his delegates become free agents. Watching candidates scrambling for delegates or trying to mau-mau the rules committee, as happened at the 1976 Republican convention, can make for exciting television; but the strife could pose difficulties for a party that wants to use its convention to showcase its nominee. A protracted nomination battle could also sow discord within the party itself and squander funds that the candidates might want to use later. Democrats seem far less likely to face this sort of challenge next year. Indeed, Hillary Clinton appears to be putting her competition behind her, and none of her challengers has a built-in regional advantage that will ensure a respectable block of delegates. Barack Obama can probably count on Illinois, but nowhere else. And John Edwards may not even be able to win the Carolinas. In fact, the compressed primary schedule could make a stalemate less rather than more likely for Democrats. In the past, a long-shot candidate (like Jimmy Carter in 1976) could concentrate on the Iowa caucus and then use a victory there to raise his profile and to gather the money necessary to compete in the big states down the road. But now there probably won't be enough time between Iowa and the ensuing primaries for a candidate like Edwards, who is focusing on Iowa, to pick up sufficient momentum and money to carry him through the mega- state primaries to come. Obama, for all his celebrity, is still a junior senator who will be pressured to bow out by his home-state Democrats and colleagues in Washington if he doesn't look sufficiently competitive after February 5. And, unless the Democratic electorate shifts significantly in the next few months, he won't. All of which means that, while Republicans become ever more fractious as the general election approaches, Democrats will have already spent months coalescing around a new leader.