Who won Col­orado and Min­nesota this week? If you look at the tal­lies of cau­cus votes, the answer is “Rick San­to­rum”. But those two states have non-​​binding cau­cuses, so the answer may not be as obvi­ous as it seems. There are two sep­a­rate, but loosely-​​related activ­i­ties at play here.

In terms of the momen­tum story, which dri­ves much of the dis­cus­sion in the media, the cau­cus votes are the ones that mat­ter. San­to­rum won that story.

But there’s a sec­ond story, one that is much qui­eter, but more mean­ing­ful in terms of the ulti­mate nomination.

After the vot­ing in the Col­orado cau­cuses was done, most of those who voted walked out, believ­ing their job done. But Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Lake Jack­son, TX) trained his cau­cusers. You see, Col­orado is a non-​​binding cau­cus state, mean­ing that the del­e­gates do not have to be allo­cated based on the vote share.

How do the national con­ven­tion del­e­gates get allo­cated? At the precinct level, precinct del­e­gates are elected after the ini­tial vote. Those precinct del­e­gates typ­i­cally meet at a county level, where county del­e­gates are elected to attend the state convention…where the national del­e­gates are elected. This means that, at each level, it’s pos­si­ble to alter the allocation.

At precincts through­out Col­orado, San­to­rum was get­ting about half of the votes, but Paul was walk­ing away with all of the del­e­gates. This puts San­to­rum (and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney) at a seri­ous dis­ad­van­tage when the national del­e­gates get selected.

The same thing is hap­pen­ing in Min­nesota. Maine, too, where he expects to end up with more del­e­gates than Rom­ney, despite los­ing the pop­u­lar cau­cus vote. And Paul intends to do it in every non-​​binding state. It’s as if he were col­lect­ing faith­less elec­tors in the Elec­toral Col­lege, as a means of turn­ing a loss on elec­tion day into an inau­gu­ra­tion in January.

It’s just crazy enough that it might work.

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