I guess there is now one less thing for me to watch this weekend when it comes to the Republican campaign for President, as the GOP caucuses in the state of Missouri won't have any announced results, one more puzzling part of the delegate selection process.
Missouri already held a non-binding beauty contest primary, which was won easily by Rick Santorum, and so the talk this week was about how Santorum should steamroll to victory on Saturday in the GOP caucuses in the Show Me State.
But, there won't be any results to announce.
Missouri's schedule is fairly typical of a number of caucus states, one reason that Ron Paul supporters have long said that delegate estimates from states like Iowa are not to be believed, as they argue their persistence in these extra rounds of GOP gatherings will result in more delegates for their candidate.
What happens on Saturday is that county caucuses in Missouri will elect people to go to the Congressional District Caucuses - on April 21; those caucuses will then elect 24 of the state's 52 delegates.
Then in early June, the rest of Missouri's delegates will be elected at the state GOP convention.
Since I mentioned Iowa above, let's look at their timetable for a comparison:
January 3 - non-binding Iowa Precinct Caucuses
March 10 - County conventions choose participants for both the Congressional District Conventions and the Iowa state GOP convention
April 21 - District Conventions meet, but pick no delegates
June 16 - 25 of Iowa's 28 delegates to the Republican convention are finally selected at the Iowa state convention.
The difference between Iowa and Missouri in this instance is that Iowa holds a "straw poll" in January at their caucuses - Missouri officials say there will be no such tally this weekend, so you won't see any results on delegates in Missouri until June.
All of that may be one reason why caucuses have gotten a bad rap again this election season - they seem cumbersome and confusing.
So, while you wait this weekend for results from Puerto Rico on Sunday, don't worry when you don't see anything from Missouri - there won't be any results until at least late April.
