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ByNancyBenac The Associated Press WASHINGTON 'Tisthesea- son — no, not THAT season. It's that point in the pres- idential election cycle when speculation starts swirling that the primaries won't produce a clear winner and one of the parties' big nomi- nating conventions will dis- solve in chaos. This time, it's the Repub- lican side of the race that's looking particularly unset- tled. After a crazy year in which Donald Trump's abil- ity to stay on top in a super- sized pack has repeatedly confounded the conven- tional wisdom, the what-if chatter is wilder and louder than usual. What if no one gets a ma- jority of delegates in the pri- maries and caucuses? What if Trump leads the delegate count but party elites want to derail his route to the nomination? What if dele- gates to the Cleveland con- vention deadlock on mul- tiple votes and then try to turn to someone com- pletely new, perhaps House Speaker Paul Ryan?!? Ridiculous, says Ryan. Silly, says Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus. "I don't think that's go- ing to happen," says Trump. Veteran politicos agree such scenarios are unlikely. The outlook will clarify once people start voting in February, they insist. But they also acknowl- edge that the chances of an unsettled outcome are higher than usual in the current unconventional po- litical environment. Ben Ginsberg, the law- yer who served as counsel to the Mitt Romney and George W. Bush presiden- tial campaigns, says that because this GOP election cycle offers three lanes of candidates instead of two — a "Trump" lane in addi- tion to the traditional "es- tablishment" and "con- servative" lanes — "it be- comes more likely that no one will have a majority of delegates." "The odds are still really small," Ginsberg contin- ues, then offers this caveat: "I did say on the day be- fore the 2000 election that there would never be an- other presidential recount." This from the man who went on to play a central role in the Florida recount at the heart of the Bush v. Gore battle for the presi- dency. The large field of GOP candidates and Trump's wildcard candidacy aren't the only factors at play in speculation that the 2016 primaries could end in un- certainty. The GOP in recent years has been shifting to a more proportional way of allo- cating delegates from each state than the old winner- take-all approach. And that means the mo- mentum Romney achieved after winning a couple of big states in 2012 "is just not going to be as likely" this time, says Mark Stephen- son, a Republican consul- tant who handled delegate strategy for Scott Walk- er's short-lived presiden- tial campaign and worked on the Romney campaign in 2008. Even if the field of candi- dates has been winnowed to three or four after the first four states award 130 dele- gates in February, the win- ner in the big Super Tuesday round of voting on March 1 still might come up with just 300-400 delegates of the 600-plus to be awarded that day, says Stephenson. That's a far cry from the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Stephenson agrees that a contested convention is un- likely, but says that between the unusual campaign dy- namics at play this year and the proportional delegate allocation rules, "as people start playing with the math, it's certainly an interesting exercise to come up with scenarios" under which no- body gets to a majority be- fore the convention. This, then, is the time of joy for delegate geeks who love to nerd out on the fine print of presidential politics and speculate on the what- ifs of a divided convention. "We do this every four years," says Joshua Putnam, a political science lecturer at the University of Geor- gia whose frontloading. blogspot.com wallows in the intricacies of the pri- maries. "We want it to happen just for the sheer excitement of it all," Putnam says of a contested convention. "But the chances of it happening are pretty slim." The idea of a brokered convention harks way back to when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms could twist arms and party bosses could steer their preferred candidate toward the nom- ination. More likely these days, if still a longshot, is a contested or deadlocked convention that opens with- out a presumptive nominee. You have to go all the way back to 1952 for a true brokered convention at which delegates turned to someone new. Democrats drafted Adlai Stevenson, who won on the third bal- lot. Putnam says a rule ap- proved at the GOP conven- tion in Tampa in 2012 could add intrigue in 2016. It re- quires a candidate to have a majority of delegates in eight states to win the nom- ination, up from the previ- ous requirement of a plural- ity of delegates in five states. In a large field, this higher hurdle to the nomination could be daunting. But it's also a temporary rule that the party can change if the outlook is muddled coming out of the last round of pri- maries in June. 2016 CAMPAIGN Dreams abound of a brokered political convention CARLOSOSORIO—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE Republican presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd before speaking in Grand Rapids, Mich. CHARLES DHARAPAK — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaks at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., in 2012. 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