Soft-failure protection for multicast communications

In one embodiment, a first computer networking device executes an election algorithm to determine whether at least the first computer networking device or a second computer networking device is responsible for forwarding, to at least one receiving device, communications addressed to a specified group of computing devices. The first computer networking device may further store first data indicating that the first computer networking device is responsible for forwarding the communications. However, in response to the first computer networking device determining that it is no longer receiving the communications, it may store second data indicating that the first computer networking device is no longer responsible for forwarding the communications and may send, to the second computer networking device, third data indicating that the first computer networking device is not receiving the communications.