Tuesday follow-up:
The biggest news story coming out of Tuesday night’s elections is that Rick Santorum won both Alabama and Mississippi and is therefore projected on a path to somehow lock-up the nomination. If that is the only news you’ve heard from Tuesday, you might want to reconsider your news sources.
What has gone severely under reported is the fact that although Santorum won AL and MS, he actually lost the battle for delegates on Tuesday…to Mitt Romney. Yes, Romney’s triple-digit delegate lead is actually slightly larger after Tuesday. While all the media focus was on the two southern states, Hawaii and American Samoa quietly held their primary contests and awarded the lion’s share of their delegates to Romney.
The AP projected tally for delegates won in Tuesday’s contests: Romney 41, Santorum 35, Gingrich 24
Including Tuesday’s total CNN projects the delegate totals to be: Romney 498, Santorum 239, Gingrich 139, and Paul 69.
Looking Forward; Delegate Math:
Rick Santorum on Monday:
The reality of the situation is that it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to get to the number of delegates that is necessary to win with the majority at the convention.
Rick Santorum on Tuesday:
We are going to win this nomination before that convention.
Math Problems
Rick Santorum does not want to be bothered with the math, but would rather deal with “reality”. Granted, “math” and numbers can manipulated in ways intended to warp reality, but in this case of delegate counting the math is nothing more than cold, hard facts – no spin. And I would contend that this “reality of the situation” that Santorum refers to is based more on the conjecture, opinions, perceptions and wild hopes of a very desperate campaign.
Let’s look at some “math” and you be the judge…
Here’s a table that shows delegates and percentages awarded, as well as those required to win the nomination:
At this point about 40% of the delegates have been awarded and only Governor Romney is on pace to win the 50.1% (1144 delegates) necessary to lock it up before convention. Admittedly he doesn’t have much room for deviation from his record of success in order to assure himself the nomination, but the way forward in the primary schedule looks to be slanted in his favor (I’ll explain below). One thing that is certain is neither Santorum, Gingrich, nor Paul have any real chances of winning before convention. The easiest path would be for Santorum who merely needs to win 2/3rds of ALL the remaining delegates to clinch – but Santorum only gained 1/3 of the available delegates with his “big” wins 2 days ago.
While analyzing these figures I examined future contests and wondered whether there are any winner-takes-all states that have any obvious winners. If so these hypothetical results could be added to the current delegate totals and provide and even clearer picture of what is required of each of the candidates. There are 5 remaining contests (with 152 delegates) that are true winner-takes-all situations: DC(19), Delaware (17), New Jersey (50), Montana (26), UT (40). Notice anything similar about these states? They are sure wins for Romney – might as well take all 152 of those delegates and put them in the Romney column. Sure it’s easy to determine other states that Santorum or Romney might win, but the rest have some potential for splitting delegates, and the exact percentage of that split can’t be determined exactly.
Just for fun here is an updated, purely hypothetical, table which includes likely future results of WTA states:
[table "72" not found /]This scenario shows Romney still has a very good clinching before convention, while it is virtually impossible for the others to do so.
Also of note: delegate rich California (172) is not a true winner-takes-all state, Romney’s 20 point lead there in the polls will almost assuredly win him a near sweep of the delegates there. In 2008 McCain beat Romney by 8 points (42-34) and McCain took 93% of the delegates.
Conclusion:
Thirty contests have been held so far this primary season. Of those contests Romney has won 19 of them. Romney has accrued more than 1.2 million votes beyond Santorum’s tally. But I think an under-discussed fact about this race is that Romney has won delegates in every single contest that has taken place. Compare that to 11 goose eggs for Santorum and 17 for Gingrich. When Santorum talks about “competing everywhere there are delegates” he doesn’t mention that he’s not even on the ballot in DC, just as he missed the VA due to campaign ineptitude. And when Santorum says “We are going to win this nomination before that convention,” he is… well…. lying.
Santorum’s faint hope of winning lies in a contested convention by attempting to deny Romney the full slate of delegates he needs to clinch. A majority of Republicans are not going to like the prospect of a brokered convention and the calls for Santorum to withdraw will grow louder and louder. Should he ignore those calls and succeed in pushing the election to convention he will be a very unpopular man.
Many may recall in 2008 when Mike Huckabee, after major Super Tuesday delegate sweep by McCain, said “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles.” He dropped out of the race a month later. I suspect Santorum‘s campaign is similarly hoping for a miracle, and will come to a similar fate.
Let it be known that when Romney’s campaign slipped into the realm of improbability in 2008 he quickly withdrew his candidacy, endorsed the presumptive nominee, forgave and forgot all animosity towards his former opponent, and vigorously campaigned on his behalf all the way up to election day doing everything that was asked of him. After withdrawing in 2008 “Mitt did events for 33 federal candidates running for office and 37 surrogate events for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin.”
Suggested reading:
Right Turn – Math matters: Romney widening his lead
Continue to keep tabs on the delegate count on our Primary Results and Delegate Count page.
~Nate G.
Nate owns and manages a small souvenir manufacturing business. He and his wife of 12 years have 2 children. Nate has been blogging for Mitt Romney since late 2006 and is co-founder and editor of MittRomneyCentral.com.
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The more I read/learn about Santorum, I see his arrogance overwhelming reality. His dishonesty about his past positions of the “true conservative” and lies about Romney do not foreshadow a statesmanly exit.
Thanks for the honest article.
I understand Rick just hired a delegate consultant. Probably something a seasoned veteran or decent manager would have done a while ago, but that’s not Rick Santorum. Details aren’t his bag; meanwhile, Mitt owns the details.
If Rick Santorum thinks genuinely about the party and the country he should support Gov. Mitt Romney and stop acting like a ‘dog in the manger ‘! and he should stop telling lies about Mitt Romney.
Too bad Santorum and Gingrich are more interested in beating Romney than beating Obama…….a vote for Santorum or Gingrich is a vote for Obama…….Go Mitt.
MS and AL were open primaries. Santorum is only competitive against Romney in contests where Democrats can come over and muck up the vote.
Romney is the true conservative.
Santorum is acting like a tendrefoot scout—-whinning and wanting to be where he has no experience to be yet. You have to earn your ranks. Mitt Romney has earned is ranks in the business world, knows his facts. We need to give Mitt the chance lead the troop along and be the master for a time.
Great article! Great job laying the situation out in such a way that even those detached Santorum and Gingrich diehards ie Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rush should be able to comprehend.
If you could train a chimp to keep saying romneycare would that be enough to elect the chimp as president. That’s the hope of Pope Santurum.
That’s a good line for Mitt, Ronald:
“Newt and Rick’s objective is to stop me. My objective is to work with other like minded Americans to defeat Obama and get our economy turned around and people back working!”
Santourm or Gingrich never beleived that they’ll get to this point. They never bothered to register to their own current resident state either. For Santourm contraception issue, waging war on women, waging war on religion gave him life. Gingrich came back to life just for lashing out the media.
They both Washington insiders, Santourm was rejected landslide by his people in PA ’06 and Gingrich basically forced out in 1999. They don’t care for the GOP party, they’ve nothing to lose by staying. When you listen carefully some of their messages are very un-conservaitve values. Since they’ve a cult like followeres, i beleive they’ll keep going until June. May be they are waiting “act of God”.
Down with Santourm/Gingrich!
Got an email from Mr. Santorum yesterday to an address I registered at several democrat sites. In it, he was wallowing like a pig in his southern victories saying we were about to get what we have waited so long for: the primary finally being between TWO MEN. Those who are saying Santorum’s goal is to beat Romney instead of Obama are right on the money. I am hearing diehard Newt supporters getting behind Mitt now, so the assumption that Rick would get Newt’s supporters isn’t panning out so well. Former Newtie’s are telling me they trust Romney to follow through on his promises, and when I ask who they would vote for the GOP nom, they are boldly saying Mitt Romney because he is the only one who can defeat Obama. The Romney numbers are swelling as Newt people are realizing their candidate just can’t. Everyone I know who wants Obama out as much as I do, are going with Mitt. Onward!
No one like Mitt, He is the one!
It’s a sad turn of events, that Mitt has to ‘fight’ santorum, gingrich, hannity, levin, limpbaugh…=)…greta, lots of pundits on faux news, cnn (which is sometimes more fair to Mitt, than faux is!)…shouldn’t they all, except for cnn, be on the same team??? I thought the agenda was to get obama out of the White House?! I guess not, eh? Thank God for Mitt Romney Central, Evangelicals for Mitt, the Drudge Report, Ann Coulter, John Gibson (talk radio host) and a few others who are ‘defenders’ of Mitt! Don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait to hear the magic number…1144…it’s going to be a longer than expected fight, but I’m hopefull that we’ll get there!!!!!!! =)
Professionals like Mitt take care of the details. Amateurs like Santorum don’t even know they exist. Enough said.
I see Santorum as a winer that needs to back to his crib and suck his thumb. And Newt I see as a bitter old man that doesn’t have a good record to run on. Please pack your bags and get out of this race if you really truely care for this country and want to defeat Obama.
Newt and Santorum only care about themselves and that is the truth of the matter.
Go Mitt Romney your are the best man for the job and the only one with the proven and
sucessful record and our countries best chance for defeating Obama. I heard Romney speak on Fox Radio today on issues and about this Presidential race how our focus should be on what is best for this country. Yeah Romney! And I believe what is best for our country is to see Romney as our nominee because he cares more for American people and
this country than any other person I have seen in this Presidential race.
Newtorum does nothing but complain it’s being outspent by Romney. If it whines and complains about being outspent by Romney, it has no business going against Obama.
Besides, Newtorum is a two-headed beast which cannot get the nomination because as far as I know two-headed beasts do not qualify.
I lived in California. There is NO way Mitt is losing that 20 point lead there. If anything it will increase. That means well over 90% of those delegates. Add that to the sure WTA states and we see Mitt getting awfully close. It will be good to see what Newtorum does as Mitt’s nomination becomes more and more inevitable. It’s true colors will show for everyone to see. I predict it will crash and burn and become a hiss and a byword forever.
Go Mitt!