Hail To Rick Santorum & His Delegate Path To The Nomination

Hail to Rick Santorum, the winner of Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama in the last 4 days, to go with his prior victories in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and North Dakota. Santorum's total is 10 states and counting.  Meanwhile last night Mitt Romney came in third in Alabama and Mississippi but won in Hawaii and American Samoa, to go with his prior island wins in Guam and US Virgin Islands.  Quite a contrast exists between the winning geography for Romney and Santorum, but that difference reminds that this contest is all about capturing delegates to the Republican convention.

Prior to last night, Mitt Romney needed to win 47% of the remaining delegates to go to Tampa with a majority of delegates, while Santorum needed to win 63% of the remaining delegates.  After last night, and capturing much less than 50% of the delegates available, Romney will need to capture even more than 47% of the remaining delegates.  Mathematically last night raised slightly the prospect that no candidate will have a majority of delegates when the convention opens, in which case the odds of Mitt Romney being the nominee drop considerably.

How does the continued presence of Paul and Gingrich affect the race for delegates and the nomination?  Gingrich is siphoning popular votes from Santorum, who has won the primary to be the champion of conservatives, and is helpful to Romney, since delegates are often awarded by Congressional districts.  Gingrich may be reducing the Santorum vote in some Congressional districts to allow Romney to claim delegates from them, while only winning 40% or less of the vote in a district.

In the battle for delegates, key remaining states will be Texas, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Indiana, but every single delegate is going to be valuable.

The delegate bottom line is that Mitt Romney must win about 50% of the remaining delegates, and he will have to claw for every remaining delegate to overcome the opposition of the dominant Republican conservatives who do not want to nominate him. This morning Rick Santorum is hearing more loudly than ever Hail To The Chief, and he is far from crazy to do so.