Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Super Tuesday Scorecard

I see that the media outlets are busy saying that Mitt Romney didn't score the knockout blow yesterday - even though he won 5 races and was the leader in two others. Rick Santorum won three (and close behind to Romney in Ohio), while Newt Gingrich could only manage to win his nominal home state of Georgia (though not in Virginia, where he currently lives because he couldn't be bothered to get sufficient petitions to get on the ballot in time).

Because of the way the GOP is apportioning votes in most of these states, a win matters, but if you come in 2d you can still pick up delegates. That's allowed Santorum to hang around as much as he has, but the numbers work against everyone but Romney at this point. Romney has racked up 2-3 times as many delegates as everyone else, and the ability to overcome that advantage is narrowing. While there are a bunch of winner-take-all primaries in April, the chances that Gingrich or Santorum could sweep those are slim and none - and slim left town.

Gingrich continues soldiering on claiming that he's going to stay in the race until the convention, but even he's got to know that he's toast. Even his win in Georgia comes with caveats - he might come away with less than half the delegates (because of the proportional delegation rules in effect). No chance at all. Santorum may think he's got a chance, but the statistics run against him as well.

He didn't do badly, but he didn't score enough points to claim any advantage over Romney going into upcoming primaries. It leaves Romney with the advantages of money and delegates pledged thus far. And that's more than sufficient to stay frontrunner and push towards the nomination.

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