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Update: Romney adds Mariana Islands to win column along with Guam (9 delegates each)

The initial gauntlet of big nominating contests, in addition to "Super Tuesday," are now in the books. Few thought that an interesting grouping of contests being held from March 10-18 would be all that important, but they are.

Romney should walk away with a victory in Hawaii, also voting this week, and most of the 5 US territories. This shows the clear advantage of running a national campaign with broad appeal over implementing a regional strategy as both Gingrich and Santorum have done. He should also pick up a good chunk of delegates in the south and could even pull off an upset win. More importantly, the Romney wins will all come at a very low cost and he has to do very little to win them, which frees up time for him to spend in contests he is expected to lose.

Santorum is trying to switch gears from being a mid-western, blue-collar, labor union guy to one who appeals to southerners. That is a very difficult task, especially as Santorum has focused on being an "I am one of you" campaigner. He has also lost precious time in Alabama and Mississippi by spending most of his post-Super Tuesday efforts in Kansas. If he stays to offer an acceptance speech in the state, that will leave him just two days to head down south, where he will be playing catch-up to Romney and Newt.

Gingrich has lost almost all of the momentum nationwide, but being from Georgia helps him here. It helps Romney, too. While Romney is clearly viewed as an outsider in the south, so is Santorum. And Newt Gingrich is aiming to take full advantage of the situation and toss a few more southern states in his win column.

A Surprisingly Big Week for GOP Candidates originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Saturday, March 10th, 2012 at 08:18:28.

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First working in Romney's favor are eight winner-take-all or congressional district winner-take-all contests that would most likely wind up in his win column. They are Puerto Rico, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, Delaware, California, New Jersey, and Utah. They could give Romney an impressive haul of up to 386 Delegates. If past contests are any indication, it is likely that his opponents wouldn't even try to compete in most of these states given their geography and demographic make-up. California is likely too large (and too big of an obstacle) for a lesser organized and underfunded campaign to compete in.

Assuming Romney is able to secure almost all of these delegates, he would only need around 350 more delegates from the remaining 1100+ available, or around 30%.

Next, a number of states that deliver delegates proportionally also favor Romney. Illinois (66), Hawaii (20), New York (95), Rhode Island (19), Oregon (28), New Mexico (23), Montana (26), and four US territories (28) combine for another 305 delegates. The good news for Romney here is he has been winning the proportionally-awarded states that favor him by wide margins, meaning he doesn't share many of the delegates. If he dominates in most of these states, the path to victory becomes very easy

Assuming Romney does well where he should, he would be less than 100 delegates away from the nomination, with a lot of states to go. This is where the other good news comes in. Most of the states that do not naturally favor Romney also offer proportional delegates, and he would likely pick up support even when he loses. For instance, although Santorum won 3 states that gave him 52 delegates during the "Super Tuesday" contests, Romney's 2nd place finish in those three states netted him a strong 35 delegates. So although Santorum won three states, he barely gained any ground.

Theoretically Romney could lose Kansas, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Nebraska and still get more than enough delegates from each state to pull out a victory. Or simply by winning just one or two of these states, he would fly past the delegate threshold.

The delegate map is very favorable to Mitt Romney. This isn't to say that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich should drop out of the race, but there simply doesn't exist a plausible scenario where they could win or force a brokered convention, absent a complete Romney meltdown. The 13 states listed above that would favor the anti-Romney candidates, don't deliver delegates in a way that could overcome such a large deficit.

Romney's Delegate Math originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Thursday, March 8th, 2012 at 08:11:56.

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Newt won only his home state of Georgia (48%). But he managed to give a speech that sounded like he just won the presidency. He vows to fight on, but so far has carried just 2 states in 22 contests.

Romney now has won 14 of 22 contests (64%) and his position as clear frontrunner is now solidified. He remains over the 50% threshold in delegates, which is a requirement to win the nomination. Romney's main advantage is that he competes in every state, while his opponents focus mostly on regional contests where they have an upper-hand, and ignore everything else. This hands a great deal of easy victories to Romney, while also allowing him to target important states for victory, like Ohio and Michigan.

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Super Tuesday Results: Romney Wins Ohio, 5 Other States originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at 00:48:28.

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Rick Santorum is claiming Oklahoma as his "Super Tuesday Home State" according to this report. Santorum states:

Actually, Rick Santorum was born in Virginia and has lived in Virginia since the 1990's. Virginia is a Super Tuesday state and would seem to be a good fit for him to claim as a "home state," especially if every state Romney travels to is a "home state." Virginia is also an important swing state. But Santorum failed to submit any signatures to qualify for the Virginia ballot, which is somewhat of an embarrassment given his ties to the region.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich's SuperPAC, Winning Our Future, is running an ad that claims Romney is "not the type to pump his own gas." I'm not sure if Romney has ever commented on Newt's $500,000 Tiffany's story, but Newt is acting like he isn't a millionaire himself.

If we are going to attack Romney, let's do it on his past liberal positions, Romneycare, and substantive issues. It makes it quite difficult to make an argument against the left's use of class warfare when we are so willing to do it for our own political gain.

See Also: Super Tuesday Preview

Photo: Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum. Source: Gage Skidmore

Super Tuesday: Class Warfare Edition originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 08:44:40.

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Some of the 10 Super Tuesday states are easy to predict, but others remain a big question mark. Polls of individual "Super Tuesday" states have been rare and, in most instances, only focus a handful of the larger contests. The impact of the recent Romney victories and Santorum losses has yet to be determined. National polls suggest he has lost most of his momentum.

As of today, here is how things look to be shaping up:

Romney will be an easy winner in Massachusetts, where he was governor, and most likely in demographically-similar Vermont. He was handed a gift in Virginia where longtime residents Newt Gingrich, who failed to submit enough valid signatures, and Rick Santorum, who didn't even try to submit signatures, won't even be on the ballot.

A handful of new polls have Newt hanging out in the 40% range in the state he represented for over two decades. While Romney probably hasn't stepped foot in his home state of Massachusetts, Newt has had to spend far too much time in Georgia to avoid an embarrassment. This has allowed for less campaign time for Newt in other states, despite skipping contests in Arizona and Michigan.

While Santorum has yet to notch a big win (he had less than 30,000 votes in all three caucus victories) he is still considered Romney's main competition and is the favorite in both Tennessee and Oklahoma. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won Tennessee while McCain pulled out a win in Oklahoma on Super Tuesday. Santorum must win both of these states to remain competitive in the long run. Three polls show Santorum is far from a sure bet in Tennessee.

Certain states always get more attention than others. On Super Tuesday, Ohio is that state. Newt has split his time between Georgia and Ohio for the better part of a month. Santorum has been busy battling in Michigan with Romney and probably missed out on precious opportunity to collect early votes. Romney has been the only candidate with an early-vote operation and the ability to launch a campaign in multiple states at one time. These factors, combined with momentum, should give Romney the edge.

Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota round out the rest of the Tuesday contests. All three will be low-turnout caucuses and will be somewhat unpredictable. Romney actually won Alaska and North Dakota in 2008, while Idaho held a primary after Romney withdrew. Santorum has done well in smaller caucuses like these, but only when he has been able to heavily out-campaign his opponents. This won't happen here. It could be a clean sweep for Romney once again based on his continuing momentum and the fact that his competition has been able to spare little resources outside of the main Super Tuesday contests.

To really secure the nomination lead, Romney would need to win Ohio or to pull off an upset in Georgia, Oklahoma, or Tennessee and take the three small caucus states. If he wins seven states, it's hard to see his momentum derailed. Gingrich will probably only win Georgia and anything beyond that will give him reason to continue on. Santorum really needs to win Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Since he is considered the favorite in those states, he would also need to steal a caucus state or two. If he leaves Super Tuesday with only two victories, the road ahead becomes increasingly difficult.

See Also: Super Tuesday Forum Predictions

Super Tuesday Preview originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 03:30:31.

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Update (6:55AM ET, 3/4/12)Mitt Romney easily wins the Washington caucuses with 38% of the vote. This is a huge setback for Rick Santorum, who finished a distant 3rd with 25% and behind Ron Paul. All of the momentum right now is behind Mitt Romney and the win in Washington only ads to that. He will be favored to win most of the upcoming Super Tuesday states at this point.

Update (8:35 ET) It appears Mitt Romney will easily win the Washington caucus. With almost 50% of the vote in, he seems to have an insurmountable lead with just over 37% of the vote. The real battle will be for second, where Ron Paul has a slight lead over Santorum and both have around 24% of the vote. But it won't matter. Another opportunity for Santorum to gain some positive coverage before Super Tuesday appears to have slipped through his fingers.