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Romans 13: Setting It Straight 7-28-11

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and first lady Michelle Obama speak at the International Women of Courage Awards

TULSA (AP) -- With the temperature pushing 70, the young, barefoot man didn't seem out of place on a downtown plaza - until he pulled out a handgun and began shooting indiscriminately into the air....

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Authorities say a man involved in a shootout with sheriff's deputies outside a Tulsa courthouse is the brother of a murder suspect who was shot to death by police officers more than six years ago....

TULSA (AP) -- With the temperature pushing 70, the young, barefoot man didn't seem out of place on a downtown plaza - until he pulled out a handgun and began shooting indiscriminately into the air....

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) -- For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours....

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) -- For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours....

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) -- For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours....

The Republican presidential candidates turned their focus to the heart of Dixie Thursday, scheduling a series of events in the strongly conservative states of Mississippi and Alabama.

GREEN ISLAND, N.Y. (AP) -- Turns out that mushrooms - great in soups and salads - also make decent packaging material....

GREEN ISLAND, N.Y. (AP) -- Turns out that mushrooms - great in soups and salads - also make decent packaging material....

GREEN ISLAND, N.Y. (AP) -- Turns out that mushrooms - great in soups and salads - also make decent packaging material....

Although the Romney and Santorum campaigns have argued their respective cases for how they could win the GOP nomination, the math realistically only ads up for one candidate: Mitt Romney. The Current Situation Romney currently has about 415 delegates. A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to secure the GOP nomination. So far, Romney has won 14 states out of 22 contests. Winner-take-all Contests

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%.

Proportional Delegates

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.

Final Thoughts

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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