oreo
Gold Member
Rick Santorum Can't WinFrontloading HQs Josh Putnam crunches the numbers and finds that under the most optimistic scenario, Rick Santorum is limited to a delegate haul of 1,075, which falls somewhat short of the 1,144 needed to win the nomination.
Putnam notes that you could goose that even further and assume big wins for Santorum in the remaining primaries. Even still, the most he could win is 1,152 delegates. By contrast, Mitt Romneys minimum 1,162 delegates while his maximum extends to 1,341 delegates.
In other wordsat this pointits mathematically impossible for Santorum to win the nomination through delegate accumulation. Of course, theres always the question of a brokered convention. But as Putnam points out, of the people to win the nomination through negotiation, Santorum is at the bottom of the list:
The bottom line here is that Romney has enough of a delegate advantage right now and especially coming out of todays contests that it is very unlikely that anyone will catch him, much less catch him and get to 1144. The latter seems particularly far-fetched given the above scenarios. And that is a problem in this race. Well, a problem for Gingrich and Santorum anyway. If all either of them can take to voters is an argument that all they can do is prevent Romney from getting to 1144, then neither has a winning strategy. That sort of strategy has a half life; one that will grow less effective as, in this case, Romney approaches 1144.
Complicating this scenario even further for Gingrich and Santorum is the fact that if neither can get to 1144 or even close to it, neither is all that likely to be the candidate to emerge as the nominee at any unlikely though it may be contested convention.
This article doesn't mention the delegates that Santorum is ineligible for because of improper filing in many state congressional districts. Illinois--coming up--for example.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/rick-santorums-ohio-delegate-problems-pile-up/Santorum has failed to file full delegate slates in Tennessee, New Hampshire and Illinois, and has failed to submit enough delegates in several Ohio congressional districts, Williams said in a statement.