Sorry....hate to disappoint you
Any way you do the math, Paul doesn't win unless he starts to win some primaries. Third place doesn't cut it
If you think there will be a vast migration of delegates to Ron Paul you are delusional
I feel sorry for you, I really do.
I'll concede that 3rd place gets him nothing, but I'm not seeing anyone that's going to stay in the race beyond Paul and Romney, so that point is moot anyway.
It's not a "migration". You just don't understand what you're even discussing right now. The only "migrating", if you prefer to use that strange term, would be any of the very few delegates that had been intending to support candidates other than Paul or Romney, who ended up dropping. There most likely won't be many of those to even speak of because no one is bound yet to begin with. In most states, delegates are not bound until after the state convention. So any of the dropped candidates are going to have a few unbound delegates, who unless they prefer Romney, would by default support Paul. Again, there won't be many of these anyway unless somehow Santorum and Gingrich pull off a miracle and stay in the race until Super Tuesday, which is unlikely because they have no real cash to speak of and no real organization.
2nd place finishes throughout will guarantee Paul a significant amount of delegates. I'm not claiming he'll win, but he certainly has a chance to keep Romney from clinching and broker the convention.
All I'm asking you to do is read up on the subject. You show a great lack of understanding of how the process works. It's not surprising, because most people don't understand it. It's complex, and it's taken me the last 5 years since Paul's last campaign to learn and understand it myself.