Delegate Math

How math virtually guarantees Romney's nomination

 Excerpt:

The Associated Press' estimate puts Romney currently at 415 delegates, to Santorum's 176, with Gingrich and Paul controlling 105 and 47, respectively. A candidate needs a majority of all delegates in order to win the nomination, which this year comes to 1,144.

Two of the remaining winner-take-all states will be uncontested, Utah and Pennsylvania. Romney is all but guaranteed to win Utah's 40 delegates on June 26, and so if Santorum win his home state's 72 delegates on April 24, his net gain is 32 -- leaving him about 200 behind Romney, with about 1430 remaining. The remaining states are scattered geographically and demographically, distributed evenly between Romney's base (the Northeast), Santorum's (the heartland), as well as the Romney-leaning West and the Gingrich-Santorum South.

If Romney were to stumble and win only a third of the delegates in the remaining states, Santorum would have to win more than half of all the delegates in order to pull ahead, meaning that Gingrich and Paul together would have to be held below 16 percent. To date, not even counting Romney's blowout in Massachusetts, Romney has won nearly half of the delegates while Santorum has won about one-fourth. That means the only path to Romney losing is Santorum doubling his past haul, while Romney dropping by about 70 percent. That's not likely.

Comment: Image from Romney campaign email. Remember delegate math is imprecise. On why Gingrich continues (basically his campaign is paying him):

Gingrich, meanwhile, directly benefits from continuing to run. His campaign has paid him, personally, more than $100,000 in "unspecified expenses in what amounted to petty cash," as the Washington Times' Luke Roziak puts it. The Gingrich campaign has also paid or otherwise subsidized Gingrich's for-profit enterprises, in the process raising his profile and, presumably, his speaking fees. Gingrich's top aides are rewarding themselves with plenty of Sheldon Adelson money, too -- one super-PAC aide paid herself $220,000 for about 10 weeks of work.