Santorum drops out but Romney hasn't won it yet

Today is April 11, 2012 and yesterday Rick Santorum dropped out of the Race for the Nomination of the Republican Party. Partially because this is the second time during this campaign that his daughter had been hospitalized but I believed that mostly he didn’t see a viable path to the nomination and wanted to avoid the possible embarrassment of losing his home state of Pennsylvania. Losing Pennsylvania would severely cripple his chances at pursuing political office in the future.

So, now the headlines read respectively:

CNN.com: It’s game on between Obama and Romney

FoxNews.com: Presidential race now down to 2 clear choices (Referring to Romney and Obama)

MSNBC.com: What we learned from the GOP race (This assumes that the race is over now)

The problem I have with all of these headlines is that they’re wrong. I’m not saying that at this point that it’s not fairly likely that Romney will win the Republican nomination but I’m just saying that the race is far from over. It’s really bothersome to hear how almost everyone in the media is talking like this things is over.

According to NBC’s numbers Romney has 573 delegates out of the 1144 needed to secure the nomination. Up to this point Romney has only won Republican primaries in States that lean Democratic in the General elections states that have large Mormon populations. The exceptions to this are that he won the swing states of Ohio and Florida as well as Virginia, although he won Virginia with both Santorum and Gingrich not being on the ballot. And most of the states that he won he was not able to break 50%. The exceptions were Massachusetts(one of his home states), Virginia (where only Ron Paul was running against him), Nevada, and Idaho. It seems as though it is obvious that most of the Republican Party does not want Romney to be their nominee especially people from traditionally Republican states.

The next primary day is April 24^th where five traditionally democratic states will decide who they want to be their nominee. Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island will all be holding primaries and if things go to plan Romney will have a good day. I’m sure Romney will be able to win all of these states with his only two competitors being Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul but what if he still can’t break 50% in these states. What if he can only get around 45% of the votes and Gingrich and Paul split the other 55% of the vote. That would not send a message of confidence to the Republican Party that Romney has this thing locked up. Then in May there will be a slew of more conservative states that will vote and I believe that it’s possible within todays Republican party that all of these states could vote for Gingrich over Romney as a protest to what many Republicans see as a unprincipled candidate that is not conservative like them.

So, in May we will have Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nebraska, Oregon, Arkansas, and Kentucky. If Romney loses all or most of these races the more favorable month of June may not save him. In June we will have the primaries of California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah. At that point every vote may be a clear vote either for Romney or against just in protest even if the person voting doesn’t really like Gingrich or Paul. They may vote for one of the two of them just to prove the point that they don’t want Romney.

If Romney is able to win every traditionally Democratic state and lose every traditionally Republican state excluding Utah, which he will win, my calculations have him at 1099 delegates going into the convention. Now these numbers are not solid numbers. Each state has different ways to award these delegates and different laws on whether these delegates of truly bound to vote for their candidate and there will be a possible legal battle over the 50 delegates that were awarded to Romney from Florida since Republican rules do not allow Florida use a winner take all system in this year’s primary. So that number could get bigger or smaller. And if Romney pulls off some big wins in some more conservative states he’ll be able to secure the nomination before we get to the convention but the truth is we don’t know yet.

I do need to mention that there are people know as super delegates who could help Romney get over that hump. They can go to the convention and vote for whoever they want. In a scenario where Romney has won a few conservative states I’m sure they will all jump on his band wagon but if he starts to really show that he is a weak candidate they might vote for someone else just to stop him from being the nominee.

So now the question is if not Romney then who. Well, in my opinion at this point I do think it will be Romney but I’m just putting the idea out there that he doesn’t have it wrapped up yet. If at the convention no candidate gets the 1144 delegates that they need to get the nomination then they all just vote a second time and a third time and as many times as it takes until someone gets the 1144 delegates that are needed to win the nomination. If no compromise can be made on one of the three candidates left in the race then maybe some other Republican will come out of the blue to win the nomination. I really don’t know what will happen but I just want to people to understand that Romney is not the only choice left and anything can happen at the convention if he does not have the 1144 delegates that he needs going into the convention.