So far, Mitt Romney’s delegate team has been doing a good job. He has over twice as many delegates as second-place Rick Santorum, and over 50% of all delegates that have been awarded. He is on track to win the nomination on the first ballot in Tampa despite not having won a majority of the vote anywhere but Idaho, Massachusetts, Virginia, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Romney did benefit from his victory in Arizona, which gave him all 29 of its delegates, but he’s done the rest of this so far by simply out-hustling his opponents. For example, he won 43 out of Virginia’s 46 delegates simply because Santorum and Gingrich failed to get the signatures they needed to secure a place on the ballot. Similarly, Santorum lost delegates in Ohio (and will lose more in Illinois) because he didn’t get delegates placed on the ballot in all congressional districts.
Some are suggesting that Newt Gingrich can be of more help to Santorum by staying in than by dropping out. This is actually not that hard to decide. The goal for Santorum and for Gingrich is to deny Romney an outright majority of the delegates. This might allow them to prevent his nomination on the first ballot in Tampa. So, as long as Romney isn’t getting more than 50% of the delegates awarded on a given night, Santorum and Gingrich are making progress toward their goal. The problem with the theory that Gingrich can help Santorum is that I can’t identify one state where he has done so, so far. He denied Santorum certain victories in Ohio and Michigan, and he failed to win any delegates at all in states like New Hampshire and Florida.
Gingrich can help, in theory, if he and Santorum win more delegates combined in a given state than Romney does, despite Romney winning the state. As far as I can tell, that outcome has not happened once. On the other hand, Gingrich can help Santorum if, by dropping out, he causes Santorum to win in states he would have otherwise lost, or if he allows Santorum to win by much bigger margins or in a broader swath of the congressional districts within a state.
Santorum will benefit most clearly from Gingrich dropping out in winner-take-all states like Delaware and New Jersey. Those two states, which border Santorum’s home-state of Pennsylvania, might go all Christine O’Donnell on Romney’s ass and give Santorum the boost he needs to deny Romney an outright majority of delegates at the convention.
Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see whether Puerto Ricans are angry with Mitt Romney over his strident anti-Latino rhetoric or if they follow the trend of all other U.S. territories and protectorates and support the least socially conservative candidate.
Hispanics, a powerful bloc whose vote could decide the outcome in pivotal states such as Nevada, Florida, Colorado and Arizona, seem to have responded by abandoning Romney, with only 14 percent of Hispanic voters favoring him over Obama in a recent Fox Latino poll — one-third of the Hispanic support George W. Bush enjoyed in 2004.
I don’t think right-leaning Puerto Ricans are going to vote the same way as Mexicans and Guatemalans in Arizona and Colorado. But it will be a pretty alarming signal if Romney doesn’t win the primary there quite comfortably.
Finally, there are two things that Romney has in his back pocket just in case he gets to Tampa without an outright majority of the delegates. There will be approximately 150 delegates from the RNC that he can probably count on, and he may be able to cut a deal with Ron Paul to pick up the support of his delegates.
However, I can’t envision a more divisive and disastrous outcome than Romney winning on the first ballot through backroom deals after failing to win the majority of elected delegates.
