Various people are debating whether having Gingrich in the race helps or hurts Romney’s chances of reaching 1,144 delegates and clinching the GOP nomination. Many of Santorum’s supporters think that Gingrich is robbing him of delegates that he needs to stop Romney, while Gingrich supporters are arguing that splitting the delegates makes it more difficult for Romney to win. The fact is, it does not matter, because barring finding Romney in bed with a dead girl or live boy, as Edwin Edwards once put it, he has clinched it mathematically.
Taking a look at the current standings, estimated by TheGreenPapers.com we have:
- Romney: 493 - 51%
- Santorum: 235 - 24%
- Gingrich: 157 - 16%
- Paul: 77 - 8%
That’s 962 decided delegates with 1,324 remaining.
With that many delegates remaining, how can it be over?
Well, there are two ways to allocate the delegates that remain. One is by a proportional system where each candidate gets some amount of delegates that are in proportion to each candidates share of the vote. So, if 30 delegates are at stake and three candidates split evenly, each would get 10. The other is winner take all, where the person securing the plurality (the most) of the vote gets all of the delegates.
The winner take all states that remain are: DC, MD, WI, DE, IN, CA, NJ, UT.
If a single candidate gets a majority in the following states, is it winner take all, but proportional otherwise: PR, CT, NY.
Let’s assume that Gingrich and Paul stay in and therefore PR, CT and NY will stay proportional. Of the WTA states, Romney is all but assured victory in DC, DE, CA, NJ, and UT. Together, those are 298 delegates. Being as generous as possible and giving Santorum the other 125 WTA delegates we have: