Santorum Math is a Beautiful Thing (or Romney wins IL)

"My math has to be right! I counted with this many fingers!"

So Romney beat Santorum in Illinois. Now what?
Well, someone has to win in Louisiana Saturday, and it likely won't be Romney. But let's talk about IL before we go south.
In spite of my confusion yesterday about whether or not there are 54 or 69 delegates in IL, the answer is both. There are 54 "direct election proportional" and the remaining 15 are picked in a complicated "don't call them superdelegates" (because Democrats have supers, the GOPdoes not) process. So technically there were 54 delegates up for grabs last night, but Illinois has 69 delegates. Got it?
Really the only questions we all have at this point are -
1. Is Gingrich ready to drop out yet?
2. Does Santorum have a chance of reaching 1,144?
3. Is Romney going to reach the magic number, and if so, when?

To answer the first question, no. Gingrich still continues to make it clear he won't drop out, and that now he is only in the game to keep votes away from Romney. But quite frankly, isn't he also taking votes away from Santorum? Gingrich has been stumping in Louisiana, where he is matching Romney in the polls at about 20% each. Santorum leads there with about 34%.

On to the next two questions.

NBC’s “First Read"  says that even if Romney won every single delegate available after today, he wouldn’t reach the magic 1,144 number until the May 29 primary. If he only wins 60 percent of the delegates in most of the state, he won't reach the threshold number until the Utah primary on June 26. I can't find an article online to back me up, but I heard John King on CNN say pretty much the same thing last night.



There is no scenario where suddenly Santorum starts collecting so many votes so fast that he catches up with Romney and exceeds him. The best scenario for Santorum supporters is a brokered convention, which is anything but a sure win for Santorum, or anyone else for that matter (ahem, Gingrich, I'm looking at you).

So why would Santorum stay in the race just to come in second and then risk it all at a convention? Well, because in spite of what all of the experts say, his campaign has their own version of math.

Here's the simplest breakdown I can distill out of the not-that-simple delegate assigning process. Every state has delegates that are elected/selected (hereafter to be known as s/elected) courtesy of the voters, and the delegates for the most part, must follow what they were s/elected to do. (In caucus states, the delegates are elected. In some primary states, such as Illinois, they can also be elected. In most primary states, however, the party selects the delegates. Hence the s/elected situation.) But in most states there are also a few wildcard delegates (such as the 15 in Illinois). They aren't so much wildcards, as they are not bound by what the people of the state want them to do. In some jurisdictions they get to act all on their own, in others, they have to do what the state party tells them to do, and in others yet, they actually already belong to a specific candidate.

Yeah, that wasn't as simple sounding as it was supposed to be.

Okay, let's go back to Santorum. Simply put, he's banking on the fact that all of these delegate numbers are sort of fluid. That some delegates have the ability to change their votes. Specifically in Arizona and Florida that had large "winner take all" delegates. The GOP rules state that any state holding a primary before April cannot be a winner take all state. So those 79 delegates Romney took in AZ and FL early on, could, in theory, possibly, maybe want to change their loyalty and jump ship to Santorum's life raft.

Except wait for it! That's also not really the case. Yes, it could, possibly, maybe, potentially happen. But these are Republicans we are talking about here. They like state rights. You don't really think the RNC can really tell a state party what to do, do you? Because, no, they can't. To do so would be very anti-Republican.

So in other words, Santorum is smoking a pipe dream. Using Santorum math, where he takes away all of Romney's "free agents" and gives them to himself, Romney only has 435 delegates, and Santorum has 311. (Oh and he's giving Gingrich 158, and Paul 91. Which is generous indeed.)

Just for the record, here's how CNN counts up the current delegates-

(Come to think of it, he wasn't that generous to Gingrich. Maybe that's why Gingrich won't drop out?)

That's a pretty ridiculous difference. But I propose we all take choose to honor the Santorum math system. Think of all the things we could get ahead on using the "well, it could be mine in the future, so you should just give it to me now" method. For instance, I foresee winning the lottery in August, although my numbers have never been right before, I think they will be in August, at which point I will be very rich. So if you don't mind, I'll just start telling everyone I have a net worth of $29M today, and use that net worth to buy a house and apply for a few credit cards. Except why would I need a credit card if I have $29M? Oh right, because I don't really have $29M, I just want you to think I do, so that you are more likely to give me the $29M when the time comes.

Santorum math, people. It's a beautiful thing.