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| "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.
