2012 Republican Delegate Count: Huntsman Out

Nominally when a candidate drops out their delegates become free agents, but in practice if a candidate endorses another candidate, the delegates fall in line and vote for the person their candidate endorsed, at least for delegates from the primary and caucus process. My source for these delegates, The Green Papers, uses that presumption for their “soft count” (which is what I am using), so today we have Huntsman’s two delegates jumping over to Romney.

This also puts Romney back in the best position he has been in before voting started. He now has more than 50% of the delegates so far, which means he needs less than 50% of the remaining delegates to win. Another way to put that is that he doesn’t even have to match his performance so far to win. For the rest of the race he can do WORSE than he has done so far (including superdelegates!) and he will still win. The other candidates have to IMPROVE their performance in order to catch up and win. The amount they have to improve by isn’t completely out of the realm of contemplation yet, but it is getting higher.