Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page.
So, we now have the rest of the results from Nevada. Compared to the update yesterday… everybody gains 2 more delegates… splitting the 8 that were remaining after yesterdays update evenly. That brings us for a total in Nevada of 14 for Romney, 6 for Gingrich, 5 for Paul and 3 for Santorum.
On our nifty “% of delegates remaining needed to win” we actually have the situation between yesterday and today of EVERYBODY moving a bit further away from the nomination than they were yesterday. This is because with the even split in delegates, given where everybody started, nobody actually exceeded the percentages they needed to stay on track for cinching. But if you consider Nevada as a whole, not just today’s update, you see that the overall picture is that Romney’s holding just about steady (very slight improvement) in how close he is to the nomination… this really didn’t help him all that much by that metric… but everybody else falls further and further behind…
We still have the situation that so far Romney has 61.5% of the delegates… but he only needs 49.2% of the remaining delegates to win, so he can actually do slightly worse than he has been doing so far and still win…. while Gingrich, his nearest competitor, has only managed 23.1% of the delegates so far, but would need to get 52.0%… more than DOUBLE what he has been getting so far, in order to catch up and win.
Now, that might still be possible… if some of the other candidates drop out… but while improving by a few percent is easy to see as possible, more than doubling how you have been doing so far is getting to be a really far stretch. Again, candidates dropping out could change dynamics. But as long as we have the four we have right now, the views forward for any of the non-Romneys involve them suddenly starting to do massively better than they have so far, so something dramatic would need to change. (Some would argue that some of the states coming up are dramatically different by their nature and this is the chance that these guys need. We shall see I guess… But it is seeming unlikely.)
How simplistic!
We are in a marathon not a sprint, there are a lot of vets, blue dog dems, a few republicans and crap load of young people that will make sure that this simplistic argument for Romney will not hold true. We are tired of the establishment we want real change! Ron Paul Go Baby Go!
The simplistic argument above is simply that for any of the candidates other than Romney to catch up and win, they have to do significantly better than they have so far, and for that to happen there would have to be a dramatic change in the dynamics of the race.
Even Santorum’s wins yesterday did not produce enough delegates to put him on track to catch up and get the delegates necessary to win. And while Ron Paul has been counting on playing the delegate game states by state for the long slog, so far his delegate take has been low.
Again, there is always room for a very dramatic change in the dynamics of the race… which could be precipitated by a candidate dropping out, or by other factors. But it has to be a big change. Romney can continue to perform the way he has so far… which isn’t that great… and he will get the nomination… just barely… he has to do better than he has so far in order to actually get there with a comfortable margin.
But the other candidates have to do a LOT better than they have so far in order to catch up and win before the convention.
But if the others all stay in, and they all just do a LITTLE better than they have so far… then they can prevent Romney from getting to the magic number of delegates, taking us in to the convention without any candidate having the nomination in hand. If you get to that point, almost anything can happen, including nominating someone who isn’t even in the race today, as after the first or second ballots, the delegates are no longer bound and become free agents.
That is the kind of excitement that hasn’t happened in many decades though, so I’m not holding my breath for that to happen. It would be wonderful to watch if it did though.