Chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have cinched the nomination. If they get up past 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated.

The chart above is now the chart using the “% of delegates already allocated” as the x-axis rather than the date, because I think it more clearly shows what is actually going on at this point.

Romney picks up all 29 delegates from Arizona. As of this update the best estimates at The Green Papers gives Romney 15 delegates from Michigan, Santorum 13, and 2 delegates still too close to call. Those of you who read my Gaming Out Arizona and Michigan post will recognize Scenario 2, which at the time I said was the most likely result, and indeed, that is what happened. If the last outstanding congressional district ends up going for Santorum, then it will actually match Scenario 2 exactly. Regardless though, the general outlines of Scenario 2 are met, and I’ll just quote my analysis from that earlier post:

Romney is still the only winner here. It is clearly not as big a win [as if he had won nearly all of Michigan’s delegates through a more geographically even win], but Romney still makes his “% of remaining delegates needed to win” go DOWN, and go down to under 50%. Santorum, despite getting some delegates, is still in a worse position than when he started the night. Before he needed 54.1% of the remaining delegates to catch up and win the nomination, now he needs 54.9% [actually 55.0% pending disposition of those last 2 delegates]. Santorum does pull ahead of Gingrich though, and put himself clearly into second place. But the three non-Romney’s in this situation are still all heading upward (toward being mathematically eliminated), none of them has started to actually move down toward catching up and winning. Romney in this situation does improve a bit here, but also still isn’t breaking out downward yet. He is still hovering in the zone where his opponents (collectively) only have to do a little bit better to block him from getting the nomination. Note that they do have to do better though. Paul, Gingrich and Santorum could keep getting delegates at the same rate, and Romney would still get the nomination, it would just take awhile.

Attention now moves to first Wyoming and Washington (although they are not getting much attention) and then of course Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is not as super as it was in 2008, but there are still a big chunk of delegates at stake, and after it is over, we should have a better view of what the rest of the race looks like, and specifically if Romney is able to break out and start closing on 1144, or if the non-Romney’s still have a real shot at blocking him from getting there. (Let alone actually catching up and winning, which is a much further stretch.)