Santorum’s campaign releases their delegate count: Romney 571, Santorum 342

This is interesting. There’s a lot of issues as to how this will be handled at the convention by the RNC as they explain below, but their numbers certainly look better than the media’s counts. I’m sure they will be analyzed quite at bit in the coming days:

The Media’s Delegate Math is Wrong

There are a couple of fundamental flaws with the delegate counts that the media keeps that reveals that this race is much closer than they report:

1)      Florida, Arizona, and quite possibly Puerto Rico will be proportional rather than Winner Take All.  They broke RNC rules by going winner take all before the window and therefore RNC Members and/or the convention will enforce the rules and make the delegations proportional.  This will reduce Romney’s delegate total substantially and increase the other three candidates’ respective delegate totals.

2)      National Convention Delegates are elected at County, District, and State conventions rather than by the initial beauty contests in many states.  For example, in Washington State Romney was allocated 25 delegates, Paul 8 delegates, Santorum 7 delegates, and Gingrich 0 delegates.  The Santorum and Paul campaigns are working together in Washington State and the result will be more delegates for Santorum and Paul and a dramatic decrease in delegates for Romney.  Santorum will also over perform in most other states that use this process and Romney will underperform.

3)      Unbound delegates – The media continues to put unbound delegates in their counts in the territories and other states.  These folks can change their mind, or have yet to make up their mind, and should not be counted as if they are bound.

 

The REAL Count

Our current internal count that takes into account ongoing county, district, and state conventions is as follows:

Romney – 571

Santorum – 342

Newt – 158

Paul – 91

 

Texas is Going Winner Take All

The state of Texas is in the process of announcing that they are going to go Winner Take All rather than proportional.  This will have a dramatic impact on the delegate projections, tighten the race after Santorum wins Texas, and significantly hinder Romney’s capacity to ever get 1144 delegates because he will not get his proportion of the state.  Simply put, this is a Game Changer.  The race is almost even if you account for a Rick Santorum win in Texas under a Winner Take All system, and there is a clear Conservative Majority with Newt Gingrich.

 

The Calendar Moves to May

The month of April was always going to be difficult but the calendar gets much more friendly for Rick Santorum in May.  North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Nebraska, Oregon, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas might lead to Santorum winning roughly 7 out of 8 states in May, and heading into the June 5th primaries with a freight train of momentum.

 

Conservative Majority with Newt Gingrich

The campaign continues to reach out to Newt Gingrich’s team to work together on County, State, and District conventions to prevent Romney from achieving 1144 and to elect a Conservative Majority of delegates.


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