Mitt Romney Clinches Republican Nomination with Landslide Win in Texas

As of last night, with 69% of the vote in Texas, Governor Mitt Romney has secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination to be the candidate of the Republican Party in the 2012 general election.

His campaign released the following statement last night:

Today, Mitt Romney released the following statement on clinching the required number of delegates for the Republican nomination.

“I am honored that Americans across the country have given their support to my candidacy and I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee. Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three and a half years behind us. I have no illusions about the difficulties of the task before us. But whatever challenges lie ahead, we will settle for nothing less than getting America back on the path to full employment and prosperity. On November 6, I am confident that we will unite as a country and begin the hard work of fulfilling the American promise and restoring our country to greatness.”

As the above map shows, Texas was a Romney landslide and Ron Paul could only manage 11.9% of the votes in his own home state...the worst home state performance of any Presidential candidate this election cycle. (Mitt Romney 72.2% in Massachusetts, Newt Gingrich 47.2% in Georgia and Rick Santorum 18.3% in Pennsylvania).



The delegate count, according to the AP, stands at:

1,183 Mitt Romney
261 Rick Santorum
135 Newt Gingrich
129 Ron Paul

Now, the focus of the Republican Party, save for a few delusional people, will turn to working toward the election of Mitt Romney as the 45th President of the United States of America and the RNC National Convention in Tampa Bay [website], Florida will be a showcase for the Romney Campaign [website].

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Santorum Throws in the Etch-A-Sketch, Suspends His Presidential Campaign

Rick Santorum has finally wizened up to the fact that there was no way he could win this primary.

He dropped out today before he suffered an embarrassing loss in his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24th.

This leaves the financially broken Newt Gingrich and the delegate-starved Ron Paul still in the race.

Story from the New York Slimes:

2:51 p.m. | Updated Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign on Tuesday, bowing to the inevitability of Mitt Romney’s nomination and ending his improbable, come-from-behind quest to become the party’s conservative standard-bearer in the fall.

“We made a decision over the weekend, that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting,” Mr. Santorum said.

Hat Tip: Drudge Report

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Romney Sweeps the Night Wins WI, MD and DC

Mitt Romney has swept the April 3rd primaries with wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia. It looks like Romney will garner 86 delegates and Santorum will get 6 delegates. As I have been saying for more than a month, this primary is over and we have a presumptive nominee. Santorum failed to qualify for the District of Columbia primary.

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Delegate Math

For the purposes of this exercise, I'll use the AP Delegate Numbers.

Candidate	Mitt Romney	Rick Santorum	Newt Gingrich	Ron Paul
Delegates	655	278	135	51
% of Nomination	57.26%	24.30%	11.80%	4.46%
Delegates Needed	487 of 1,167	866 of 1,167	1,009 of 1,167	1,093 of 1,167
% of Remaining Delegates Needed	41.90%	74.21%	86.46%	93.66%

In other words, it's time for Santorum and Gingrich to put on their big boy pants and admit that it is over.

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The Race So Far




Graphics

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Speeches

Mitt Romney


Rick Santorum


I could find no speeches uploaded for Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. I think that the networks have pulled their embeds from these campaigns and that the campaigns themselves are too disorganized to even think of posting videos of their candidate online. That alone should disqualify them from a national race.

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Next Up

On April 21st, Missouri has their third chance to select delegates this primary season. I think the "Show Me" state has taken things too far this election cycle. I've blogged about the mess in Missouri previously, check it out.

Then on April 24th, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich reach the point where they become mathematically ruled out. New York (95 delegates), Pennsylvania (72 delegates), Connecticut (28 delegates), Rhode Island (19 delegates) and Delaware (17 delegates).

I expect Mitt Romney stands an excellent chance to win them all. I believe it is probable that he will take Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum's home state.

On May 8th, Rick Santorum (depending on how many delegates he wins on April 21st and 28th) may be mathematically eliminated from the nomination battle.

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Mitt Romney Wins the Illinois Primary

Mitt Romney won the Illinois primary last night with 428,434 votes to Rick Santorum's 321,079 votes.Ron Paul came in a distant third with 85,464 and Newt Gingrich finished fourth with only 72,942 votes. These numbers are with 99% of the votes counted.



This latest victory puts Mitt Romney in the neighborhood of 300 delegates ahead of Rick Santorum, 430 ahead of Newt Gingrich and around 500 or so ahead of Ron Paul. In the next few weeks, the already mathematically unlikely campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul will be mathematically eliminated from the possibility of gaining enough delegates to win as the number of delegates needed will become greater than those remaining to be won. The Gingrich and Paul Campaigns would already have to win in the neighborhood of 80% of the remaining delegates in order to secure the nomination of the Republican party. The Santorum Campaign needs nearly 70% to get the nomination and Romney needs less than 50% to cinch the nomination.

It's time the party closed ranks behind Mitt Romney and started working toward a victory in November. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have already proved themselves incapable of working together within the Republican party in order to achieve a victory over Mitt Romney.

Videos

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Mitt Romney Victory Speech


Rick Santorum After Losing Illinois


I could find no videos of Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich speaking after losing Illinois, so that must mean that the networks have pulled their embeds with those two campaigns since I've not been able to find video of either of them after the last few contests. You'd think that the campaigns would be smart enough to make their own videos and upload them to Youtube.

Here are some additional videos of the Romney Campaign activity in Illinois...


Mitt Romney Campaign Google Plus Hangout



Mitt Romney Campaign Speech in Illinois

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Rick Santorum Takes Missouri (Again) Mitt Romney Dominates Puerto Rico Ron Paul Supporters Sabotage Missouri Caucuses

It is presumed that Rick Santorum has re-won Missouri (despite sabotage attempts by Ron Paul supporters) the state is scheduled to have another caucus on April 21st, where delegates will be chosen at the congressional district conventions. There are two more votes scheduled for Missouri. Here is an explanation of how the confusing caucus system in Missouri works:

How do the caucuses work?

• County Caucuses, March 17, 2012: Attendees will select delegates and alternates to the Congressional District Conventions and State Convention.  Delegates selected at the county level will not be bound to a specific candidate unless a rule is passed by participants of the caucus. (See below for a list of county caucus locations.)

• Congressional District Conventions, April 21, 2012: Delegates chosen at the county level will select 3 delegates and alternates to the National Convention and 1 presidential elector.  These delegates and alternates will identify their candidate before being chosen.  They will be bound to that candidate on the first ballot at the national convention. (For Congressional District Convention location information, please see the bottom of this page.)

• State Convention, June 2, 2012: Delegates chosen at the county level will vote on a slate of 25 at-large delegates and alternates to the National Convention and 2 at-large presidential electors. These delegates and alternates will identify their candidate before being chosen.  They will be bound to that candidate on the first ballot at the national convention.

Source: Missouri GOP

The results of the previous Missouri caucus.

More on the attempts to sabotage the Missouri caucuses by Ron Paul supporters is after the section on Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico


Mitt Romney won over 50% of the Puerto Rican vote, meaning he gets all 20 of the delegates. It is expected that he will get 2 of the 3 superdelegates as well.

The Puerto Rico Results with 83% of precincts reporting:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Mitt Romney	98,375	88.0%
Rick Santorum	9,524	8.5%
Newt Gingrich	2,431	2.2%
Ron Paul	1,452	1.3%

There are no victory speeches available, so here are a couple of other videos relating to the Puerto Rican primary and a look at the way at least one candidate got the results of the vote...

Tablet News Delivery




Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuño greets Mitt Romney


Ron Paul Supporters Sabotage Missouri Caucuses


St Charles County




An account from a caucus participant in Christian County, Missouri:

Hubby and myself were in the Christian County Republican caucus today. It was insane.

Nobody got arrested like in St Charles, because our sheriff was the sargent in arms--but it got nutso from the get go....

The Ron Paulites tried to take over the process by bastardizing Robert Rules of order, objecting to every teeny tiny thing.

Their leader stood up and threaten to take their votes to Obama if the the majority did not respect the Ron paul minority and elect the chosen Ron paul delegates.

Source: Atlas Shrugs (read the whole thing) 

Here is an account by a Ron Paul Supporter of what he observed in St Charles County:

GOP voters began showing up at the high school two hours before the caucus was set to begin at 10 a.m. Though the meeting didn’t start on time as organizers worked to accommodate the near-overflow crowd, attendees would get more than they bargained for before the day ended.

The caucus began shortly after 11 a.m. with an invocation and pledge of allegiance. It was followed by a reading of the rules by County GOP Central Committee Member Bryan Spencer and an introduction of County GOP Chair Eugene Dokes.

Dokes reiterated the importance of the rules and emphasized the ban on recording devices before pausing to implore a man in the bleachers to turn off his video camera or face arrest.

Source: Bob McCarty Writes (he also links to other coverage of the chaos)



Video from Christian County


A Ron Paul Supporter describes the plan to subvert the caucus process by putting forth delegates as Trojan Horses


I, as a conservative, am disgusted by the unruly and anarchistic behavior of the libertarian supporters of Ron Paul. Perhaps the events of this weekend will encourage the Republican party to move away from a voting method that is easily sabotaged by a handful of organized bad actors. Primaries are not so easily sabotaged and they allow for the participation of more people in the process of selecting the nominee of their party.

Delegate Math

The nomination of the Republican party candidate for President is essentially a numbers game. The 2,286 delegates who attend the RNC 2012 Convention in Tampa, Florida will select the nominee of the Republican party based on the varied (and often confusing) rules of the state or territory they represent. The candidate who will be the nominee of the party has to receive the votes of 1,144 of the 2,286 delegates.

In past election cycles, most states were winner take all and the nomination was usually acknowledged before March by a majority of the serious candidates and they would drop out in order to clear the way for the candidate who had demonstrated they had a plurality of support in the party.

This year, things are different in two ways. First, the RNC voted to change the calendar and made most states give out their delegates in a proportional manner in order to prolong the nomination contest. This, in my opinion, was an important ingredient in a recipe for disaster. The second change, is the unwillingness of candidates to acknowledge they cannot win the delegates necessary to be the nominee of the party. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are running as spoilers, hoping to deny the front runner the number of delegates necessary to be nominated. The reason I don't include Ron Paul in this category is because he has never been a threat to upset the process; he simply does not have the level of support necessary to pull it off and...the majority of his supporters are not likely to vote for the Republican nominee if that nominee is not Ron Paul.

Here is the state of the nomination contest to date: (March 19, 2012)

Candidate	Delegates Won	% Delegates Won	Delegates Needed	% Remaining Needed
Mitt Romney	513	44.84%	631 of 1328	47.52%
Rick Santorum	239	20.89%	905 of 1328	68.15%
Newt Gingrichl	139	12.15%	1005 of 1328	75.68%
Ron Paul	69	6.03%	1075 of 1328	80.95%

The numbers are stark. It is virtually impossible for anyone other than Mitt Romney to win the nomination and, at this point, to stay in the race is a destructive act that adds nothing to what has previously been said. All it does is increase friction and discord within the various ideological factions within the party. All this when we will be facing a very well funded candidate (Obama) who will be enjoying an unprecedented army of organized supporters who will be building on their 2008 campaign experience.

I've used the numbers from CNN for this table. Most of the "guesstimates" of how many delegates each candidate has is within 20 delegates of the numbers used above and, if those other numbers are used, change little in the look of the table.

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Santorum takes Alabama and Mississippi Romney takes Hawaii American Samoa Not Reporting

This election night didn't turn out like I had thought it would. I had already colored in the map to show Newt Gingrich taking Alabama and Mississippi. Instead, Rick Santorum had a very good closing argument and eeked out twin wins in the deep south. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney finished in very close second and third in both, with Ron Paul a very distant fourth. As expected, Mitt Romney is taking close to fifty percent of the vote in Hawaii and is expected to take American Samoa also. The results from the latter haven't come in yet.  It is possible that the delegates from Hawaii and American Samoa will cause Romney to net more delegates than either of his opponents.


**update 10.25am** According to ABC News [link], here is the expected delegate haul from last night:


41 Mitt Romney
35 Rick Santorum
24 Newt Gingrich
01 Ron Paul


The Washington Post has more on the delegate math [link]:

According to the Associated Press delegate count, Mitt Romney won 42 delegates last night to 38 for Rick Santorum. By winning nine delegates in American Samoa and 45 percent of the vote in Hawaii, Romney wiped out Rick Santorum’s narrow wins in the Deep South. And, just like Saturday, when Santorum won Kansas and lost ground to Romney, today Santorum’s task to get to 1,114 delegates (as he promised last night he would) is that much harder.
Over and over again you hear pundits say things like, “Well if you look at the math. . . ” and “Romney wants to focus on just the math.” There should be a gong at the ready when talking heads and pundits go into that mode. The nominating process is about the delegates. Math, like gravity, can’t be ignored.
To be clear, Santorum cannot win the nomination by closely splitting proportional states and losing winner-take-all states. That is a formula for falling further and further behind. And that is what is happening.
There are 1,358 delegates yet to be awarded. Romney has 495. He needs 694 delegates, less than 48 percent of the remaining delegates, to wrap it up.

Here are some maps, exit polls and videos of the results for you to check out the results of the March 13th voting results:

Alabama





The AP projects that the delegates from Alabama will be awarded as follows:
16 Rick Santorum
12 Newt Gingrich
10 Mitt Romney
00 Ron Paul

Here is some exit polling data:

Which best describes your education?	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
High school or less	21%	27%	32%	33%	4%
Some college/assoc. degree	35%	26%	34%	32%	6%
College graduate	26%	31%	40%	25%	4%
Postgraduate study	18%	35%	31%	25%	6%

No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Democrat	6%	-	-	-	-
Republican	70%	30%	34%	32%	3%
Independent or something else	24%	27%	33%	25%	11%

On most political matters, do you consider yourself:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Very conservative	36%	18%	41%	36%	4%
Somewhat conservative	31%	31%	31%	33%	2%
Moderate or liberal	33%	39%	29%	19%	9%

How do you feel about the Tea Party movement?	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Support	62%	26%	36%	34%	3%
Neutral	24%	32%	35%	23%	7%
Oppose	9%	41%	26%	15%	11%

White evangelical or white born-again Christians	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
White evangelical or white born-again Christian	75%	27%	35%	32%	4%
All others	25%	34%	31%	21%	10%

Which comes closest to your position? Abortion should be:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Legal in all cases	8%	-	-	-	-
Legal in most cases	18%	39%	26%	26%	6%
Illegal in most cases	38%	24%	37%	31%	5%
Illegal in all cases	32%	18%	49%	28%	3%

Which ONE of these candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted today? (CHECK ONLY ONE)	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Can defeat Barack Obama	36%	51%	15%	32%	1%
Is a true conservative	18%	5%	51%	34%	9%
Has strong moral character	24%	24%	62%	7%	7%
Has the right experience	19%	33%	6%	51%	5%

See the rest of this exit poll at Fox News.

Mississippi




The AP projects that the delegates from Mississippi will be awarded as follows:
13 Rick Santorum
12 Newt Gingrich
12 Mitt Romney
00 Ron Paul

Here is some exit polling data:

Which best describes your education?	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
High school or less	22%	31%	29%	37%	3%
Some college/assoc. degree	35%	26%	37%	32%	4%
College graduate	26%	31%	34%	29%	5%
Postgraduate study	17%	36%	31%	25%	7%

No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Democrat	4%	-	-	-	-
Republican	80%	31%	34%	32%	2%
Independent or something else	16%	28%	29%	25%	16%

On most political matters, do you consider yourself:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Very conservative	42%	22%	39%	35%	4%
Somewhat conservative	29%	33%	31%	31%	4%
Moderate or liberal	29%	38%	28%	26%	7%

How do you feel about the Tea Party movement?	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Support	66%	27%	34%	34%	4%
Neutral	25%	35%	32%	27%	5%
Oppose	6%	37%	30%	21%	8%

White evangelical or white born-again Christians	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
White evangelical or white born-again Christian	80%	29%	35%	32%	3%
All others	20%	33%	27%	27%	11%

Which comes closest to your position? Abortion should be:	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Legal in all cases	8%	-	-	-	-
Legal in most cases	18%	40%	19%	33%	6%
Illegal in most cases	43%	34%	31%	29%	4%
Illegal in all cases	28%	21%	44%	30%	4%

Which ONE of these candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted today? (CHECK ONLY ONE)	Total	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Can defeat Barack Obama	39%	46%	22%	30%	1%
Is a true conservative	20%	7%	52%	34%	5%
Has strong moral character	20%	22%	65%	8%	5%
Has the right experience	19%	29%	8%	59%	4%

You can see the rest of the exit poll at Fox News.



Hawaii




There are no projections for how the delegates from Hawaii will be awarded, but since it is proportional according to congressional district, I expect that Mitt Romney will get a few more than the second place finisher, Rick Santorum. There are 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii. 

As far as I can tell, there have been no exit polling data released that covers Hawaii.

American Samoa

There are no results from American Samoa yet. I expect that it will go to Romney. 6 of the 9 delegates are up in this election.



The Speechifying




Rick Santorum


Newt Gingrich

I can find no video of Mitt Romney or Ron Paul from last night. That is odd, especially since the Ron Paul people almost always upload hundreds of copies of his remarks to Youtube.

Next Up

With the unexpected wins for Santorum, this puts extra pressure on the Romney Campaign to do well in a very electorally lean March. Illinios becomes very important.

The rest of March sees Missouri caucusing (again) on the 17th, Puerto Rico on the 18th, Illinios (95 delegates in one winner take all race) on the 20th and Louisiana on the 24th.


In April, Maryland, Washington, DC and Wisconsin are on the 3rd and the bigger fish of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Rhode Island taking place on the 24th.

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