The End of the Beginning

What happened on Super Tuesday? A good outcome for Romney, moderately respectable for Santorum, a very low threshold of positive for Gingrich. Paulistas hung in there. Before we look at the numbers, take a look at some of today’s headlines from Real Clear Politics:

·         Romney Has No Clear Path to 1144 Delegates

·         Doubts About Romney Aren't Going Away

·         It Ain't Over, and It Won't Be for a While

·         With No Knockout, Bruising Battle Plods On

·         Danger Signs for Mitt Romney

·         Tuesday Sets Up Long Slog to Nomination

·         Mitt Romney: The Candidate of "Eh, I Guess"

·         Inconclusive Tuesday

·         Super Tuesday Ends in Split Decision

·         Romney Racks Up Delegates as Campaign Underscores Weakness

Those are all just from today. But just the negative ones, so here’s a list of the positives:

·         It Will Be Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama

·         Romney Takes Another Step Toward Nomination

·         Ohio, Romney & November

Yes, that is ten against to three neutral/positive. These are from a wide range of mostly conservative pundits, so if you ever thought conservative media was in Romney’s pocket, you haven’t been keeping score. MSM stories tend to run 70+% negative toward Romney, as you’d expect. So, essentially all of Romney’s success is in spite of overwhelmingly negative media.

If you were to read the headlines without doing any math, you might think Super Tuesday had been an unmitigated disaster for Romney. So maybe we should do the math to find out the truth.

There were ten states voting yesterday. Romney won six (60% of the states). Santorum won three (30% of the states). Gingrich won one, (10% of the states). Paul won zero, but he and all of them did pick up some delegates. And it’s delegates that count toward the nomination, so we want to look at those, but before we do that, let’s look at percentage of voters, and the lead winners held over the second place finisher.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	59.5 % (+19%)	0%	0%	40%
Vermont	39.8% (+14.3%)	24%	8%	25%
Massachusetts	72.1% (+60%)	12%	5%	10%
Idaho	61.6% (+43.4%)	18%	2%	18%
Ohio	38.0% (+1%)	37%	15%	9%
Alaska	32.6% (+3/6%)	29%	14%	24%
Tennessee	28%	37.3% (+9.3%)	24%	9%
Oklahoma	28%	33.8% (+5.7%)	27%	10%
North Dakota	24%	40.0% (+12.9%)	8%	28%
Georgia	26%	20%	47.2% (+21.3%)	7%

Romney came in second in three of the four states he did not win (3^rd in the final state, North Dakota). In addition to the three he won, Santorum came in second five times (plus 3^rd in Vermont and not on the ballot in Virginia). Paul, who won zero, came in second in Virginia, Vermont, and North Dakota (with a very close 3^rd in Idaho). Gingrich did get that important win in his home state, but he still got less than half the voters there; he came in third or dead last in all the rest. There’s a little more to rub in about Gingrich: he had tried to claim Romney barely won his “home state” of Michigan last month, but Romney hasn’t lived there for forty years (he still won, but it was close). However, Massachusetts, where Romney has been living since his 20s resoundingly supported him. Gingrich’s support in Georgia was much more tepid. And in his other home state,” Virginia, where he has been living for the past decade, he failed to get on the ballot. If Romney had failed to get a vote in Michigan, then Gingrich might have something to say about that, but Romney won the “other home state.”

OK, but since the delegate count matters in the end, that’s the real story. Here’s how that went.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	43	0	0	3
Vermont	9	4	0	4
Massachusetts	38	0	0	0
Idaho	32	0	0	0
Ohio	38	21	0	0
Alaska	8	7	3	6
Tennessee	11	26	11	0
Oklahoma	11	18	11	0
North Dakota	7	11	2	8
Georgia	19	3	54	0

 Romney was awarded 168 delegates in states he won, plus 48 in states he didn’t win (he got delegates in every state), for a total of 276 for the day.

Santorum was awarded 55 delegates in states he won, plus 35 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 90 for the day.

Gingrich was awarded 54 delegates in the state he won, plus 27 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 81 for the day.

Paul was awarded 21 delegates for the day.

The total for the day was 468 (not all estimates are the same; these are the current estimates from MSNBC.com, which may vary slightly from RealClearPolitics.com). Romney was awarded 59% of the votes. Santorum got 19%. Gingrich got 17%. Paul got a little under 5%. Put another way, if you add up all the non-Romney delegates, that’s 192, or just 41% of the delegates.

Of the 731 delegates assigned so far, Romney has 404, Santorum has 161, Gingrich has 105, and Paul has 61. Romney has 55% of the delegates so far.

Is it a sure thing that Romney will get the nomination? No. But he is a very strong and very clear front runner. Santorum would need to garner over 60% of the remaining delegates (with Utah and California looming ahead) in order to have a chance. Another thing we’ve seen is that, when Romney goes in person to spend time in a state, so that people see him instead of the media-created perceptions of him, the trend surges in his favor. My guess is that more of that surging is likely to happen after healthy Super Tuesday wins.