Five Percent

To no one's surprise, Mr. Romney did win Florida. The one surprise was by how large a margin he won (14 points). To a significant degree, this was a two-man race. Neither Uncle Ron nor Mr. Santorum had the money to do any ad buys in the expensive state and only spent a little money on organization offices and some tours around the state. Their 7 and 13% showings tend to reflect this lack of attention.

Mr. Romney was heavily buoyed by the early voting. The early numbers that went up over the networks were all due to early voting and Mr. Romney consistently held around 50% of the vote in those cases. His percentage steadily went down as the actual election day votes came in (even more so as the panhandle votes came in, which Newt won).


As noted in yesterday's post, all four men are soldiering on. For three of them, it's going to be nibbling at Mr. Romney's heels until Super Tuesday. He will be favored in most of the states but none are winner take all and I think there is enough dissatisfaction with Mr. Romney that there will be delegate allocation to other candidates.

February hands out 196 delegates as opposed to the 115 that were handed out in January (although this is theoretical as caucus state do not award delegates until their state conventions which are held later). The hard count stands at 59 for Romney, 23 for Gingrich, and 3 for Paul. Santorum has been credited in most standing with anywhere between 6 and 12 delegates for Iowa, but he won't know how many he's actually getting until mid-June. Likewise with Mr. Romney who gets anywhere from 6 to 12 Iowa delegates and is generally awarded Mr. Huntsman's 2 delegates from New Hampshire. So, given how you slice it, Mr. Romney has anywhere between 5 and 6.5% of the delegates he needs to win the nomination (1144).

Nevada theoretically gives out 28 delegates on Saturday (although they won't actually be allocated until the state convention on May 6) with Colorado and Minnesota giving out an additional 76 theoretical delegates on February 7 (state conventions are April 14 and May 5 respectively).