The Maine problem stems from two sources. First is that it's a caucus state and as with Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado, no actual delegates are awarded based on this results. Only delegates to the state convention (May 5) are elected and the actual candidate delegates will emerge from that.
Second is that Maine's caucuses are not finished yet. Unlike every other state caucus which meets on one day or even one weekend, Maine's caucuses meet over six weeks. The first caucus met on Jan. 29 and the last will meet on March 3. However, most of the caucuses were scheduled to be done on Feb. 11 so the Maine GOP elected to call an end to the straw poll on this day and the "winner" would be announced based on these numbers. Even this wouldn't have been too bad if Washington county hadn't decided to postpone it's caucus meetings until the 18th due to weather. This dropped the completion percentage from the 95% expected, to 84%. What's more, Uncle Ron has a lot of support in Washington County so the lead of 194 votes (out of 5585 cast) that Mr. Romney has will certainly shrink.
We won't know until May what the real results are. At the moment, Mr. Romney is simply taking the ball and running with the victory, which is the correct thing to do. Public perception is 9/10th of the game as far as the later races are concerned and that's all the matters to someone shooting for the actual nomination. Uncle Ron is just hoping to get enough delegates to influence the party platform and get a little respect.
This should be a pretty dead week from a political standpoint. The next debate is the following week and the next races are not until the end of February. So we have very little except traditional campaigning and fundraising.
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