Consolidation

As expected, Mr. Romney won all five contests last night and won them handily. I was wondering if a stray county or so would turn out in protest for another candidate (especially for Uncle Ron), but that does not appear to be the case.

Pennsylvania is still sorting things out as they elect their delegates directly (with each delegate declaring whom they support), but Mr. Romney has taken 10 of the first 22 delegates available in Pennsylvania. Another 37 delegates will be assigned as they sort out the votes and the last 10 will be elected by the Pennsylvania Executive Committee in June. Nominally, these 10 along with the 3 party leaders will be "Uncommitted" but they will all fall in line and support Mr. Romney I'm sure.

The other four states were dominating wins by Mr. Romney. He took all available delegates in Connecticut, Delaware, and New York and 3/4 of the available delegates in Rhode Island (Rhode Island does not have a 50% threshold rule as New York and Connecticut do). The last 1/4 in Rhode Island (4 delegates) were taken by Uncle Ron as he was the only other candidate to break the 20% voting threshold.

So, in the hard count, Mr. Romney now has 782 delegates or 68% of what he needs. This bumps up to 844 if you include non-binding pledges and caucus estimations, which would take his percentage up to almost 74%. Mr. Santorum is still in second with 226 hard delegates. Newt is third at 138 and Uncle Ron is trying to claw his way out of fourth, having now collected 61 delegates.

Next up are the state conventions in Maine and Minnesota on May 5 which will dispense another 21 and 13 delegates respectively. I would expect Uncle Ron to take most of these. Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia follow with primaries on May 8.

Mathematically, Mr. Romney will not be able to clinch the nomination in any delegate count until the Texas primary. If, for some reason, he fails to get the needed delegates by then, he will certainly do it on June 5 when California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota all go to the polls.