1) He wins 650 to 750 of the available delegates. If McCain does that, he'll be only 300 delegates or so away from the magic number, and essentially impossible to catch.
2) He wins the popular vote in 15 to 16 or more of the states, even if it's close. One could conceivably imagine an outcome in which McCain narrowly ekes out victories in lots of states, giving him 400 or 500 delegates, with Huckabee and Romney sharing the rest. Even though the delegate race would still be pretty wide open, the media would undoubtedly call this a landslide, and crown McCain the nominee.
So, if Romney wants this primary to continue on after Tuesday, he's got to prevent both of these things from happening. One other consideration: if Huckabee manages to win the second most delegates on Super Tuesday, that would be pretty bad for Romney too. So add that to the mix as well.
Taking all this into consideration, my advice to the Romney campaign would be as follows:
A) Forget the northeast (except Mass.) -- you can't win here, and most states are winner take all. Resources spent here are resources wasted.
B) Forget Missouri. This is a winner-take-all state and yes, you're close here. Close, but behind. Give this one up, and hope your voters go to Huckabee instead of McCain. Denying McCain these 58 delegates and the win is more important than giving those delegates to Huckabee.
C) Limit yourself in Georgia. Delegates awarded by Congressional district, so focus on a few where you can win. Careful though, you don't want to take too much from Huckabee here and give the popular vote win to McCain.
D) California, Illinois, California, Illinois, and then California some more. Between the two of them, 243 delegates. You're not going to win them all, but if you can pull out a popular vote victory in these two states (along with your three strongholds), then you have saved yourself for another few weeks. Even if you can't grab the "win," keep as many delegates away from McCain as you can.
The best Romney can realistically hope for is 350-400 delegates. If Huckabee can pull out 150-200, that would leave McCain with 500-600. Still a win for him, but maybe not enough to end the race right there.
Next post, by popular demand: The Democrats.
1 comment:
I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the media’s lack of questions to the presidential candidates about global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be an issue.
Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) live earth is also asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw a poll on www.EarthLab.com that says people care a lot about what their next leader thinks of global warming. Does anyone know of another poll or other results about this subject?
Here is the page where I saw the EarthLab poll: http://www.earthlab.com/life.aspx. This is a pretty legit website; they are endorsed by Al Gore and the alliance for climate protection and they have a carbon footprint calculator. Does anyone have a strong opinion about this like I do? No matter what your political affiliation is or who you vote for this is an important issue for our environment, our economy and for homeland security.
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