So thanks for making the case that whoever comes in third in SC should drop out, since FL is winner-take-all and not proportional as you claimed.
Ah, but here’s the rub: SC is only worth 25 delegates now instead of 50. Florida is down from 99 to 50. A sweep of these two states is ONLY 75 delegates. Tennessee has more delegates than Florida, Alaska has more the SC:
All candidates will try to linger til Super Tuesday in March: FL and SC pushing up their primaries has lessened their importance.
“....In the meantime, the primary calendar is full of quirks. South Carolina (Jan. 21), and Florida (Jan. 31), will award all their delegates to the candidate who gets the most votes, even though they are holding their contests before April. Both states already lost half their delegates for holding early contests, so the state parties decided to make them winner-take-all. The RNC says there are no additional penalties for violating the proportional rules.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/28/v-fullstory/2564342/wacky-rules-complicate-race-for.html
Looks like this moving dates around has changed a lot of things. I hope Perry wins the VA court case and keeps making the dates on other state ballots (as he has been). It will be a very interesting primary as the number of delegates has dropped in many states due to being “punished.”
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/events.phtml?s=c