Well it’s lopsided at the moment because a bunch of liberal/blue states have voted so far. In May, WV, NC, AR, KY, and TX all vote, and Rick is poised to carry them all.
It may not matter however. WI is virtually do or die for Santorum. If he doesn’t stop Romney here, it won’t matter how good he does anywhere else. He needs to be camped out here between now and April 3rd. If he goes to MD, he should be very specific where he goes (Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland, Bel Air/Aberdeen, Salisbury, Ocean City). MD is a waste because Montgomery County is 1000% certain to go Romney and big. I don’t want to see Rick anywhere there when his time will be much better spent in WI. Carrying the 1st and 6th CD’s in MD will be just as much as a victory (especially the 1st) and we’ll see if his performance on the Eastern Shore warrants putting DE in play for him on Apr 24.
Looking at the Demographics, WI is much better suited to Rick than IL was. Rick outperformed Huckabee in IL by nearly doubling his performance, and Huckabee managed 35% in WI last time.
OK, continuing this hypothetical math of a primary with pure winner-take-all rules, I calculated the final delegate total assuming that Rick and Mitt win the below states. Under those rules, the threshold to win the nomination would be 1,218 delegates. A pure WTA calculation with early WTA penalties removed would give Romney 1,274 delegates according to my calculations. If I took NM and DE away from Romney, he still would win under this system.
It kind of shows how the race is close enough that whoever the winner is is all going to come down to which guy the archaic rules end up favoring. Overall though, I think there is no way to stop Romney now unless he becomes so weakened that he actually loses in his northeastern and West Coast strongholds.
Rick:
TX - 155
PA - 72
NC - 55
MO - 52
IN - 46
KY - 45
WI - 42
AR - 36
NE - 35
WV - 31
SD - 28
MN - 26
Mitt:
CA - 172
NY - 95
NJ - 50
UT - 40
MD - 37
OR - 28
CT - 28
NM - 23
DC - 19
RI - 19
DE - 17
Romney: 1,274
Santorum: 1,032
Gingrich: 126
Paul: 0