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Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has now secured at least 88 of the 155 delegates at stake in the Texas Primary, bringing his secured delegate total to 1174, 30 more than necessary to win the majority of the delegated needed for the GOP nomination. With 4% of Texas precincts now reporting, Romney has consistently maintained or increased a 60 point lead over his nearest competitor, Congressman Ron Paul. In the contested race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, David Dewhurst is holding a 48% to 31% lead over his nearest rival Ted Cruz in a nine person contest.

Red Mass Group is reporting that the Romney Campaign is planning on decertifying the Ron Paul delegates that won positions at the MA State Caucuses on April 28th to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida under the “Ronald Reagan Unity Liberty Slate, by invoking Rule 5.2, which requires delegates to be certified by the “allocation committee.” Translation: We aint certifying no stinking Ron Paul Delegates

RNC might block entire Nevada delegation over Ron Paul delegate mischiefBy Justin Sink - 05/03/12 08:53 AM ET The Republican National Committee is warning the Nevada GOP that if supporters of Ron Paul are allowed to take too many slots for the national convention, the party may opt against seating the state's entire delegation. "I believe it is highly likely that any committee with jurisdiction over the matter would find improper any change to the election, selection, allocation, or binding of delegates, thus jeopardizing the seating of Nevada’s entire delegation to the National Convention," said John R. Phillippe Jr., the...

. . . when Massachusetts Republicans went to their caucuses on Saturday, many didn’t vote for Mitt Romney’s picks. Less than half of Romney’s 27 chosen delegates won, and the losers included some notable Massachusetts Republicans - including former Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and House Minority Leader Bradley H. Jones Jr. {and Charlie Baker, failed gubernatorial candidate}

Even though Romney's chief rival, Rick Santorum, has suspended his campaign, states continue to hold primaries. There are five contests on April 24th with 219 delegates at stake; but even if Romney won every single delegate that day he would be far short of 1,144. Wyoming and Missouri are holding conventions before April 24th where Romney may pick up some delegates but even winning all of them wouldn't bring him much closer to the magic number. Looking ahead, Romney would need to win about 80 percent of the delegates available in the April and May events to possibly clinch on...

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, won half of the contingent of national convention delegates chosen Saturday in Missouri's complicated selection process. The former Massachusetts governor picked up 12 delegates, while seven went to former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania even though he withdrew from the race last week. Trailing were U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas with four and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia with one. The 24 delegates were picked at conventions in each of the state's eight U.S. House districts; those voting were selected at local caucuses earlier. Most of the remainder of Missouri's...

Rick Santorum, the winner of Alabama's Republican presidential primary, hasn't released his 22 Alabama delegates to support another candidate, but delegates said they expect to unite behind Mitt Romney if he locks up the GOP nomination. ....Santorum won Alabama's GOP primary March 13, picking up 22 delegates, compared with 13 for Newt Gingrich and 12 for Romney. Even though Santorum has suspended his campaign, the rules of the Alabama Republican Party bind his delegates to him until he releases them. Dean participated in a conference call with Santorum on Monday, during which the former Pennsylvania senator told delegates he has...

Scottsdale, Arizona (CNN) - Members of the Republican National Committee gathering in Arizona were invited to meet with Mitt Romney in private Friday and have their pictures taken with the presumptive GOP nominee, but there was a price of admission: loyalty. RNC members and state GOP chairmen were welcomed into the private reception only after signing a form pledging to support Romney as a delegate to the national convention in Tampa. – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker All 168 members of the committee have a vote at the convention as "superdelegates" – and one of Romney's supporters on the...

Mitt Romney doesn't get the coveted "presumptive nominee" title just yet -- at least according to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. "We haven't officially declared a presumptive nominee out of respect for Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich," Priebus said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" before adding that Romney is "clearly on a pathway to be a presumptive nominee."

Colorado Republicans are heading to their national convention with their most conservative delegation in years, as supporters for Ron Paul and Rick Santorum masterminded a stunning upset in electing delegates. [Big SNIP] This game is not over until August in Tampa," said Michelle Morin of El Paso County, who spoke on behalf of Gingrich. "We need the best leader to defeat the left."

DENVER, COLORADO –Republican Party of Colorado Chairman Ryan Call announces delegates and alternate delegates for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL: “I am pleased to announce Colorado’s delegates and alternate delegates for the Republican National Convention this August. Colorado Republicans are grateful for the dedication and enthusiasm to Colorado and the Party, and for their tireless efforts to make Barack Obama a one-term president,” said Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call.

Now that Rick Santorum is out of the race, what happens to his delegates? Santorum has 285 delegates, according to the latest ABC News delegate estimate, second to Mitt Romney’s 661... ...But some of those delegates were never really “his.” ABC estimates that 78 Santorum delegates, from his wins in states that don’t “award” their delegates – Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, and North Dakota, would have been free to support any candidate at the Republican National Convention in Tampa... Another two of Santorum’s delegates were Republican National Committee superdelegates, who will attend the convention by virtue of their positions in the...

The Romney campaign’s phony delegate counts and establishment Republican calls for Rick Santorum to end his campaign, and allow Mitt Romney to claim the Republican presidential nomination without a majority of the delegates, expose the fatal weakness of the case for the Romney nomination. Romney is far from having a commanding lead in delegates, and Romney is not “over half way there” as his camp and their establishment GOP allies claim. If the Republican National Committee rules are correctly applied, and the delegates elected by local caucuses in states the mainstream media has stopped following are allocated, Romney has more...

This is interesting. There’s a lot of issues as to how this will be handled at the convention by the RNC as they explain below, but their numbers certainly look better than the media’s counts. I’m sure they will be analyzed quite at bit in the coming days: The Media’s Delegate Math is Wrong There are a couple of fundamental flaws with the delegate counts that the media keeps that reveals that this race is much closer than they report: 1)      Florida, Arizona, and quite possibly Puerto Rico will be proportional rather than Winner Take All.  They broke RNC rules...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich capped his busy Thursday of cris-crossing Delaware by speaking at the 9-12 Delaware Patriots’ Sussex County chapter in the Millsboro Fire Hall. With several candidates for local and statewide offices in attendance, ranging from Glen Urquhart to Tom Kovach, Gingrich outlined his platform and vision for putting America back on the right track. He interacted with the audience from the podium, rolling with shouted remarks from attendees, and even referring to an Android tablet a man in the front row was using to talk about innovation through technology to make the government more efficient. He...

Frederick, Md. - Newt Gingrich says the finish line for Mitt Romney's path to the GOP nomination is further down the road than what current delegate counts indicate. The longshot hopeful, who has said he won't get out of the race until Romney secures 1144 delegates, is stressing that the delegates have to be "uncontested" in order to count. The frontrunner's rivals argue some of the states that awarded Romney all of their delegates violated Republican National Committee rules when they moved their contests ahead of April 1 and therefore should distribute delegates proportionally. This dispute, if it continues, would...

Newt Gingrich unveiled a new message to Mitt Romney Monday morning during a campaign stop in Maryland: if the former Massachusetts governor does become the Republican nominee, pick a conservative platform. But speaking on the eve of three primaries that could potentially seal the Republican nomination in Romney’s favor, Gingrich vowed to only exit the race if a candidate gets the required delegates. ““I will be going to Tampa, Callista and I will both be going to Tampa, because we are going to fight for a conservative platform,“ Gingrich said. “He [Romney] has to win 1,144 uncontested delegates. At that...

Mitt Romney continues racking up delegates — 568 thus far, about half of the 1,144 needed to clinch the Republican nomination. He continues racking up endorsements, with establishment figures like George H.W. Bush and tea party favorites Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan giving him their support last week. And with a huge financial and organizational advantage over his three remaining GOP competitors, he should continue to accumulate delegates where they are awarded proportionally by district or state, even when he loses. By the time the Texas primary rolls around on May 29, there’s a good chance he’ll have the finish...

No, no, no. The Republican presidential nomination really is not over despite the parade of rather craven endorsements now flowing Mitt Romney's way. Before I go any further, a few words of explanation. Please bear with me. Part One of this column will explain why I am writing this right now. Part Two, the meat of it, will explain the actual delegate arithmetic in play, while also providing part of a tutorial on caucus/convention systems. Part Three will "game out" the remaining contests. Part Four will explain why a contested convention could be very much to the benefit of the...

"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat," the American humorist Will Rogers once said. He also said, "Democrats never agree on anything. That's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans." Will Rogers must be turning in his grave because this is the year that Democrats are organized and do agree on something — the need to defeat the Republicans. That means if Republicans want to win this election, it's time to unite behind the only candidate that can still win the party's nomination, Mitt Romney, and then...

Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum have agreed to a debate in May sponsored by the Texas Republican party. “Both my staff and myself have reached out to the campaign of Governor Mitt Romney and have been told that they are considering attending the debate,” state-party chairman Steve Munisteri says in a press release. The statement notes:.....

As he struggles to keep up with frontrunner Mitt Romney and parries calls for him to drop out of the Republican presidential race, Rick Santorum has said in recent weeks that he has actually won more delegates than some media counts show. Those counts, Santorum says, are not taking into account Republican party rules, as well as the state-level meetings that actually determine how many delegates go to each candidate. "Here's one of the things that I can tell you I didn't know," Santorum told a small group of reporters at a breakfast in Washington Monday. "Every single state is...

It is possible that MittRomney might not get the requisite number of delegates before the RepublicanNationalConvention is held in August, but that's looking more and more unlikely as the primary season grinds on. Because it could happen, though, here's a review of the "delegate math," as well as a look at how it might be skewed by the tangled web of rules spun by the RepublicanParty and the flouting of those rules by a couple of key states. [SNIP] The kicker in all this is that, as much fun as it would be to watch that perverse, self-inflicted three-ring circus...

Even though he was defeated in every primary and caucus, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is still claiming he will win several states because of delegate support.  The Paul campaign is now predicting victory in Minnesota and Maine, and says he is close to victory in Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska, Georgia, North Dakota and Missouri. The Paul team is highly organized and his claims should not be dismissed. In Taney County, Missouri, the results of the February 7th election were Santorum 58%, Romney 23% and Paul 11.5%. The result was reversed on March 17th when the Texan won 100% of the...

By April 24th we can accurately predict if we get a brokered convention in 2012.

Texas is usually flyover country in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. But this year could be different, even with a delayed primary. Although former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is leading former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in the hunt for delegates, it is next to impossible for Romney to wrap things up before the Texas primary on May 29. And Santorum has led most public opinion polls in conservative Texas, which has the country’s second-largest number of delegates at stake, with 155. Two other factors point toward a competitive Texas race: Gov. Rick Perry’s endorsement of...

6:51 AudioSaying that Mitt Romney may not be able to "grind his way toward the nomination" despite a huge fundraising advantage, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told NPR today that he sees no reason to exit the Republican presidential race and that there's a chance of a new contender emerging at the party's convention in August. "I'm not so sure you wouldn't get a series of brand new players" stepping forward during a brokered convention, he told Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep. Or, he said, he might emerge as the convention's choice. Gingrich said he expects to end the primary...

Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign is pushing back on the idea that the former House speaker must win three more states in order to be nominated at the Republican national convention, arguing that he could compete in Tampa instead by peeling off delegates from his GOP opponents. I wrote earlier that in order to get nominated on the first ballot, Republican National Committee rules state that Gingrich would have to win a total of five states – three more than he already has. That’s not technically right. As Gingrich communications director Joe DeSantis just pointed out to me, the rules literally...

While it’s clear that regional variations have played a role thus far in the Republican primaries — with Mitt Romney doing well in the Northeast but not in the South, for example — breaking down the contests along other lines might help shed some additional light on the race. It’s perhaps interesting to compare how Romney has done in each of five groupings of contests: the five states that have the largest percentage of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona); all other swing states (Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio,...

In Puerto Rico, for the price of 20 delegates, Mitt Romney sold out his conservative principles. There is a long history of Congress requiring English to be the language of government and schools for territories seeking to be admitted to the Union — e.g., Louisiana, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. For all of the territories that had large non-English speaking populations, Congress announced before the territories voted on the question of statehood that a change in language policy would be a prerequisite for statehood. In the case of Puerto Rico, where according to the latest Census only 15% of residents...

March 18, 2012. St. Louis. It’s midnight Missouri time and there is still no sign of any winner in the Missouri Caucus. In fact, there are no vote totals, news reports or even a Missouri Republican Party Caucus website. It was there earlier. Now, it simply says, the page doesn’t exit. News accounts from earlier in the day before the media black-out detailed near riots from one caucus site to the other as Ron Paul supporters battled the state GOP leadership. Some of the highlights of news accounts coming in from Missouri include the arrests of two Ron Paul caucus...

.............[Jim]Talent [top Romney surrogate] isn’t alone in thinking the caucus system is confusing. In 2008, Missouri’s presidential contest was a primary, not caucuses. Campaigns and the state party are scrambling to ensure voters understand the 2012 caucuses. Most counties will caucus today, but a handful have already held their caucuses or will do so later this month. Further complicating the matter is the fact that at the caucuses, the voters will pick delegates, not candidates. A caucus can pass a rule that binds delegates to a particular candidate, but it’s not clear how many caucuses will do so. Still, MissouriGOP...

For the first time in a generation, Republicans are preparing for the possibility that their presidential nomination could be decided at their national convention rather than on the campaign trail, a prospect that would upend one of the rituals of modern politics. .....as Romney struggles to win the hearts of conservative voters and hold off a challenge from Rick Santorum, party leaders, activists and the campaigns are for the first time taking seriously the possibility that neither he nor anyone else will get to that total. In that case, the nomination would be decided by the more than 2,200 delegates...

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney would stand to benefit just as much as Rick Santorum if Newt Gingrich exited the presidential race, according to a new poll released Friday. The Gallup poll defied conventional wisdom by suggesting Romney would peel off just as many Gingrich supporters as Santorum would. Forty percent of Gingrich supporters in Gallup's daily tracking poll said Romney was their second choice while 39 percent said they would migrate to Santorum. "If two candidates for a presidential nomination compete in the same ideological space, it would make sense that if one dropped out that the other would benefit,"...

Newt Gingrich seems to be making decent sense, in terms of apparent logic, in saying that by staying in the race he can help rack up enough delegates to keep Mitt Romney from winning on the first ballot at the GOP national convention. Sometimes, though, that which seems to make sense does not actually work in practice. Nomination arithmetic is different from normal arithmetic. And no, I am not talking about how he alters the "impressions game" by splitting the conservative vote and thus either handing pluralities to Romney or narrowing the margins of victory for Santorum. That is a...

SAN JUAN, P.R. — The pickup truck that carried him through Iowa is long gone, replaced by a small motorcade of S.U.V.’s. There was a police escort, and a phalanx of Secret Service agents. The sweater vest was gone, at least for the day, and Rick Santorum, the winner of the last two presidential primaries, was smartly turned out, in a dark suit and power tie, when he held a half-hour private meeting with Gov. Luis G. Fortuño of Puerto Rico.The two men did not take questions from reporters, but allowed photographers to capture the moment. With the cameras whirring,...

It’s true that in reality, the “win” didn’t change the delegate count all that much. Give or take, all candidates still split the delegates about 2:1 for Santorum. And it’s true that there are clearly enough “winner take all states” that play to the Gingrich game plan that he could still get to the convention with the most candidates, none having 1,144. But it is also clear to me after analyzing the data, I must intelligently weigh the situation for what is the best prospect to beat Obama and sell conservative policies to the American people to save this Republic....

The first hint that the night might not go Mitt Romney's way was his decision not to have a victory party at all, which I first heard on the Hugh Hewitt show. As I said at the time, that's an odd decision, considering the free media coverage one gets from the inevitable candidate speech. Perhaps that should have tipped us off that the early exit polls had missed the mark, and that the Romney campaign knew full well they would come in third in both Mississippi and Alabama.However, despite the disappointing results in the two southern states, Romney ended up...

Despite his losses in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Mitt Romney appears to have expanded his delegate lead on Tuesday. The most recent projections from AP show Rick Santorum took 31 delegates from Alabama and Mississippi, while Newt Gingrich took 24 delegates and Romney got 23 But this morning, Romney was projected to win all nine delegates from American Samoa’s caucuses, and he also won the Hawaii caucuses by a large margin. AP projections show Romney beat Santorum 18 delegates to four in those jurisdictions. So, as of this morning, Romney has won 41 delegates from Tuesday’s contests, compared to...

There is an interesting analysis article over at Real Clear Politics that lays out a scenario whereby the August Republican National Convention evolves into the worst nightmare imaginable for party officials – a brokered convention. Based on how Republican candidates for president have done so far with different demographics and regions of the country, Sean Trende predicts how the race for the Republican nomination may play out and lays out a scenario where a brokered Republican convention could take place. Now, it’s no secret that a brokered convention would be a catastrophe for Republican Party leaders use to grand coronations...

If you have crunched the numbers like I have, it’s very hard to see how Romney is denied the 1,144 delegates in a 3 man race. This is because in a 2-man race in the Southern states, Romney would be shut out of most delegates, whereas now with the Anti-Romney vote split, he is taking 1/3 or better of the delegates. This will in fact get him to 1,144 based on even the most pessimistic scenarios. Consider the following: Romney has acquired about 407 delegates in the following states (Endorsed Superdelegates are included in the totals) IA (7), NH(7), SC(2),...

California Could End Up Deciding Republican Presidential Nomination Megan Goldsby, CBS Local - San Francisco SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – The Republican presidential contest remains unsettled, and California could be the state that finally decides it. Super Tuesday turned out much like a children’s birthday party – everybody left with a prize, according to former California Republican Party chair Ron Nehring. “Everyone is going to stay in this contest throughout the month of March,” said Nehring. “I’d be very surprised if anyone dropped out.” KCBS’ Doug Sovern Reports: Republican Presidential Nomination Could Be In California's Hands Even though he didn’t land...

(CBS News) BILOXI, Miss. - The four main candidates for the Republican nomination for president say they're committed to staying in the race right up to the convention this August in Tampa, Fla. There's just one problem: If they do, it might turn out that no one gets the number of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. Stumping in Birmingham, Alabama, Mitt Romney continued his Southern charm offensive, celebrating an endorsement from the country band Alabama. "Wouldn't you love to hear them sing 'Sweet Home Alabama'? Wouldn't that be wonderful?" he asked a crowd at one campaign stop. In...

The organizers also state their desire to take control of the local Republican organization and the Republican State Central Committee (RSCC). When speaking about the RSCC, the organizer stated that they wanted a majority on the committee so that they could dictate how the party spends its money, emphasizing that money should only go to candidates that adhere to the platform.

Rick Santorum won’t be winning any delegates in four of Illinois’ 18 congressional districts next month. But, at least in the 13th District, it won’t be because he didn’t try. Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). (Julie Denesha/Getty Images)On Jan. 6, the state filing deadline, a Santorum volunteer had brought to the board of elections an envelope containing nominating petitions for a slate of three Santorum delegates in the 13th, the State Journal-Register reports. But the petitions were never submitted. A volunteer inadvertently failed to take them out of the envelope, the Journal Register reports, and the envelope wound up in...

A new official delegate count being kept by the Republican National Committee reveals that Newt Gingrich has won more "bound" delegates in the presidential primary than Rick Santorum. Gingrich has won 107 delegates compared to Santorum's 95, according to the RNC's count, which was made after Super Tuesday. That effectively puts him in second place behind front-runner Mitt Romney. But the RNC does not count delegates from states like Iowa in its total, according to the Huffington Post, which first reported the story. The Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses did not officially allocate any of the state's 28 delegates to the...

One of the reasons to be skeptical that Rick Santorum could win the Republican nomination is that we now have a pretty good idea of how the vote will play out from state to state — and the coalition that he is building seems short of a majority. It is not that Mr. Santorum’s delegate deficit is mathematically insurmountable. But he’s behind, and he is very unlikely to win states like New Jersey and California that either have a lot of delegates or use winner-take-all rules to award them. That might not leave enough fertile opportunities for him to gain...

Newt Gingrich stands to gain more than 50 delegates in the Republican presidential race, thanks to his overwhelming victory in Tuesday’s Georgia primary. .....If the totals hold, Rick Santorum would fall about 3,500 ballots shy of reaching 20 percent of the statewide vote. Failing to meet that threshold means Santorum was shut out of a share of 34 delegates awarded based on the statewide vote. Only Gingrich and Romney met that minimum percentage. Based on his vote total alone, Gingrich stands to win 16 statewide delegates; Romney 8. Under the state GOP rules, the remaining 10 statewide delegates are awarded...

In a memo to reporters, Romney Political Director Rich Beeson laid out his camp's view that neither Santorum nor any of the other candidates in the race has any chance of securing enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination...... "Super Tuesday dramatically reduced the likelihood that any of Governor Romney's opponents can obtain the Republican nomination," Beeson wrote. "As Governor Romney's opponents attempt to ignore the basic principles of math, the only person's odds of winning they are increasing are President Obama's." Beeson cited Romney's current lead in delegates and a tough upcoming primary and caucus calendar as examples of...

Republican Hard and Soft Count Delegate Summary Total Delegates: 2,286 (1144 needed to win) 2012 Presidential Primaries, Caucuses, and Conventions Chronologically This is a good chart to study to get a feel for the delegate "count" jungle. And think about this when you hear a candidate or their PAC "demand" another candidate withdraw. (Newt and Rick are very close in the count -- actually Newt looks potentially stronger). The candidates know these numbers and they play the MSM and the MSM plays us. Stay informed.