I’ve always enjoyed numbers, so the delegate contest in the GOP presidential race has been interesting. Romney is now telling the media it would take a miracle for anyone else to get to the required 1,144 delegates. And that’s true, if current trends persist. The problem? At the current rate, it appears he, too, would fall short. As John Avlon and Ben Jacobs explain:
If Mitt wins every remaining all-or-nothing state but one, and half of the remaining proportional delegates, he would likely still fall short of the magic nomination number of 1,144—which would force him to rely on unpledged delegates, the Republican version of the infamous Democratic super-delegates in 2008, to claim his party’s mantle.
Even if Mitt somehow won every delegate in every coming contest, he still wouldn’t clinch the nomination until Oregon’s primary on May 15.
And if Romney musters only 40 percent of the proportional delegates going forward—equivalent to his share of the popular vote total to date—it would mean the first Republican race undecided when the convention opened in a generation.
Read the whole thing.