Despite questions about Romney, the math is going his way

Mitt Romney faced the usual nagging questions Wednesday: Why does he have a hard time connecting with very conservative and working-class voters in the Republican presidential race? What will it take for him to shut down relatively weak opposition?

Yet even as pundits asked those questions, and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich vowed to fight on after Super Tuesday, the harsh math of delegate allocation suggested that Romney's rivals have little hope of overcoming his huge lead in the currency of the GOP nomination: voting delegates to the national convention in Tampa, Fla.

Romney's campaign argued that he had taken a big step toward an inevitable claim on the nomination after winning six of the 10 states that voted on Super Tuesday - including a come-from-behind victory in the big prize of Ohio - and capturing the majority of the delegates at stake.

"The calendar ahead offers them dwindling opportunities to close the gap," Romney political director Rich Beeson wrote in a memo distributed to reporters. That, he said, is because Romney has twice as many delegates as his nearest competitor, Santorum, and the GOP awards delegates on a proportional basis rather than winner-take-all.

"As Gov. 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 wrote.

Independent strategists and analysts agreed with the campaign's assessment of the arithmetic, but neither Santorum, Gingrich, nor Texas Rep. Ron Paul indicated a willingness to stop the fight.

State rules for awarding delegates are complex, but the Associated Press projects that Romney is leading overall with 419 delegates, including endorsements from Republican National Committee members who automatically attend the convention and can support any candidate. Santorum has 178 delegates and Gingrich has 107. Paul trails with 47.

"It's not officially over, but it's effectively over," said Jon Lerner, a GOP pollster who worked on the presidential campaign of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Lerner saw signs of Romney's potential general-election strength in his large victories in suburban counties around Cleveland and other Ohio cities, as well as Oakland and Macomb Counties around Detroit.

"He cleans up in just the kinds of suburban counties with educated, upper-scale swing voters Republicans need to win," Lerner said.

The next three states on the calendar - Kansas, with a caucus Saturday, and Mississippi and Alabama, with primaries Tuesday - figure to be good opportunities for Santorum and Gingrich. The states are conservative, with large shares of evangelical Christian voters, a group that has favored Romney's rivals, according to exit polls.

But the former Massachusetts governor also has a good chance to pick up delegates in these states, so his rivals won't be able to net the big numbers needed to catch him.

Later this month, the map begins to tilt in Romney's favor. There's the March 20 primary in Illinois, for example, in which 54 of the state's 69 delegates will be at stake.

And starting in April, party rules will allow states to award delegates winner-take-all. Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Wisconsin vote April 3. The big prizes April 24 are Pennsylvania and New York, which vote that day along with Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

Texas holds its primary May 29, but delegates will be awarded proportionally.

Later in the spring, California and New Jersey weigh in with winner-take-all contests.

Santorum was dismissive of the Romney campaign's renewed inevitability argument, including a declaration by an unnamed Romney adviser that it would take an "act of God" for him to lose.

"What won't they resort to to try to bully their way through this race?" the former Pennsylvania senator said Wednesday while campaigning in Lenexa, Kan. "If the governor now thinks he's now ordained by God to win, then let's just have it out."

Gingrich, who won in Georgia, which he represented in Congress for two decades, said he would stake his campaign on strong finishes in Alabama and Mississippi.

"We are staying in this race because I believe it is going to be impossible for a moderate to win the general election," the former House speaker said at a rally in Montgomery, Ala.

Meanwhile, allies of Santorum urged Gingrich to drop out to avoid splitting the anti-Romney vote. Santorum's top strategist suggested that was the only way Romney could be stopped.

"There's been poll after poll that shows if Rick Santorum were just to have a one-on-one shot with Mitt Romney that the Gingrich supporters go right to Rick Santorum in big numbers," John Brabender told the Wall Street Journal. "Conservatives and tea party folks are going to have a decision to make: Do we want Mitt Romney to be the nominee or not, or do we want to just keep splitting our vote?"

Santorum said he would not push Gingrich to quit.

Ironically, majorities of voters interviewed in exit polls Tuesday said Romney would make the GOP's strongest candidate against Obama; it's just that those who value conservative ideological purity more than electability tended to vote for Santorum or Gingrich.

"This is a very strange cycle," said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist and former Gingrich adviser who is neutral in 2012, "but none of it adds up to Rick Santorum being the nominee - especially with Gingrich in the race siphoning off 25 percent of the conservative votes."

The next events on the Republican presidential nominating calendar:

Saturday: Kansas Republican caucuses

Tuesday: Alabama and Mississippi primaries; Hawaii Republican caucuses

March 17: Missouri Republican caucuses

March 20: Illinois primary

March 24: Louisiana primary

2012calendarEndText

Results from Tuesday's GOP presidential voting.

Candidate % of Vote

Mitt Romney 32

Newt Gingrich 29

Ron Paul 24

Rick Santorum 14

100% of vote counted

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This article includes information from the Associated Press.