Santorum Wins Kansas Caucus     Permalink

As expected, Rick Santorum won a landslide victory in the Kansas caucuses yesterday with 51% to Mitt Romney's 21%. Newt Gingrich was third with 14% and Ron Paul was last with 12%. Finishing behind Romney and Gingrich has to be slightly embarrassing to Paul since neither Romney nor Gingrich even contested the state. In his march to victory in Kansas, Santorum won 104 of the state's 105 counties, giving him 33 delegates to Romney's 7.

But it wasn't all bad news for Romney. In Wyoming, he racked up 13 delegates, Santorum got 7, Paul got 4, and Gingrich got 1. Wyoming held a straw poll a week ago, but no actual delegates were selected then.

Romney also had a good day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, sweeping up all the 18 delegates from both Guam and the Northern Marianas, which both political parties treat like states, although neither one is advocating statehood for them. Finally, Romney also did well in the U.S. Virgin Islands, getting 7 delegates there to Ron Paul's single delegate.

Trying to figure out the total number of delegates each candidate has is well, trying. In most caucus states, there are two elections. First, there is a straw poll on which candidate the caucus goers favored. That vote is basically irelevant. Then a later vote chooses the actual human beings who go to the county caucuses a few weeks later. Generally, these delegates are free to vote for anyone they want to, so it is hard to count them as belonging to one camp or another. In addition, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee (three from each state and territory) are all voting delegates to the national convention and not bound to any candidates. According to the RNC Romney has 339 delegates so far, "unbound" has 258, Gingrich has 107, Santorum has 96, and Paul has 22. However, CNN's count attempts to allocate the unbound delegates and puts Romney at 458, Santorum at 203, Gingrich at 118, and Paul at 66. Winning the nomination requires 1144 delegates.

Further complicating the math is that both Florida and Arizona awarded all their delegates to the winner of the statewide primary, Romney in both cases. This allocation is a clear violation of the RNC rules and in the event that Romney comes into the convention with just over 1144 delegates, Florida and Arizona will surely be challenged, leading to a messy credentials fight. However, most observers expect him to have well over 1144 delegates, thus avoiding a battle at the convention.

On Tuesday, Alabama, Mississippi, and Hawaii vote. All eyes will be on the two deep South states to see if Romney can finally break through with conservatives. If he can, it will be hard to see anyone denying him the nomination. If he loses both of them, however, the March march is going to become an April march.

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