“In all likelihood Mitt Romney will manage to win the necessary 1144 delegates”
Don’t buy into the Karl Rove hype.
Not gonna happen. Santorum is running an excellent campaign. People are waking up. He is doing a great job of fighting back against fallicy that the Inevitable One..is.
Math is math. Romney only has to pick up 48% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination. He has the benefit of winner-take-all states in several states in the NE. And he has the advantage now in both NY and CA. Objectively you got to give him a decided edge.
Yes, he could come up 50 delegates short but that won’t be enough to hold him back. Imho he would have to capture no more than in the 45%-46% range of all the delegates awarded to deny him a first ballot nomination at the convention. In other words he would have to have have no more than 1044 votes to his credit and be at least 100 delegates short of clinching.