Romney knew what Fred supporters may realise tomorrow. South Carolina was largely a winner-take-all primary. Neither Fred nor Romney are going to get a single delegate out of the state, most go to McCain and the few rest to Huckabee.
Meanwhile, by campaigning a few more days in Nevada, Romney broke 50%, winning a REAL majority, and took a vast majority of that state’s delegates (which were NOT winner-take-all).
All he could have done in South Carolina is held his voters and kept Thompson in 4th place. Thompson hadn’t gone after McCain, Romney couldn’t do it alone.
Romney worked hard but he couldn’t overcome McCain’s 100% name recognition in South Carolina.
Winner take all is not a literal definition.
“WINNER-TAKE-ALL type as a method of choosing delegates to that party’s National Convention; as a result, the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type has survived only in the Republican Party nominating process where it was still being used by the GOP in roughly half of the party’s primaries in 1996. However, the current form of the WINNER-TAKE-ALL primary, in most cases, allocates district and at-large delegates separately so that a presidential contender might lose the statewide vote yet still, by winning a district or few, pick up all the delegates from those districts: as a result, the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type as currently used by Republicans in most states where it is found does not necessarily allocate ALL of a state’s delegates to the statewide winner.”
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Definitions.html#Winn