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I don't believe that is the case.

50% didn't mean anything statewide. Every candidate with more than 20% would get proportional delegates.

50% did matter in the district races. On the other hand, from a conservative perspective (rather than a Gingrich-only perspective), the only thing that mattered was Romney not getting delegates. Gingrich got 50% in several districts, and got all 3 delegates.

Here are the current percentages by districts where Gingrich wasn't at 50% (rounded to integers for brevity), and Rick didn't come in 2nd.

For each district, I looked at the simplest way to knock Romney out, and listed the votes needed and from which candidate (Gingrich or Santorum). For example, in district 1, Gingrich would have needed 6794 Santorum votes to hit 50%, but Santorum only needed 4236 Gingrich votes to beat Romney for 2nd, so in that district Gingrich folks should have voted for Santorum.

D  GINGRICH  ROMNEY    SANTORUM VOTES NEEDED 
1  20878/38  17257/31  13021/24 S-4236
2  Gingrich 1, Santorum 2
3  Gingrich 50%
4  Gingrich 50%
5   5213/31   6893/41   2057/12 G-1680 1st(can't make 50%)
6  27413/38  29174/41   9559/13 G-8669 
7  33606/46  22032/30  12054/16 G-2895
8  Gingrich 1, Santorum 2
9  Gingrich 50%
10 Gingrich 50%
11 42138/47  25654/28  15222/17 G-7369
12 Gingrich 1, Santorum 2
13 Gingrich 50%
14 Gingrich 50%
As you can see, Gingrich needed considerably more than 10,000 extra votes to get to 50% in all the districts (about 31,000 to be exact). In the 5th, he didn't need many votes, but he DID need the votes from EVERY other candidate, not just Santorum, in order to hit 50%.
Now, here's another number. If just 4236 Gingrich voters has switched to Santorum, in ONLY the 1st district, here's how it would have changed the delegates:
 
    Newt Mitt Rick
SW    20   11   0
DST   33    6   3
Tot:  53   17   3
---------------------
SW    15    9   7
DST   33    5   4
Tot:  48   14  11
As you see, a 4200-vote swing would cost Mitt 3 delegates. On the other hand, If instead 4200 additional votes had shown up for Rick in district 1 (not taking from Newt, it looks even better:
    Newt Mitt Rick
SW    16   8   7
DST   33   5   4
Tot:  49  13  11
A small additional vote for Rick, maybe by not Robocalling to suppress his turnout, could have denied Romney 4 delegates, just by allowing Santorum to hit the 20% threshold.
BTW, if just the Perry and Bachmann voters had switched to Santorum, the same would have happened, with only a swap of 1000 gingrich votes. Santorum getting over 20% was the best way to steal Romney delegates, and he missed by 0.4%.
Sadly, if the candidates who had dropped out had simply NOT been on the ballot, and their voters had stayed home, the same would be true, Santorum would have hit 20%. Voters just showing up and casting votes for Huntsman, Johnson, Roemer, Bachmann, and Perry cost Santorum 7 delegates, and gave Romney 4 delegates.