To deny Romney the nomination Santorum must win WI, and it would be optimal for him to deny Romney a majority in NY (thus making it proportional) and win several districts there, thus evening the delegate count. This nomination is going to be so close that states like DE could help decide it. Combining denying a majority in NY with winning DE will give Santorum enough of a lift to fight it out to California, where he won’t need to win, but he would need to hold Romney down to around 100-120 delegates or so. Blowing Romney out of the water in places like TX, NC, and KY are also very important in this scheme.
Also to be followed closely are the state convention delegate selections. If the anti-Romney’s unite, Romney might lose upwards of 90 delegates from his current count. WA is especially important on that front. If he gets denied those, Not Romney will have more wiggle room, but they would still need to deny him delegates in primary states.
Thankfully, the May calendar is so heavily conservative that it should give Santorum enough momentum to steal a lot of delegates in CA. During May, Santorum needs to basically camp in CA while sending out his surrogates and some ad money to the conservative states during that time to run up the margins.
Then, we fight on to Tampa.
By that logic though, the April calendar is tougher and could trip up Santorum. April 3rd is WI, MD and DC, so he's really got to win WI or he looks really weak, with a 3-week gap then until the mini-Super Tuesday on April 24th. NY, CT, RI and DE are probably all going to be Mitt wins. Santorum better get PA, but he is likely to end up looking about as strong as Newt did on Super Tuesday, only winning his home state. The calls for Rick to drop out of the race by the RINO media and GOP elite will be deafening at that point, knowing that May looks like a much weaker month for Romney. I do wonder if LA showed us that the increasing focus on Obamacare in the media is going to hurt Massachusetts Mitt. That could help Rick in WI. Apparently the decision's not coming out until late June so it probably won't continue to be the top media issue after the April 3rd primaries.