Santorum and Gingrich - Could They Be BFF?

Below is a map showing the current delegate count and states won by each of the four candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Alaska doesn't appear on the map, but Romney edged out Santorum by about 3% in the Alaska Caucus.  Sarah Palin announced that she had cast her vote for Gingrich, but also spoke to reporters who cornered outside her caucus site in Wasilla about whether she could be enticed into the race: 

Anything that I can do to help, I will be willing to help," said Palin. Later, when asked if she would enter the 2012 race if there is a contested Republican presidential convention, she replied: "As I say, anything is possible." 

Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are within a few points of one another in recent polls conducted in Alabama and Mississippi in advance of the Tuesday primaries in those two states.  (The American Samoa and Hawaii caucuses are that day as well, but don't stay up for them.)  Rasmussen polled both Mississippi and Alabama and found Gingrich with 30% support, Santorum with 29%, and Romney with 28% in Alabama while Romney leads in Mississippi with 35% followed by Santorum and Gngrich tied with 27%.

Alabama and Mississippi have a total of 84 unbound delegates up for grabs.  Mississippi's will be awarded proportionately, and Alabama's are almost certain to be awarded proportionally as well.  Here is the rub for Santorum in catching up.  Alabama is a hybrid proportional state.  If one candidate garners 50% or more of the vote total, the delegates are then awarded on a winner-take-all basis.  This is why the pundits are claiming that if Gingrich stays in, Santorum is going to have no chance of catching Romney in the vote total.  Clearly if the vast majority of Gingrich supporters in Alabama were to instead vote for Santorum, he would have an excellent chance of taking all 47 committed delegates out of Alabama.  Instead, the break down is projected based on the latest Rasmussen poll to be:

Gingrich      16 delegates

Santorum     16 delegates

Romney       15 delegates

(Candidates must hit a 20% threshold in voting to be awarded delegates in Alabama, thus Paul gets shut out.)

But if the only road to Santorum having a chance at nomination is to prevent Romney from reaching 1144 delegates, the number needed, it isn't clear to me that Gingrich's departure from the race after this Tuesday would  be a good thing for Santorum.

Here are the states left in the Republican primaries after Tuesday, in order of primary, that are either winner-take-all or proportional-hybrid like Alabama:

There are a total of 489 delegates at stake in these nine states, with Wisconsin, New York, California and New Jersey being the top prizes.  Santorum's lead over Romney in Wisconsin is 43% to 27% in the most recent polling in Wisconsin, so he seems likely to pick up all of Wisconsin's committed delegates.  There are no current polls out in Connecticut according to the  RealClearPolitics blog.  But in neighboring New York, current polling has the race there at Romney 38%, Santorum 23%, Gingrich 13% and Ron Paul 11%.   Connecticut is more urban overall than New York State, and Romney is polling much better in urban areas outside the Midwest and Plains states,  But assuming the polling in Connecticut were to be analogous to New York, without Gingrich in the race it becomes more likely that Romney would cross the 50% threshold and capture all the 25 delegates.  The same is likely to be the case in New York State.  The chance of Santorum capturing 50% of the vote seems very small, regardless of whether Gingrich is in or out by New York, so it is much more important to Santorum to ensure that the votes are in fact distributed proportionally.


New York's primary is April 24.  With the exception of Indiana and Arkansas, all the six primaries after New York and prior to the California primary on June 5 have strictly proportional allocation of delegates.  Texas is the big prize among these with 169 bound delegates. If, as Nate Silver has mapped out, Santorum's end game has to be not to win the nomination outright, but to keep Romney from doing so, it seems best for him to have Gingrich vying for delegates in all six of these states, and helping Santorum counter the Romney negative ad machine with negative ads.   If Gingrich were to drop out of the race on May 30, the day after the Texas primary, there would be 6 days for the word to get out to his supporters in California to consider shifting their allegiance to Santorum and conceivably set him up for a win of all the delegates in California's winner-take-all primary.  Seem improbable?  The current polling in California has Romney at 31%,  Santorum at 26%, Gingrich at 15% and Paul at 11%.

Santorum has an incredible up-hill battle. But if he can tamp down his sanctimonious ("JFK's speech on separation of church and state made me want to throw-up") side, and have Gingrich throw in the towel and his support Santorum's way at the most optimal time, he still has a slim chance to secure the nomination on a second or later ballot in Tampa.