Politics: Its another primary night

I posted a scenario of delegate allocation earlier.

3 states and 1 territory will be hosted events.

In order for the stop Romney forces to have any chance, they have to out collect delegates by a 2-to-1 margin.

Polling data in Alabama and Mississippi,  indicate that Romney is holding his own.  If that is indeed the case, the anyone-but-Romney forces may not get the 2:1 margin in delegates they need to stop him.

There is no data on Hawaii or American Samoa which are both caucuses and thus hard to poll.  However, if the Romney organization has any presence there and the non-Romney's have none, then it is likely Romney will pick up at least half if not all those delegates.

After tonight's numbers come in, I'll have to re-jig the scenario of delegate allocation I published earlier and see if the Romney nomination train has been slowed down at all.

UPDATE:  As expected Romney did not win Alabama or Mississippi and he picked up about 1/3 of the delegates to be had in the 4 locations. Thus, the math remains unchanged. But the third place finishes by Romney fuel the perception that Romney is not closing the deal. In this case, the perception has some merit.

Larry Sabato offers this perspective: Barring a massive, difficult-to-fathom shift in this contest, Mitt Romney has a better than 80 percent chance to be the GOP nominee. No amount of wild tapping on CNN’s magic wall will alter those odds. But what kind of nominee will Romney be? We have all witnessed Romney’s weak performance as a candidate. Yes, he’s constructed a solid organization, but it cannot hide Romney’s unappealing inadequacies. Maybe a bad economy will elect him anyway, but without pure luck tossing the White House into his lap, he needs Rick Santorum’s challenge.