What if Romney has no delegate majority AND no popular vote plurality?

[retromike22]

I was thinking about Gingrich's and Santorum's campaigns, and trying to come up with a way they could possibly become the nominee. It's not impossible, but extremely difficult for either Gingrich or Santorum to catch up with Romney in delegates. Denying Romney the majority of delegates, is certainly possible, especially if both Gingrich and Santorum stay in for a while. But what if Romney has the plurality of delegates, and either Santorum or Gingrich have the plurality of the popular vote? The title of "popular vote winner" would be hard to dismiss, it would be like Bush vs. Gore but at a convention. It's the best scenario I can come up with Santorum or Gingrich getting the nomination.

Here's how it looks right now:

Delegates (and delegate percentage) of those allotted so far: 744

Romney: 409 (54.9%)
Santorum: 163 (21.9%)
Gingrich: 111 (14.9%)
Paul: 61 (8.1%)

Romney has a clear majority of delegates, and Santorum and Gingrich are far behind.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_delegate_count.html

But look at the popular vote (and percentage) so far: 7,882,473

Romney: 3,196,540   (40.5%)   
Santorum: 1,957,987 (24.8%)
Gingrich: 1,827,447 (23.1%)
Paul: 900,499 (11.4%)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/republican_vote_count.html

Romney doesn't have a majority, and the race is much closer. So what if this happens:

Total Delegates: 2286

Romney: 1045 (45.7%)
Santorum or Gingrich: 720 (31.4%)
Gingrich or Santorum: 365 (16.8%)
Paul: 156 (6.8%)


So we go to the convention, and one of the factors for the delegates to select the nominee is looking at the popular vote... and the popular vote percentage is like this:

Santorum or Gingrich: (39%)
Romney: (37%)
Gingrich or Santorum: (14%)
Paul: (10%)

[Tender Branson]

If Newt doesn't win AL & MS and drops out, it could go pretty fast for Romney.

Also, there's no reason for Paul to stay in any longer. Which of the remaining states is he expected to be good in ? South Dakota ? Montana ? All of them have primaries ...

[Inks.LWC Supports Chuck Hagel]

If Newt doesn't win AL & MS and drops out, it could go pretty fast for Romney.

Also, there's no reason for Paul to stay in any longer. Which of the remaining states is he expected to be good in ? South Dakota ? Montana ? All of them have primaries ...

I know SD, NM, and TX are all proportional though (there may be more).  Paul still has reason to stay in.

[argentarius]

If Newt doesn't win AL & MS and drops out, it could go pretty fast for Romney.

Also, there's no reason for Paul to stay in any longer. Which of the remaining states is he expected to be good in ? South Dakota ? Montana ? All of them have primaries ...

The whole point is that we can force a brokered convention and boo the nominee in his acceptance speech.

[Erc]

It's a fair point retromike, and one for which we don't have any precedent.  All the long-lasting contests (with the possible exception of McGovern '72) ended with a consensus poll/PV winner, who was also the delegate leader.  If someone could pull through and lead in the polls and the PV at the end of the race, they could make a reasonable case to the various stripes of superdelegates to come around to them (or at least force a second ballot).

That said, just looking at the numbers, it seems incredibly unlikely that any candidate will be able to make up the huge deficit...16 points is a lot to catch up when about half the states have already voted.  Of course, the biggest states haven't voted yet, and many of the states which have voted had abysmal turnout.

But it would seem that it would require a huge shift in the voting patterns, plus one of the non-Romneys would have to drop out.  And if they did that well in the PV, they probably win most of the states from here on out (including, say, California).

If Santorum (or Gingrich) does somehow start romping to victory over the next few months, it is, as has been said, rather likely they won't have a majority of delegates.  But at that point it would seem clear that they are the consensus choice---despite a narrow total PV total, they'd be winning in national polls of Republicans by 10 points or more, and would have had the momentum throughout April, May, and June.  The story would be Romney desperately trying to cobble together a first-ballot win from superdelegates (or an unholy bargain with Paul), before his campaign completely collapses.

All of this, of course, doesn't even begin to touch the nebulous problem of evaluating the popular vote as a yardstick, given abysmal caucus turnout, etc.