Ben Kenobi, Santorum can't even begin to erode Romney's lead unless he starts winning states that will give him decisive pools of delegates. Romney racking up the numbers while Santorum boasts about winning Southern contests that award him practically no net delegates simply will not cut it. If you note things like how Hawaii neutralized Santorum's win in AL and MS and Romney actually won more delegates and expanded his lead on the night of his "big defeat," you'll start to see the magnitude of the task Santorum faces. If he's to force the brokered convention, he needs to beat Romney in states like IL, states like NJ, states like...hell, even possibly NY.
I respect the hell out of the campaign Santorum's run. Being dead serious for a moment, Santorum has literally won states despite being outspent 5/1 or worse. That's pretty incredible and speaks to how terrible a candidate Romney is the passion of Santorum's supporters. But unless he shakes the dynamics of the race up, he will lose, even though he'll win another 8-10 states along the way to defeat.
Exactly, Santorum's success clearly took him by surprise.
In order for Santorum to win, he needs to keep Romney's PV margins down, but equally, needs to focus on willing delegates... since more delegates are in urban and suburban areas, Romney continues to vacuum up delegates despite losing the popular vote.
Santorum and Romney are in opposite by oddly similar positions. Rick needs to win a major swing state and start to win in urban/suburban areas to increase delegate collection and establish a moral justification for their continued candidacy. Mitt needs to start to expand his base beyond wealthy, educated "yuppie"/suburbanites... in order to create momentum . Mitt also needs to win somewhere that isn't a) a state won by Obama in 2008 (it looks good to some, but only re-enforces the 'moderate' tag) b) a red state by winning the areas that Obama won c) a state with a disproportionate Mormon pop'n d) a state with a majority GOP 'conservative' electorate....
