I won't say I expected this. Pawlenty placed a respectable third. I would have expected Gingrich or Cain to have dropped out first.
Unlike, Gingrich, Cain, Johnson, etc., Pawlenty has run an "establishment"-type campaign, in which his goal was to actually win. Candidates like Gingrich and Cain don't really expect to win. They're running either to promote their issues or promote themselves. They'll stay in way past the point at which it's obvious that they're going nowhere.
With Pawlenty, the entire point of his candidacy was that he had a chance of winning, so once it became crystal clear that that was never going to happen, there was no point in continuing.
