The Battle Continues, But The Numbers Have Been Crunched...

[Likely Voter]

Rick will win a few CDs in CA. CA is a very diverse state and once you get away from the coasts it is essentially a red state.

There is no doubt that June is going to be good for Romney, but the period between the Yankee primaries in late APril and the CA primary is going to be brutal for Romney. He will be lucky to win 1 out of 8 states in May, the last of which will be the big state of TX. Romney is just lucky that TX has super-proportionate rules.  If TX was WTA or even WTA by CD, Romney would have a much harder time making his 1144, or at least making it without unbound delegates putting him over the top.

[Likely Voter]

It is possible for Santorum to have a comeback and deny Mitt the 1144 he needs, but Rick has to start winning in unexpected states.

Rick will likely win MO, LA, PA, NC, WV, NE, WI, AR, KY, TX, SD, IN, and MT...but even if he wins all of those Romney will still get his 1144.  Santorum needs to also win in places like IL, PR, NM and DE. He also needs a huge delegate haul out of TX and to hold back Romney's haul in CA.

[Likely Voter]

Obama actually won a majority of pledged delegates, but since the Dems have so many supers, it wasn't enough. He could have won even if Hillary had a slim majority of supers, but she would have needed like 70% of the supers to put her over the top. In the end Obama got 2/3/s of the supers and he won.

While the GOP has less supers, the scenario where the supers put Romney over the top is a distinct possibility. I think an interesting scenario would be if Romney wins just over 1000 delegates and then gets put over the top by picking up 80-100% of the unpledged delegates. That could be seen by tea partiers and other grassroots conservatives as the establishment forcing a Romney nomination. The net result could be less base enthusiasm, resulting in lower turnout.

[Likely Voter]

if you put WTA NJ and UT in the Romney column, along with even just half the delegates from CA, he only needs a little over 1/3rd of the remaining delegates to get to 1144.

Actually he would need 467 of the remaining 1078, which is 44.4%
(including Romney winning DC, which is also WTA)