Republican candidates eye on magic number

WASHINGTON: Momentum is crucial in the state-by-state race for the Republican nomination, but in the long slog of the US presidential campaign the candidates are also chasing an elusive magic number: 1,144.

That's the threshold of delegates to the Republican National Convention in August that a candidate must win to secure the party's nomination and almost 40 percent of it will be up for grabs next week on "Super Tuesday."

With the four candidates including leading rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum vowing to slug it out until the end, chances have risen this year that the flagbearer who will challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in November won't be chosen until this summer or beyond.

Super Tuesday essentially ended the Republican contest in 2008, but a more fractured race is expected next week, when 10 states, including key battleground Ohio, vote simultaneously on March 6.

And with more proportional allocation of delegates introduced by the party since the last general election, the Republican race could carry on for months.

In the complex Republican Party nominating process, delegates are awarded by each state, sometimes on a proportional and/or non-binding basis, until one candidate reaches the 50-percent-plus-one mark needed for victory.

Eleven states have held voting contests so far. Romney has won six of them, Santorum four, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich one.

While Romney has won just over 50 percent of the total delegates to date, he has little wiggle room, and more than 100 of the delegates to the convention are Republican National Committee members who can vote for anyone.

Americans appear to be less focused on the specifics of delegates, and more about trends, issues, and electability at least for the moment.

"People are not paying a huge amount of attention to the technical rules," Michael Heaney, an assistant professor of politics at the University of Michigan, told AFP.

"They're paying attention to the symbolic outcomes of these elections."

Analyst Stu Rothenberg, who edits The Rothenberg Political Report, said that "right now it's about momentum and perceptions and who has the money."

"There will be a point I'm not exactly sure when, sometime after Super Tuesday when we'll be looking a lot more carefully at who has more delegates," he said.

The delegate battle between Romney and Santorum came under the spotlight Thursday, when a row erupted over how party leaders in Michigan apportioned its 30 delegates after the state's bitterly contested Tuesday primary.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, beat ex-senator Santorum by three percentage points in Michigan, but because of proportional distribution, they split 28 of the delegates, 14 each.

Santorum thought he secured a draw a major symbolic victory in Romney's home state by getting one of the two remaining at-large delegates, but the party awarded them both to Romney, prompting Santorum's campaign to accuse Michigan party insiders of "political thuggery."

Romney on Tuesday is likely to win in states such as Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, but he's in a battle royale for Ohio, with 66 delegates at stake, against Santorum, who is ahead in Tennessee (58 delegates) and Oklahoma (43).

And former House speaker Newt Gingrich is ahead in Tuesday's largest delegate trove of all, Georgia. Should he win there, and fare well in other states, his faltering campaign could receive a shot in the arm.

"Two things are at stake," said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

"First, the primaries and caucuses will choose a large number of delegates. Second, victory or defeat could send a signal to potential contributors. Victory will keep the money flowing, while defeat will turn off the tap."

When the dust settles, Super Tuesday could do little to put someone on a clear path to the nomination, and some experts envision a muddle dragging out through the spring, in a process that could harm the eventual nominee.

"Then it goes on, state by state, drip by drip. It's like water torture," Jack Lindley, the Republican Party chairman in Vermont, told CNN.

If the race continues to be this tight it is possible that no winner will emerge before the Republican National Convention in late August, in which case a victor would have to be decided by backroom brokering among the delegates.