On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” GOP presidential soon-to-be also-ran Rick Santorum dismissed frontrunner Mitt Romney’s snowballing delegate count, declaring, “This isn’t a mathematical formula.”  Later that day he told a Fox News reporter, “It’s pathetic isn’t it?  I mean, now you’re gonna make the argument, ‘I should be president’ because of math.”

Actually, what isn’t mathematical about the delegate accrual process?

Presidential primary nomination season is rife with mathematical calculations.  Each state boasts its own complicated apportionment formula, ranging from mostly proportional to quasi-proportional to winner-take-all.  Savvy campaign managers earn big bucks planning winning strategies for accumulating the requisite number of delegates.  Campaign tacticians create sophisticated statistical models to predict state, district, and citywide outcomes and to plot contingency routes for reaching a majority of delegates.  Campaign finance staff forecast revenue from donations, estimate advertising costs, and manage a budget equivalent to that of a midsized company.

What does Santorum think is going to happen after his failure to clinch the nomination: that God will intervene and change the laws of mathematics for him?  read more »