How would Santorum do without Gingrich?

Calculating the delegate totals is more challenging. One issue is states like Iowa, in which the results reported by the news media are from a presidential-preference straw poll that is not directly tied to delegate selection. In these cases, I assumed that delegates were proportional to the straw poll results, even though they are picked though a separate process. Another is states that allocate some of their delegates by Congressional district. I was able to find district-by-district results for Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina and Ohio and make exact calculations for those states, but had to make some best guesses in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

With those qualifications in mind, this general result should hold: Mr. Romney would still be significantly ahead in the delegate count. I have him with 404 delegates versus 264 for Mr. Santorum and 71 for Mr. Paul.

Mr. Romney’s delegate total, in fact, is very slightly higher than it would have been before the redistribution of the vote. There are cases when the shift in votes costs him delegates, such as in winner-take-all districts, or when one of his opponents gains more votes and crosses a threshold that enables him to receive proportional delegates. But Mr. Romney is being given some votes under these assumptions — if not as many as Mr. Santorum — and that helps him in cases where the delegate allocation is more proportional. These factors came close to balancing out, but Mr. Romney gained about 10 delegates on net.