“I wouldn’t trade places with Mitt if I were in the race,” the Republican senator from South Carolina said. ”He has almost a third of the delegates he needs. Mathematically, Rick would have to win 75 percent of what remains. He’s done an outstanding job, Rick has, of starting with almost nothing and being a real contender, and Newt’s come back from the dead two or three times. But mathematically, this thing is about over, but emotionally it’s not.”

Graham declined to say whether the other Republican candidates running for president should end their bids, even as he argued that Romney will inevitably capture the nomination.