Team McCain is doing their own delegate math, and most of it matches up with my calculations yesterday.
Like I wrote then, they think they win most of the winner-take-all states: New York, Arizona, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They think they have Missouri (and it’s a possibility; I put it in Romney’s pile). Team McCain puts Utah in Romney’s pile, and they admit they don’t know how Delaware goes. I put it in the Romney pile, based on an old poll.
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has a specific estimate of California’s 170 delegates: 63 for McCain, 44 for Romney, 19 for Huckabee. This memo also has “22 for Giuliani” and obviously a lot of toss-ups/don’t knows.
I had put McCain at about half, 85 or so.
In Georgia, the McCain campaign estimates that Huckabee will win the delegate fight with 21 followed by McCain at 12 and Romney at 10.
(Yesterday I had Georgia as winner-take-all and it is not; it’s 3 delegates for each of 13 congressional districts won, and 30 to the statewide winner. I’ll have to revise down my Huckabee estimate a bit, although I would still think Huckabee will take a majority there.)
Davis’ memo puts McCain with 423 of the 1009 delegates at stake that day, 143 for Romney, and 298 that could go anywhere.
Yesterday I put McCain “somewhere north of 400″, Romney getting 200 to 250, and Huckabee getting around 200.
It looks like the biggest prize that’s really up for grabs is Missouri’s 58 delegates that go to the winner.
Campaign Spot reader Ernest thinks I’m putting too much faith in Romney’s chances there (based partially on his endorsement by Gov. Matt Blunt and former Sen. Jim Talent. The other Republican Senator, Kit Bond, endorsed Giuliani and said he won’t endorse a second, but will back whoever turns out to be the nominee).
Ernest notes that on 1/24 Rasmussen had it Huckabee 27, McCain 26, Romney 18. Also on 1/24, Research 2000 had it McCain 31, Huckabee 25, Romney 21, and predicts the winner will be “either Huckabee or McCain.”






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