Rick Santorum pulls out

And then there was three…

This afternoon, Rick Santorum announced that he was suspending his campaign, leaving Mitt Romney with no serious challenger (by total delegates) to challenge him.  Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the fight hoping to capitalize on the vacuum for the anti-Romney conservative candidate, but as Santorum realized, there just isn’t enough delegates remaining in the Republican primary race to make a serious run for the nomination.

The current delegate total and percentage projections of the 1285 delegates available to date are (based up AP allocations):

Mitt Romney:  661 delegates  (51%)
Rick Santorum:  285 delegates  (22%)
Newt Gingrich:  136 delegates  (11%)
Ron Paul:  51 delegates  (4%)
Jon Huntsman:  1 delegate  (0%)

There are 1001 delegates remain in the upcoming races, and 151 projected delegates yet to allocated (1152 total delegates).  In order to reach the needed 1,144 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination, the candidates need:

Mitt Romney:  483 delegates  (42%)
Rick Santorum:  859 delegates  (75%)
Newt Gingrich:  1008 delegates  (88%)
Ron Paul:  1093 delegates  (95%)
Jon Huntsman:  1143 delegates  (99%)

With a majority of the remaining states being proportional or winner-take-all by district allocations, it is mathematically improbable for anyone but Romney to clinch the nomination out-right at this point (barring a major meltdown by the Romney campaign).  With that said, we should start seeing this race and the media coverage migrating from a race to the Republican nomination to a general election campaign with Romney facing off against Obama and the nominees from the other political parties.