Even After Texas Primary, Romney Remains The 'Presumptive' Nominee Short of 1144 Needed.

At the moment the polls close in Texas Tuesday evening, most media
outlets and very likely even the Mitt Romney campaign will declare that
he has secured enough delegates to win the Republican nomination for
president.

For what it's worth, there
are two problems with that statement. First, as a practical matter,
Romney actually won the Republican nomination when the other candidates
competing for delegates in the primaries and caucuses stopped doing so.
That was weeks ago.

And second, as a
technical matter, Romney will not have the "bound" delegates he would
need to win the GOP nomination, regardless of how well he does Tuesday
night.

According to the count by the website thegreenpapers.com,
Romney goes into Texas with 907 bound delegates — those who are
required by rules to vote for him through at least the first ballot.

Texas
awards its 152 available delegates proportionally to the popular vote.
So even if Romney were to win 75 percent of the vote, that would provide
him 114 more delegates — giving him a total of 1,021. That would mean
he couldn't get to 1,144 until June 5, when California, New Jersey, New
Mexico and South Dakota all hold primaries.

So
why the discrepancy between the count of bound delegates (which, by the
way, is the stricter standard the Republican National Committee has
used in its own delegate counts) and the media count? It's because most
media have followed The Associated Press, which has included estimated
allocations from contests that do not formally bind delegates to
particular candidates.

For example:
According to the AP's count, Romney won 13 delegates in the Iowa
caucuses at the start of the primary season this January. But the Iowa
delegates won't technically be awarded until the Iowa GOP state
convention on June 16. Texas Rep. Ron Paul's supporters have attended
other state conventions en masse and have won disproportionate numbers
of delegates for Paul, so there is a reasonable chance that Iowa's
delegate slate will be something other than the media estimates
following the January voting.