missouri having the cops break up the caucuses at their own request and then not voting, this has been an absolute mess. remember when you heard wyoming voted back in february, and they gave wyoming to mitt romney. in that state they have still only allocated about half their delegates so far. they re eking them out over time and today they decided to take one of the santorum delegates away and give them to mitt romney instead. why? has something changed in wyoming? i have no idea. i strain trying to figure it out. i still can t figure out how ron paul won the u.s. virj in islands vote. despite ron paul having won the vote in the u.s. virgin islands, it was mitt romney who was given 7 of the 9 delegates there. so illinois tonight. huge deal? maybe. we can tell you at this hour what the latest results are of the non-binding, non-delegate-related precedence
they have tried to make an asset for themz by the fact that mitt romney has gotten victories like this such as illinois. do you think that matters the cost per vote these guys are spending? no, i actually think it s a ridiculous argument, rachel. in 2008, the john mccain campaign was outspent by $250 million. it s almost impossible to win a presidential election when you re talking about that type of fundraising disparate. if mi disparity. if mitt romney goes on to become the nominee, they won t have that kind of fund raising at this time. if rick santorum were somehow able to come back and do it, they will be faced with that kind of fundraising disparity, and it s a huge strategic problem if you re on the republican side of the aisle and you want to be a republican president. steve schmidt, john horowitz. i think we ll be checking back in with you as the night wears
in the illinois republican primary tonight, nbc news has projected mitt romney the winner. mitt romney at 49% of the vote, rick santorum, 33%, ron paul and newt gingrich both in distant third and fourth places in single digits right now. you just heard mitt romney speaking to his supporters in illinois. here s rick santorum addressing his supporters in gettysburg, pennsylvania. here s rick santorum. thank you, thank you. it is great to be back in pennsylvania. thank you for joining us. [ applause ] let me just thank all of you for being here, and i know they re not going to be able to hear me, but i just feel so bad.
vote. we ll be watching those percentages in the rankings of the other candidates as the percentages of the vote increases. this is exciting. this is election night. republicans in the great state of illinois making big consequential decisions whether to punch their ballot for mitt romney, rick santorum, ron paul or newt gingrich. actually, that s not the way it has worked at all. have you seen what the ballot looks like that republicans were using tonight in illinois? it s different in every county, but this is representative. let s put up the macon county ballot. if you re going to vote in illinois and you re voting in macon county, which is right in the middle of the state, if you want mitt romney to be president, you can indicate you want mitt romney to be president of the united states, but whether or not you do that, it doesn t really mean anything. it does not get totaled for any official purpose. we will tell you tonight what the final results are of how people filled in that p
now, let s say you do like mitt romney, but let s say you hate this guy jimmy john liautaud, or you hate one of these other people. you can t vote for them because you had a dispute about the height of a fence this guy put up near your child s ballpark. you have a random dispute for one of these delegates. you can pick all the other people listed as the mitt romney delegates but not the guy you don t like. let s say your other delegate choice is jim hendricks. this is all hypothetical. i don t know who these people are, but it says on your ballot that jim hendricks is for newt gingrich. even though you re not particularly for newt gingrich, that s okay, you can pick him as a delegate. if you did that, how would your vote be counted, then? should that be seen as a vote most formal mitt romney but also a little bit for newt gingrich because you picked a newt gingrich delegate along with your mitt romney votes? your expression in what you want