Wall Street Willie Hit A Triple Yesterday

(The cartoon above is by Jeff Parker in Florida Today.)

Wall Street Willie (aka Willard Mitt Romney) inched a little bit closer to the Republican nomination yesterday when he hit the political version of a triple (with the new season starting, I thought a baseball term might be appropriate). Romney scored three victories, with easy wins in Maryland and the District of Columbia and a closer race in Wisconsin.

The race is not over though. Romney is just a little over halfway to getting the number of delegates he needs to become the nominee (needing approximately 500 more delegates). The race still looks like it could go to at least late May or early June. That should make the late-state voters happy, and could mean the huge delegate totals of Texas on May 29th and California on June 5th might actually mean something. Here are last night's numbers:

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (100% reporting)
Mitt Romney...............3,122  (70.20%)
Ron Paul...............534  (12.01%)
Newt Gingrich...............479  (10.77%)
Others...............312  (7.02%)
TOTAL VOTES...............4,447

MARYLAND (99% reporting)
Mitt Romney...............116,065  (49.11%)
Rick Santorum...............68,386  (28.94%)
Newt Gingrich...............25,825  (10.93%)
Ron Paul...............22,443  (9.50%)
Others...............3,600  (1.52%)
TOTAL VOTES...............236,319

WISCONSIN (95% reporting)
Mitt Romney...............296,575  (42.45%)
Rick Santorum...............263,383  (37.70%)
Ron Paul...............81,779  (11.71%)
Newt Gingrich...............42,570  (6.09%)
Others...............14,320  (2.05%)
TOTAL VOTES...............698,627

The next states to make their choices known are Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. They all have primaries scheduled for April 24th. Yesterday a poll was released on Pennsylvania, and it showed Santorum is still holding a lead in that state. Here are those poll numbers:

QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY POLL (Pennsylvania)
Rick Santorum...............41%
Mitt Romney...............35%
Ron Paul...............10%
Newt Gingrich...............7%
Undecided...............6%
(37% say they could still change their minds.)