... are all states that Paul has basically walked away with a majority of the delegates.

So much for "not going to win a state".

Granted, in Nevada and Massachusetts the delegates are bound to the straw vote results in the first round... which means that they will mostly have to vote for Romney in the first ballot. IF they choose to vote, at all. They can abstain from voting in the first round.

Funny how the media are saying that Romney is the presumptive winner, when the primary is only just starting (sure, votes are over in most states... but the actual delegate selection has only just begun... and look who's winning all of those delegates)

There's a movement in Idaho to unbind all Romney delegates and rebind them to Paul. This is going to require a 75% majority of votes during the delegate selection process though... very unlikely to happen now that the Romney campaign has cottoned onto it... also, it's Idaho. Lots of Mormons.

All of those delegates that used to be bound to Gingrich and Santorum, now unbound. How many were Paul supporters? How many have not yet even been selected?

The Paul movement has also taken over the state GOPs in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, and Nevada. This means that the Republican parties in those states have fallen to the "Ron Paul Revolution".

Delegate Counts:

Majority (50%+ of the delegates):

Maine - 21/24 delegates
Nevada - 22/25 delegates
Minnesota - 32/40 delegates
Colorado - 18/36 delegates

Incomplete Wins (states where Paul is in the lead, but not all delegates have been selected yet):

Iowa - 13/13 delegates so far. 28 total
Massachusetts - 16/19. 41 total.
Virginia - 17/33. 49 total.
Louisiana - 0/0. 111/150 district delegates. 46 total.

Likely Wins (states that are going well, but there is a dispute in the numbers, or something like that):

Oklahoma - shenanigans went down at convention. Paul eventually won all the delegates up for vote, but will probably be disputed.

Other delegate pickups (Paul hasn't won, or isn't in the lead, but has picked up delegates, anyway):

Arizona - 3/29
Michigan - 8/30
Vermont - 2/17
New Hampshire - 3/12
Rhode Island - 4/19
Alaska - 6/27
Hawaii - 3/9
North Dakota - 2/24
Georgia - 10/76

Non-State Delegates: 1/67

States yet to select delegates:

Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi

Paul Total: 181 + Louisiana + Oklahoma
AP (mainstream numbers): 119

However, there is a significant difference between these numbers and the AP's numbers. For one, the AP's number includes their predictions for all states that have held their first votes. Paul has consistently outperformed those first votes, and is already likely to be double their final predicted number (when you account for Oklahoma and Louisiana). The AP also has Romney at 991... his numbers are actually closer to 450. This race is far from over. It's only just begun.

Wow US politics is harder to understand than trigonometry. I have no idea what all this delegate/primary shit really means.

In Canada you go out on voting day and pick the party you want, that's about it. No primaries or anything.

But I am cheering for Dr. Paul, so this is good news if you say he's doing well.

Essentially:

 - In August, the Republican party will meet in Tampa, Florida, to vote on who they want to nominate to run in the national elections.

 - Each state sends representatives to vote on their behalf at the convention in Florida.

 - These representatives are called delegates. The number of delegates that each state has depends on how important that state is to the Republican party (basically, how many registered Republicans are in that state). Sometimes the party "punishes" states for breaking rules, and reduces the states delegates (one example being Florida, which was punished because it was a Winner-Take-All before Super Tuesday (more below), and so the RNC (republican national committee) halved the number of delegates that Florida could send).

 - Each state has its own Republican party. They basically run all the affairs of the Republican party in that state. It is the state parties which decide how the delegates will be selected, the dates and locations for doing so, that kind of thing. So, the Florida Republican party set the date, said it would be a primary, and said that the delegates would be winner take all.

 - The two main ways of selecting delegates are either primaries, which work like how you talked about in Canada, people go and vote, and the results of that lead to the delegates going to Florida; the other way is via caucus. In a caucus, you first vote for who you want to be a delegate for your county. These delegates will then be voted for, at a later date, to move on to district level. Finally, those district level delegates are revoted on for state. Those state delegates go on to Tampa.

 - Delegates can be portioned out in different ways. Some states are proportional, where the number of delegates matches the number of votes. Others are winner-takes-all, so the person with the most votes gets all the delegates. Some states are a mixture - with half the delegates going to the winner, the other half proportional. Some states have the delegates tied to districts, or counties - so, you just have to win at county level to pick up some delegates.

 - Delegates can also be bound, or unbound. If a delegate is bound, then they must vote for who they are told to vote for by the state party. If a delegate is unbound, then they can vote for whoever once they get to Tampa. If a delegate is bound to a candidate and that candidate drops out, that delegate becomes unbound (neither Santorum nor Gingrich have officially dropped out - they've only suspended their campaign, so the delegates are still bound).

 - If, in Tampa, the delegates all vote and no majority is found to support a candidate, the convention becomes "brokered". Under these circumstances, delegates are no longer bound, and another vote is held. Now, the delegates can vote for whoever they want. More and more rounds of voting are conducted until a winner is found. Paul's campaign strategy has been to create a brokered convention in Tampa, as this is his strongest chance of winning.

 - As you cannot legally force somebody to vote, bound delegates are actually allowed to abstain in the first round. This means that if you're a Paul supporter, but you're bound by your state party to vote for Romney, you can choose to not participate in the first round at all. This is a little known fact, mainly because the media refuses to tell anyone about it. This is why Paul's success in Nevada and Massachusetts are so important: not only does this increase Paul's delegates, but it directly reduces Romney's (and Massachusetts, too, Romney's home state).

In short, yeah, it is complicated. Canada's is an easier system. However, it because of the complexities of the system that candidates like Paul are able to have any success at all.

This is all well and good, but Paul still needs to stop Romney from getting the 1044(?) he needs in order to seize the candidacy. Otherwise, Paul's strategy is more or less useless.

He stood a chance with Gingrich and Santorum in the race, now that they are gone, it's more or less over for Paul

Also, Paul won the US Virgin Islands. Not really a state, but he took the popular vote. 

Current predictions, according to GOP unbound, put Romney at dead on 1,144 delegates in the first round, with Paul at 529. Romney's count has dropped 14 in the past 24 hours, Paul's has gone up 41.

A couple more upset wins, and Romney loses the first round majority.

Delegates bound to Romney in the first vote can abstain, if they're Paul supporters (as will be the case with Massachusetts delegates, for example).

Gingrich/Santorum delegates are still bound, as they have only suspended their campaign. Santorum has implicitly supported Paul since dropping out, meaning that if he officially terminated his campaign, those delegates are likelier to move to Paul than Romney.

EDIT: Majority is 1,144.

Cool thanks for the explanation, wow that is complicated, but it's cool that there is voting for who is the party candidate. Up here the party just decides who their candidate will be and then we can vote. 

So it's a good system then since it gives guys like Paul a chance to win, instead of the party just choosing Romney because he's the "most electable" or whatever. 

Rule 38 of the RNC, “No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.”

If this is the case, Romney will never get the 1144 needed in the first round to claim nomination because 'bound' delegates would not actually be bound.

Ron who?

Thing is, nothing is set in stone. None of this stuff is law, it's all just party rules. Because the party is broken up into smaller, state parties, they can all do what they want. That's what makes it so complicated.

If you're an activist who has an idea about how the system should work, and enough people agree with you, you can get into the party, raise the motion at a meeting, have enough people agree with you, and, bam, that becomes a party rule. If you think about how often this must happen, and how differently it happens in each state, it's easy to see why the aggregate of it all becomes so "complicated" to the casual observer.

Obviously, once you started looking into it, things don't look so complicated, and it's all rather fascinating. 

Google Ron Paul.