On Monday, Rick Santorum’s campaign published its “new delegate math.” Their delegate counts show the gap between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney much smaller than what the Associated Press publishes. An article at ABC News summarizes how the campaign figures its numbers. Their numbers would change my previous chart to something like this:

Recall that candidates above the dashed line are ahead of the delegate count to get the nomination; candidates below the line are behind. Santorum uses his numbers to contend that the GOP is heading for a brokered convention.
The Santorum campaign assumes that the Republican National Committee will force Florida and Arizona to allocate their delegates proportional to the statewide vote. There are two major flaws with this assumption. First, the RNC already penalized Florida and Arizona for their early winner-take-all elections by taking away half of their delegates. If the RNC were to force the states to allocate their delegates proportionally, the RNC would have to give back the penalized portion. Second, most states that allocate their delegates proportionally do it by congressional district, awarding all delegates per district to the winner within the district. It is a winner-take-all by district allocation.
So, let’s assume that the RNC does force Florida and Arizona to allocate their delegates proportionally, and that by doing so they give them back their penalized delegates. Further assume that the states then allocate those delegates proportionally the same way the other states do, giving them out winner-take-all by congressional district. (Two big assumptions, but more reasonable than Santorum’s). How do the results change? Not the way Santorum assumes, and certainly not in a way he would like. Romney would still win all of Arizona’s 58 delegates since he won in every congressional district. Romney would get 84 of Florida’s delegates and Gingrinch would get 16. The net effect is that Romney would increase his lead over Santorum and Gingrinch would close the gap between himself and Santorum. And my chart would look like this:

Santorum’s dream could become his bane.