Most people assume that despite his losses on Tuesday, Mitt Romney remains in the best position to secure the Republican nomination given his superior money and organization. And that analysis is probably correct. But at the same time, there’s a plausible chance that when all the primaries and caucuses are over in June, he’ll still be short of the 1,144 delegates needed to make him the “presumptive Republican nominee.”

The rules governing the allocation of delegates are highly complex and the race remains extremely volatile, so it’s a futile exercise to try and make a detailed delegate projection at this point in time. But it is conceivable to craft the following general scenario: Romney wins states in the west and northeast, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum combine to dominate the south, Midwest and Appalachia, and Ron Paul siphons off a chunk of delegates. If such a scenario plays out, it’s possible to see how Romney could have problems getting over the top, even if analysts are broadly correct that his money and organization give him the edge.