dcdecoder: What you need to know about today’s...

What you need to know about today’s Florida primary.
Mitt Romney, as you can see in the image from prediction market InTrade, is almost certainly going to win.
Newt Gingrich, who was once leading in the Florida polls, has been massively outspent in Florida: Romney and his allies have ponied up the money for 12,768 television commercials to Gingrich’s comparatively paltry 210.
In total ad spending, Gingrich may have been lapped as badly as five to one.
Spending by outside groups (meaning not the presidential campaigns themselves) is up a whopping 1,600 percent versus the same time in 2008, POLITICO reports.
Romney proves organization is worth something: Nearly 40 percent of GOP Floridians cast their vote as an absentee ballot or in early voting and Romney won these voters by 12.5 percent over Gingrich. If you walk into election day with a 12.5 percent lead, you’re going to be hard pressed to lose the top spot.
Why haven’t Ron Paul or Rick Santorum fought in Florida? Because the state awards its 50 delegates to the winner of the overall state ballot. At least they think they do…
… because while Florida’s state Republican party wants a winner-take-all system, all Republican contests held before April are supposed to reward their delegates proportionally. POLITICO explains why this could get messy if the GOP convention comes down to counting delegates.