2012 Delegate Count: Scoring the Scorecards

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Mitt Romney leads the delegate count by a large margin regardless of what source you trust, but voters likely have wondered who is correct.

To be clear, Romney captured the presumed-Republican-nominee title when Rick Santorum darted from the race, and it became especially clearer when Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he would officially shut down his run on May 1. That leaves only Ron Paul, and he can't overcome Romney's delegate count.

Mitt Romney

A side-by-side comparison of TheGreenPapers.com, The Associated Press, CNN and RealClearPolitics.com show varying delegate counts that fluctuate generously for some candidates and appear identical with others.

But how does one parse through the tedious state conventions, caucuses, and primaries to determine a hard number of delegates that decide the true winner of a party's nomination?

"Very early on in the summer of 1999, it became rather apparent that actually explaining how the voting in primaries or caucuses (and subsequent conventions), etc. translated into candidate X getting so many National Convention delegates might make the site that much more useful," Richard Berg-Andersson, TheGreenPapers.com staff member, wrote in an email.

TheGreenPapers.com, unlike its valuable delegate-counting counterparts, devotes an entire page to each U.S. state, district and territory to explain their particular delegate processes involved -- the sum of which ultimately decides the major party nominees.

In the above graphic you will note that TheGreenPapers.com allocates the least number of delegates to Romney in comparisons against the AP, CNN and RealClearPolitics.com. Part of the reason is that TheGreenPapers.com doesn't speculate about delegates in caucus states that have held straw polls, but haven't officially selected national delegates.