In order to win the nomination, a candidate must secure a majority of Republican delegate votes. There are 2,380 delegate votes cast at the Republican convention. A candidate must, therefore, win 1,191 votes to secure the nomination. Of these 2,380 votes, 463 delegates are unpledged - that is, which candidate receives these delegates is not determined by the state primary or caucus and left to the discretion of the delegate to cast as he or she sees fit. This group is considered the Republican's group of superdelegates.

Each state receives delegates based on the following formulation:

*10 delegates at large

*3 delegates for each congressional district

*"Bonus" delegate if the state's electoral vote in the preceding presidential election went to the Republican candidate. The state receives 4.5 delegates plus 60% of their electoral vote in this case.

*"Bonus" delegates if the state has

 *a Republican Senator

 *a congressional delegation that is at least 1/2 Republican

 *a Republican Governor

 *a state house controlled by the GOP or in which GOP membership has increased by at least 25%

 *GOP control of both state houses

In addition to these delegates, all 50 states and American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia receive 3 delegate votes for the state party leaders -- the national committeeman, the national committeewoman, and the state party Chair.

Finally, 123 delegates are members of the Republican National Committee and are unpledged to candidates. They are considered part of the Republican superdelegates.

As mentioned above, these delegates are not, however, necessarily pledged to the winner of the state. Each state can have both pledged and unpledged delegates. How delegates are allocated and which are pledged and unpledged is determined by each state. Typically the three state party leaders are unpledged and contribute to the total 463 unpledged delegate votes.

How these delegate votes are pledged to candidates is complicated and based on individual state decisions. The most common primary system used by the Republicans is a winner-take-all system. In this system the candidate who receives the most votes receives all the delegate votes. The name "winner-take-all" can be deceiving though as states have district and state-wide delegates to allocate to the candidate who receives the most votes. Some states, such as Connecticut, choose to allocate all their delegates to whomever wins the most votes in the state, regardless of how they perform in each district. Other states, however, award delegates similar to California, which gives district delegates to the winner of each district and then awards at-large delegates to the winner of the state. Therefore, if McCain won 48% of the vote in CT and Romney won only 38% McCain would pledge 27 delegates to McCain only. If the same vote tally occurred in CA, McCain would win the 11 statewide delegates, but could only win 90 of the district delegates, while Romney won the remaining 69 delegates.

Some Republican parties, such as Kentucky, use a proportional representation system similar to that used by the Democrats.