After Donald Trump’s victory in New York last night the math has become clear. Donald Trump is now the only G.O.P. candidate who can mathematically get to 1237 by winning pledged delegates. More importantly his leads in the coming primaries next week look relatively solid as Cruz and Kasich continue to split the vote. This creates a straight forward dynamic.
Donald Trump is within range of getting to 1237, but it is still an exceptionally hard slog. As we saw last weekend, Ted Cruz is succeeding at winning the race for delegates even when they are “technically” for Trump. So while 1237 may seem like an important marker, it can be ignored by unloyal delegates who can relatively easily manipulate the rules to stop Trump. Donald Trump is almost a mortal lock for more delegates and more votes than anyone else and by not an inconsiderable margin. The reality for the Republican Party is clear. The Party can nominate Donald Trump possibly with some degree of ease or they can fight on for 3 months with the goal of overturning what seems like the will of the voters. Indiana and California can matter, but the core reality of this seems locked. There seems no escaping the difficult choice between accepting Trump or bringing on the chaos of six weeks with no voting and endless wrangling. Denying Trump’s claim will seem to be somewhat of an effort to disenfranchise the actual voters. Donald Trump is not an appealing choice, but he may seem like a better choice than chaos. However it is also important to note that it is ultimately the 2472 actual individual people who are delegates who will matter in all of this. It could be possible that party leaders want something desperately, but these 2472 people don’t. It is within their power to change everything. The idea that a process which ends with something like 20,000,000 votes cast will come down to the collective will of just 2472 people will seem to many if not most as some kind of anarchy. Trump or Chaos, no other choice.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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