With Donald Trump’s victory in the Nevada caucus, he appears to be on track to become the Republican nominee for president. He has won three of the first four contests and has a substantial lead in delegates. Certainly, in any normal year where all of the candidates are guaranteed the party’s general support should they become the nominee, he would now be a prohibitive favorite. But, as everyone acknowledges, the dynamics in this cycle are far from normal. As such, it’s worth stepping back from the prevailing narratives and media hype and readdressing the fundamental question: Will Donald Trump receive 1,237 delegates by the 2016 GOP convention? If he does, he’ll be the nominee without any sort of floor fight. If he doesn’t, he won’t.
This question is easy to answer at the extremes. If Trump wins every remaining state, he’ll pass 1,237 delegates with ease. If Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz wins a solid majority of states, then he will pass 1,237 instead. But if the race is at all close, then a meticulous understanding of how each state awards its delegates is crucial to determining what it will take for Trump to win or lose. Not knowing how the delegate process works is like trying to follow a football game with only a vague notion of how many points a touchdown is worth: easy in a blowout, impossible if it’s close.
With that said, ignorance about the delegate process is understandable. Nearly every state has a slightly different system of awarding its delegates, and the rules of allocation are incredibly technical and convoluted. But with slight simplification, we can group the different means of delegate allocation into six distinct categories: proportional statewide, proportional by congressional district, quasi-proportional by congressional district, winner-take-all by congressional district, winner-take-all statewide, and other. Isolating and analyzing these six categories can give us a solid notion of how close Trump actually is to the 1,237 threshold and various scenarios that could potentially stop him. As this analysis will show, the path to stopping Trump is narrow, but far less narrow than current reactionary narratives would suggest. And if the field consolidates quickly, then it may even be the more likely outcome.
The Categories
Proportional Statewide: 14 elections, 501 Delegates
Arkansas (3/1, 28 delegates), Massachusetts (3/1, 42 delegates), Vermont (3/1, 19 delegates), Virginia (3/1, 49 delegates), Kentucky (3/5, 46 delegates), Maine (3/5, 23 delegates), Puerto Rico (3/6, 23 delegates), Idaho (3/8, 32 delegates), Michigan (3/8, 59 delegates), Washington, D.C. (3/12, 19 delegates), North Carolina (3/15, 72 delegates), Utah (3/22, 40 delegates), Oregon (5/17, 28 delegates), New Mexico (6/7, 24 delegates)
These states award their delegates proportionally to the statewide total vote each candidate receives. The races are frontloaded, with all but four occurring before March 15, the first day that states can have winner-take-all systems. Most of them stipulate a minimum threshold candidates have to reach to receive delegates. However, the highest minimum is only 20 percent, and it is lower than that in most states. These thresholds should only be of serious concern for John Kasich and Ben Carson, so it can generally be assumed that delegate totals will resemble the vote percentages. In this kind of election, it is fairly difficult for a candidate to distinguish himself, because the process requires him to improve several percentage points to increase by a single delegate.
Proportional by Congressional District: 6 elections, 230 Delegates
Minnesota (3/1, 38 delegates), Oklahoma (3/1, 43 delegates), Kansas (3/5, 40 delegates), Louisiana (3/5, 46 delegates), Rhode Island (4/26, 19 delegates), Washington (5/24, 44 delegates).
These six mid- to small-sized states award delegates proportionally, but consider both statewide and congressional district-specific results. Every congressional district in these states has three delegates that are allocated proportionally based on the results only within those congressional districts. Assuming the race remains relatively close between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio in these states, then they will almost certainly each get one delegate apiece from the Congressional districts (unless one of the candidates can break 50 percent in a district, in which case he would receive all three). In these states, it will be even harder for candidates to distinguish themselves in delegate total than in proportional statewide states.
Quasi-Proportional by Congressional District: 8 elections, 533 Delegates
Alabama (3/1, 50 delegates), Arkansas (3/1, 40 delegates), Georgia (3/1, 76 delegates), Tennessee (3/1, 58 delegates), Texas (3/1, 155 delegates), Hawaii (3/8, 19 delegates), Mississippi (3/8, 40 delegates), New York (4/19, 95 delegates).
These elections are heavily southern and, like the two above categories, occur primarily before March 15. Like the proportional congressional district primaries, these states all give three delegates to each of their congressional districts. But if the highest vote total is less than 50 percent of the vote in a given congressional district, the winner gets two of the three delegates, with the runner-up taking the third. This means that until March 15, these states give candidates far more of an opportunity to pick up extra delegates than any of the races in the above two categories. Even though some quasi-proportional states have fewer delegates than other states, the candidates will almost certainly devote a majority of their pre-March 15 resources to the non-New York states in this category, with Texas looming as by far the biggest prize available.
Winner-Take-All by Congressional District: 9 elections, 563 Delegates
Illinois (3/15, 69 delegates), Missouri (3/15, 52 delegates), Wisconsin (4/5, 42 delegates), Maryland (4/26, 38 delegates), Connecticut (4/26, 28 delegates)* Pennsylvania (4/26, 71 delegates), Indiana (5/3, 57 delegates), West Virginia (5/10, 34 delegates), California (6/7, 172 delegates)
These states all contain a certain number of delegates (usually three) reserved for the candidate who receives the most votes in each congressional district, with the rest of the votes going to the candidate who receives the most votes statewide (except for Connecticut, which awards its statewide delegates proportionally). As demonstrated in South Carolina, it is easy for a winner-take-all by congressional district state to turn into a pure winner-take-all state if the winner’s votes are distributed fairly evenly across the state. For the larger and more politically diverse states in this group such as Illinois, Pennsylvania, and California, however, the distinction will be significant. That said, these states will likely award a solid majority of their delegates to the same candidate. With the exception of Connecticut and California, all of these states are in the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic regions.
Winner-Take-All Statewide: 10 elections, 400 Delegates
Florida (3/15, 99 delegates), Ohio (3/15, 66 delegates), Northern Mariana Islands (3/15, 9 delegates), Arizona (3/22, 58 delegates), Delaware (4/26, 16 delegates), Nebraska (5/10, 36 delegates), Montana (6/7, 27 delegates), New Jersey (6/7, 51 delegates), South Dakota (6/7, 29 delegates)
This category is straightforward: If you get the most votes in a state, you get all of its delegates. This makes the contests all-or-nothing, so close races in this category will be fought to the death. Florida and Ohio are the two big prizes here. Both happen on March 15, so they (along with Illinois and Missouri) will receive most of the attention as soon as Super Tuesday is over. These states are also fairly diverse geographically, but are notably all located outside the Deep South, which seriously dampens Ted Cruz’s chances.
Other: 5 elections, 118 Delegates
Colorado (37 delegates), Wyoming (29 delegates), North Dakota (28 delegates), Guam (9 delegates), American Samoa (9 delegates)
These five elections have some form of direct election of unbound delegates. Some of them, like Wyoming, have a process of multiple conventions within the state to determine the delegates, while others, like Guam, just have the state party choose a group of people to send to the convention. Because the rules are so convoluted and the delegates are unbound, expect to hear little about these states unless the nomination is decided by a margin of 100 delegates or less, and an enormous amount about them otherwise.
What does this mean?
Ted Cruz, Super Tuesday, and the Quasi-Proportional by Congressional District Races
The five southern quasi-proportional Super Tuesday states—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas—will make March 1 an extremely important juncture in the campaign in a way it would not be if the states were all strictly proportional. These five states have 379 delegates, and a dominant performance by either Cruz or Trump in all of them could lead them to capture around 250 of those delegates. Right now, Cruz is favored in Texas, while Trump is favored in the other four. In terms of delegates, this scenario slightly favors Cruz due to Texas’s massive size. Still, the fight between Cruz and Trump (and where relevant, Rubio and Carson) throughout these states will have the biggest impact on delegate allocation between now and March 15.
This also raises a tradeoff between short-term and long-term interests in stopping Trump. In the short term, any delegate for Trump is a bad thing for those who don’t want him to be the nominee. This election could very well be a long war of attrition, and Trump’s frontrunner status is firm enough that giving him any more of a head start than he already has could wind up dooming the other candidates. But in the long term, the anti-Trump wing’s best hope is likely Rubio beating Trump in a one-on-one race. While hardly conclusive, there exists some evidence that Rubio would gain more of Cruz’s support than Trump should Cruz withdraw. And if Cruz doesn’t drop out, there’s also the intuitive possibility that Cruz supporters who are purely anti-establishment would be more likely to abandon a floundering Cruz for Trump than the heavily ideological Cruz supporters would be to abandon a floundering Cruz for Rubio, meaning a prolonged Cruz candidacy would only exasperate the extent to which he has a spoiler effect on Rubio. This means that anything that winnows the field down to Rubio and Trump as quickly as possible is good for the establishment, and Trump humiliating Cruz in his home state of Texas could accelerate that process.
Even that is contingent on Cruz behaving in a predictable and somewhat selfless way in service of the interests of the Republican establishment, which is perhaps the least Ted Cruz-like thing imaginable. Cruz might even prefer a Trump victory to a Rubio one, or at least prefer spiting the establishment by preventing their anointed candidate from stopping Trump. The absolute worst thing that could happen to Marco Rubio is a Ted Cruz who performs too poorly to steal meaningful delegates from Trump but well enough to have a spoiler effect in winner-take-all primaries.
An alternative possibility is that Cruz could potentially help Rubio for selfish reasons. If the only thing Ted Cruz cares about is maximizing his own chances at being the Republican nominee and he doesn’t get substantially more traction then he’s currently getting, he could attempt a difficult but theoretically possible maneuver of staying in long enough to prevent Rubio from getting a majority of delegates, then suspending his campaign and allowing Rubio to win enough winner-take-all states to stop Trump from getting the majority, which would force a brokered convention. Cruz’s case in a brokered convention isn’t terrible, as he is in many meaningful ways a compromise between the antiestablishment rage of Trump and the commitment to conservatism of the rest of the party. It would be hard to pull off, but given the unpredictability of this election cycle, little can be ruled out.
The Kasich and Carson Questions
Another wild card in this race is the presence of Kasich and Carson. The dynamic between Kasich and the other candidates is massively different in the different kinds of primaries. In proportional statewide states, Kasich’s candidacy hurts Trump (and by extension helps Rubio) because any increased turnout among non-Trump supporters decreases Trump’s delegate share. In proportional by congressional district, the situation is slightly more nuanced because Kasich could potentially pass Cruz or Rubio in a congressional district and subsequently take a delegate, but his pro-Trump impact is marginal. Quasi-proportional by congressional district is even harder, because Kasich’s spoiler effect against Rubio could actually drop him from first to second or from second to third, shifting delegates from Rubio to Trump or Cruz.
Where Kasich’s presence could make a massive difference is in the winner-take-all states beginning on March 15. Crucially, Ohio is one of these states, and in Ohio it is Rubio who plays the spoiler to Kasich, not the other way around. Keeping Ohio’s 66 delegates out of the hands of Trump would make any negative impact Kasich’s candidacy has on Rubio in proportional states well worth it. But Ohio is not the only winner-take-all state that on March 15. That’s the same day as statewide winner-take-all races in Florida and the Northern Mariana Islands and winner-take-all by congressional district races in Illinois and Missouri. (North Carolina is on the same day as well, but it is less significant in comparison by virtue of being a proportional race.) If Kasich’s candidacy had enough of a spoiler effect to cost Rubio these races, it would be a devastating blow of up to 229 delegates. There’s no guarantee Rubio would win these races even without Kasich in the running, but Kasich’s presence can only hurt his chances.
Given all this, the best possible scenario for the anti-Trump wing of the party would be for Kasich to drop out and endorse Rubio immediately (or somehow drop out in every state but Ohio). But Kasich hasn’t given indication that he intends to drop out any time in the immediate future. It’s also hypothetically possible that the dynamics of the race will alter more fundamentally and that Kasich will become the establishment candidate of choice, but that seems increasingly unlikely. Perhaps by March 15 Kasich will agree with that assessment and drop out. If not, the effects of an indefinite Kasich candidacy could easily sabotage Rubio out of the nomination.
The effect of Carson’s candidacy is far less clear. In proportional states, he’s just taking away delegates from other candidates, so his presence only makes it harder for any other candidate to reach a majority. But once Carson drops out, his voters could support Cruz as a fellow evangelical conservative or Trump as a fellow political outsider. And it is pure speculation to guess who people who support Carson as their first choice and Cruz as their second choice would choose as their third choice between Trump and Rubio. Carson’s support in states outside of the South means that he probably won’t play a real spoiler effect in the winner-take-all states if he’s still around, but he could absolutely shift a particularly close election. But between the fact that Carson’s supporters are primarily in winner-take-all states and the likelihood that Carson supporters would not break overwhelmingly for any one second choice candidate, his macro-effect is likely much smaller than Kasich’s.
After the Ides: The Shift to Winner-Take-All Primaries
Given the relatively low variance of potential outcomes between now and March 15, we can estimate pretty well how many delegates Trump will have once the winner-take-all primaries start. Between now and then, there are 412 proportional-statewide delegates (including the March 15 North Carolina primary), 167 proportional-by-congressional-district delegates, and 438 quasi-proportional-by-congressional-district delegates. Trump will receive roughly the same percentage of those first 579 of those delegates as he does the popular vote in those states. If we assume that Trump will average no worse than 30 percent and no better than 45 percent across those contests (if his average is somehow outside of that range, the nomination will already be decided in one direction or the other), that will give him between 174 and 261 delegates. The 438 quasi-proportional delegates are harder to estimate because of the higher variance of outcomes, but a reasonable range would be about 25 percent to 60 percent, or 110 to 263 delegates. Given his current 82 delegates, Trump will have between 364 and 604 delegates by March 15 (again, counting North Carolina). My personal prediction is that he’ll have about 520. 364-604 is an admittedly large range, but its small enough to estimate the approximate challenge Marco Rubio would have in winner-take-all races. Post-March 15, there are still 250 proportional delegates remaining, and Trump will capture some of those. There are also the 118 “other” delegates. But even if Trump does quite well in these races, he will still have to win at least 400-500 delegates from winner-take-all states.
We now have a firm context for the future of the race: if it really is true that Rubio should beat Trump in a majority of head-to-head contests, then Rubio can afford to lose some of the March 15 states to Trump, but a Trump sweep on that day would almost certainly be insurmountable. Assuming March 15 isn’t a complete Trump sweep, then it’s just a question of whether or not Cruz and Kasich clear the field for Rubio (and if more Cruz supporters actually would support Rubio than Trump as the polls suggest). If they do, and the crucial assumption of Rubio’s head-to-head capabilities holds, then Trump will probably be stopped from getting the majority by the convention. If Cruz and/or Kasich play spoiler to Rubio or if Rubio actually can’t beat Trump in head-to-head contests, then Trump will get the majority.
The Verdict
Trump’s nomination is not as inevitable as it seems. The structure of the Republican calendar is designed to prevent any candidate from locking up the nomination too early, and the design has held. But if a majority coalition can’t coalesce around a single non-Trump candidate, then all the delay in the world wouldn’t matter. Ultimately, the nomination will likely be decided by how Cruz and Kasich handle the next month. If they both drop out before the March 22 primaries, Rubio should be able to mount enough of a coalition to stop Trump, either by winning a majority outright or forcing a brokered convention. If they don’t, then it’s unlikely Rubio will be able to get enough votes to beat Trump in enough states without Kasich’s centrist and Cruz’s ideologically purist supporters, even if both candidates are running heavily weakened campaigns. No establishment Republican would choose to have so much riding on Ted Cruz, but it’s still better than the entire race being a lost cause.
Author’s note: All electoral rules, primary dates, and delegate totals were taken from thegreenpapers.com, a website that has assembled a wealth of information about election laws. The distinctions between the six kinds of primary elections are my own.
Image Credits: Gage Skidmore/Flickr, Alex Hanson/Flickr