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How Donald Trump Can Fall Short of His Delegate...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/upshot/how-donald-trump-can-fall-short-of-a-delegate-majority.html
13 hours ago ... Here's How Bernie Sanders Could Win the Nomination ... Donald Trump is about 550 delegates short of earning the 1,237 delegates ... These states play to most of his demographic strengths, including a moderate, less ...
Donald Trump is about 550 delegates short of earning the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination.
If
he keeps winning at the pace he has so far, he will probably take
around 60 percent of the remaining 900 or so pledged delegates, reaching
his target. But Mr. Trump’s path is deceptively tenuous, and it might
not take much to knock him off.
It all hangs on whether Mr. Trump can continue to fend off Ted Cruz
in states where Mr. Trump is relatively weak. He barely did it in
Missouri (with an official result still pending) and North Carolina last
Tuesday, when Mr. Cruz showed unexpected strength.
The Trump Base
Mr.
Trump can cover about half the distance of what he needs simply by
sweeping the states where he’s expected to fare well. The voting
patterns and demographics of the remaining states look pretty good for
him. He has an added advantage in that the delegate rules over the
second half of the primary season make it easier for him to earn
lopsided delegate tallies in many states.
Mr.
Trump is a strong favorite in the remaining primaries in the East and
Appalachia, like New Jersey, Connecticut, West Virginia, Delaware, New
York and Rhode Island. These states play to most of his demographic strengths, including a moderate, less religious Republican electorate.
The delegate rules in these states would let a victorious Mr. Trump claim more than 80 percent of the available delegates.
Mr.
Trump should get at least 30 or so delegates in the three remaining
proportional contests: Oregon, Washington and New Mexico. He could
easily get more.
Continue reading the main story
Mr.
Trump’s tally could grow even further with a big win in Pennsylvania on
April 26, but he faces a complication: the “loophole” primary. Voters
directly elect 54 of the 71 delegates, and the loyalty of delegates
isn’t plainly stated on the ballot. The other 17 delegates are awarded
winner-take-all; it’s hard to know how much of the others Mr. Trump
could count on if he won.
It’s a lot harder to figure out the remaining states.
There
are the winner-take-all primaries in the West and Great Plains:
Arizona, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska. They’re worth more than 100
delegates. Mr. Trump has generally struggled in the Plains States and
farther West, but he will probably be favored in Arizona and Montana if
the race keeps going as it has. (You can see the hints of his potential
strength there in how he did in nearby Nevada and parts of Idaho). He would find himself in a close race in South Dakota or Nebraska, and might even be considered an underdog.
There
is also a contest in Utah; Mr. Cruz is likely to clear the 50 percent
threshold needed to claim all of that state’s delegates.
Then
there are the four states that award their delegates on winner-take-all
by congressional district: Indiana, Maryland, Wisconsin and California —
the last being the biggest prize of the season, with 172 delegates.
Indiana
has the potential to be a state somewhat like nearby Missouri and
Kentucky — a good state for Mr. Trump, but perhaps for Mr. Cruz as well.
California,
Wisconsin and Maryland could be three weak states for Mr. Trump, but he
might win over divided opposition. That’s because Mr. Cruz, who based
part of his campaign on drawing evangelicals
and who is the main opponent to Mr. Trump, is weakest in relatively
liberal and less religious areas. The result is a divided opposition
that lets Mr. Trump win wider margins of victory with a smaller share of
the vote.
Just
compare the results in states like Michigan and Illinois with Missouri
and North Carolina. Mr. Trump actually won a larger share of the vote in
Missouri and North Carolina than he did in Michigan and Illinois. Yet
he easily won Illinois by eight points and Michigan by 12 points,
because his opposition was more evenly divided between a relatively weak
Mr. Cruz and a strong Mr. Kasich.
Mr.
Trump found himself in far closer races — a true dead heat in Missouri
and a three-point race in North Carolina — because Mr. Cruz was able to
consolidate the preponderance of the anti-Trump vote.
How Trump Wins
If
the rest of the primary season goes as it did in early March, Mr. Trump
could win the nomination with around 1,300 delegates, based on a model
of how demographics have correlated with the strength of the candidates
so far.
The
model isn’t perfect — it struggles to some extent with the big
variations in Mr. Trump’s strength on the Plains and out West, where
there have been relatively few primaries so far. It also can’t capture
the potential effect of strategic voting (like not voting for your
favorite candidate in an attempt to help him in the future) or of the
candidates’ decisions to concentrate their effort in some states more
than others. But it nonetheless offers a realistic path that’s
consistent with the results so far.
Trump on Track, but Barely
If the rest of the race plays out as it did in early March,
Donald Trump could win the nomination with about 1,300 pledged
delegates. But the path involves many close states.
Cruz
Trump
Kasich
Rubio
Rhode Island
West Virginia
New Jersey
New York
Delaware
Connecticut
Pennsylvania
Indiana
South Dakota
Montana
New Mexico
Arizona
California
Maryland
Oregon
Washington
Wisconsin
Nebraska
Utah
10%
20
30
40
50
60
The
model points to big Trump wins in a number of blue states, allowing him
to rack up large delegate margins. He wins in California in almost the
same way that he did in Illinois and Michigan — showing vulnerability,
but benefiting from a split field and Mr. Cruz’s blue-state weakness.
Mr.
Trump then edges out Mr. Cruz across red or purple states, as he did in
North Carolina. Mr. Cruz wins Wisconsin, Nebraska, Washington and Utah
(where he clears the 50 percent winner-take-all threshold). But it’s
still not enough to stop Mr. Trump.
The Post-Rubio Effect
But Mr. Trump’s lead could close if the votes from his opposition consolidate further. And there are signs of that.
Mr.
Trump’s impressive showing in Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina
last Tuesday led a lot of people to overlook just how strong Mr. Cruz
really was. Mr. Cruz hit 40 percent of the vote in Missouri, something
he had done only in Texas, in caucus states and in the Mormon areas of
eastern Idaho. He hit 37 percent of the vote in North Carolina and swept
the metropolitan parts of the state, usually an area of weakness for
Mr. Cruz. He even won 30 percent of the vote in Illinois — again,
something he hadn’t done in a blue-state primary (although he still
showed considerable weakness in the core of the Chicago metropolitan
area).
The
easiest explanation is that Mr. Cruz was consolidating the conservative
voters of a weakening Marco Rubio, who dropped out after Mr. Trump
trounced him in the Florida primary. Mr. Cruz’s advance into the 30s
puts him within striking distance of Mr. Trump in a lot of states where
Mr. Trump might have been a big favorite earlier in the year. It would
not take too many additional gains for Mr. Cruz to turn key states into
tossups, or even to win them.
In
this scenario, Mr. Trump barely wins states where Mr. Cruz is fairly
strong, including winner-take-all contests in South Dakota, Montana and
Arizona. If Mr. Trump lost those states, he would probably fall short of
1,237.
What’s
more, Mr. Cruz is in striking distance in a much longer series of
primaries — including California — where he could go from losing to
winning with even fairly modest gains. Those gains could come from
strategic voting by Kasich supporters who decide to help Mr. Cruz in
denying Mr. Trump his delegate target. It’s not even clear how strong
Mr. Kasich will be by June, when California votes.
It’s
possible that Mr. Rubio’s departure alone could be enough to stop Mr.
Trump. Mr. Cruz would overtake Mr. Trump in enough states to deny Mr.
Trump a majority of delegates if Mr. Rubio’s projected voters were
reallocated in proportion to Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz’s strength by
congressional district.
Not
all of Mr. Rubio’s supporters will vote. Not all will vote against Mr.
Trump. But if Mr. Cruz picks up the preponderance of even the small
segment of voters Mr. Rubio was winning, it could be enough to start
flipping a few close contests. It might have allowed Mr. Cruz to pull
away in Missouri and perhaps even win North Carolina. Since the
Republican delegate rules now tilt more heavily toward the winner, the
difference between slight losses and slight wins in states can easily
shift huge numbers of delegates — and decide whether Mr. Trump wins the
nomination.
Many
of these states are already poised to be close. It wouldn’t take much
to knock Mr. Trump off track, even if he clearly seems to be on it now.
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