Donald Trump to storm convention just shy of delegate threshold for nomination
y Ralph Z. Hallow - The Washington Times - Wednesday, March 9, 2016
NEWS ANALYSIS:
Donald Trump is on track to hand the Republican establishment an unprecedented defeat at the national convention in July, despite being outspent 3-1 by party leaders and their associates in their all-out effort to turn primary and caucus voters against him, according to a state-by-state delegate allocation analysis by The Washington Times.
By the time California and three other states count their votes from the last four primaries June 7, the brash billionaire businessman and TV star will be 74 or so delegates short of the 1,237 majority needed for the nomination, the analysis shows.
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With so large a plurality in the offing, it is increasingly unlikely that the Republican establishment, fronted by 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, will carry through with plans to change the convention rules to wrest the nomination from Mr. Trump and hand it to an establishment-approved candidate such as Marco Rubio or John Kasich, or even a noncandidate like House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who is expected to be named the convention’s chairman and has the adoration of the party’s power brokers.
“I cannot imagine him not getting a majority on the first ballot if he’s only 74 delegates short of a majority,” said Republican superlawyer and Constitution scholar James Bopp Jr.
“Even if he were 174 short, if he had a substantial lead in delegates, it would likely be politically unacceptable for the anti-Trump forces to deny him nomination,” said Mr. Bopp, also a former Republican National Committee vice chairman.
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The vast majority of the 2,472 delegates are bound by the rules of their state parties and in some cases by state law to vote on the first ballot for the candidate who has won a required percentage of votes in that state’s primary or caucuses.
“To win a first-ballot victory solely on the basis of delegates bound to him on the basis of all the primaries and caucuses, Trump will need to sweep the two March 15 winner-takes-all states of Florida and Ohio,” said delegate allocation analyst Jim Ellis, who was a political adviser to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Those wins would add 165 delegates to his column, and that would put him within easy striking distance of a majority, assuming the rest of the electoral calendar plays out as projected in the accompanying chart. Only 10 states award all their delegates to a single candidate who takes a plurality of the votes.
In addition, there were originally 247 unbound delegates, including the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, who are generally party loyalists and do not support a Trump candidacy. The number of unbound delegates, however, continues to grow as candidates drop out of the race. Delegates are automatically unbound if their candidate suspends a campaign.
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“If he’s only 70 or 80 votes short, it’s hard to imagine his not getting the unbound delegates he needs,” said American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, who served as a political director in the George W. Bush White House.
“Interesting that in the last 48 hours the ‘never Trump’ crowd has trouble saying his name, but they have come to find Ted Cruz as the only viable alternative to Trump. They don’t like it, but he’s the only option,” he said.
Mr. Cruz’s viability is questionable in The Times’ analysis, which has the senator from Texas winding up with only 636 delegates — 601 short of the needed 1,237 delegates.
The Times’ analysis has Mr. Rubio amassing a total of 336 and Mr. Kasich only 119.
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