Donald Trump has cleared the 1,237-delegate threshold for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the Associate Press’ delegate tracker.
Five GOP primaries will take place June 7, offering an additional 303 delegates, but with a handful of unbound delegates recently announcing their plans to support the New York billionaire at the national convention, Trump has already reached 1,238.
“I think he has touched a part of our electorate that doesn’t like where our country is,” Oklahoma GOP chairwoman Pam Pollard, an unbound national convention delegate, told the AP. “I have no problem supporting Mr. Trump.”
The Trump campaign’s latest milestone comes just weeks after the political novice became the last man standing in the Republican field. Both Ted Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas, and John Kasich, the two-term governor of Ohio, suspended their campaigns in early May after becoming mathematically incapable of clinching the nomination on the first ballot.
In the weeks leading up to the moment Trump was declared the presumptive nominee, his greatest detractors were pushing hard for a contested convention where Cruz, or a “white knight” candidate, could steal the nomination from the brash business mogul.
Even after Trump wiped out his remaining two rivals, his detractors continued to pursue a the possibility of recruiting third-party candidate.
But with 1,238 delegates in his pocket, a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee and general election poll numbers that appear to be rising, Trump is set to arrive in Cleveland facing far less trouble than even he might have expected just weeks ago.
