With Super Tuesday just days away, Donald Trump is set to win a large number of contests. However, the delegate math means it is unlikely he will walk away with so many delegates as to make him unstoppable.
Unlike South Carolina, which allocated its delegates by a winner-take-all system, Super Tuesday states have variations of proportional allocation systems. Some are strictly proportional—Virginia and Massachusetts, for instance—while most states have what is commonly called “winner take most.” Assuming no single candidate wins half of the vote, all candidates who hit a minimum threshold (of 15 or 20 percent) get a proportional share of statewide delegates. Many delegates will be allocated by congressional district, with each district’s first-place finisher getting two delegates and the runner-up receiving one. This is good news for those who wish to stop Trump. While Trump has a lead in states like Georgia, Oklahoma, and Alabama, the second-place and even third-place finishers should get delegates, too.
Moreover, Texas looms large. With 155 delegates on offer, it accounts for nearly a quarter of those up for grabs on Super Tuesday. The polls in Texas have been all over the place, but the average shows Cruz in the mid-30s, Trump in the mid-20s, and Rubio near 20 and on the rise. That suggests that all three will win delegates, with the most going to Cruz. But there is a catch: Almost all of Texas’s delegates are allocated by congressional district, which makes it very hard to figure how those delegates will be allocated. Additionally, heavily Democratic districts receive just as many delegates as heavily Republican ones, which complicates matters.
Any range of scenarios is possible, but it would be tough for Trump to walk away with a very large delegate lead. Cruz should win the bulk of the Texas delegates, while Rubio looks to be competitive everywhere. That should keep the Trump margin down.
The larger problem is that Super Tuesday does not look set to winnow the field, except perhaps Carson. John Kasich remains defiant—effectively taking a month-long break between the New Hampshire and Ohio primaries. His presence in the race will probably not influence much on Tuesday—unless his vote share keeps Rubio or Cruz from hitting thresholds—but without a clear anti-Trump emerging next week, he has little incentive to walk away. Ditto Cruz. His path to the nomination depends on doing very well on Super Tuesday. He looks to fall short of expectations, but with a win in Texas, what incentive will he have to quit? In all likelihood, he’ll be able to claim the number two position in total delegates, and bragging rights for beating Trump in two contests (assuming he wins Texas, which he probably will). Ditto Rubio. If he finishes consistently second to Trump in the states outside Texas, what incentive does he have to throw in the towel?
All of this becomes a pronounced issue on March 15th, when Ohio and Florida hold winner-take-all contests and Trump looks likely (for now) to win both with less than half the vote. If he pulls that feat off, he’ll be in the catbird seat.
This is the most worrying prospect about Super Tuesday. If it does not winnow the field, then Trump takes a huge step closer to the nomination—even if he does not net all that many delegates.
Unfortunately, until last night’s debate, nobody has really laid a glove on Trump. Why? The rules of the nomination process provided no personal incentive for Cruz or Rubio to act on behalf of the collective welfare of the party. Rather, each had an incentive to pursue his own strategy for the nomination, and the presence of the other anti-Trump candidates made each doubt that an assault on Trump would actually benefit him, as opposed to the others. Given last night’s drubbing of Trump, this utility calculus appears to be changing—a hopeful sign.
But there is the irrepressible worry that it is too late. One could say this reticence was a failure of leadership on the part of these candidates, although what pundits have been asking for was basically an act of selflessness that is rare in politics, especially from those so ambitious as to spend a year in pursuit of the White House. One could say this was a result of bad campaign strategies, yet the strategies made sense from the pure self-interest of each candidate—at least until now.
It is better to conclude that this has been a failure of the rules of the Republican nomination process itself. It is a terrible system, full of weaknesses that Trump has managed to exploit with aplomb. Two years ago, Jeffrey Anderson and I wrote a blistering critique of the current regime, and offered a sensible alternative that would have given the party much more leverage over a demagogue like Trump. Our proposal fell on deaf ears—not just among the party elite, but among most of the pundit class in general (with a few notable exceptions).
The rules of the game matter enormously in determining outcomes such as this—unfortunately, this was as true in 2013 as it is today. It is far too late to change the rules for this cycle. Let us hope that last night marked a turning point, that the major candidates now focus on Trump, winnow the field, and ultimately defeat this scourge.
After that, conservatives need to insist—finally—on root-and-branch party reform.
Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.
