Donald Trump is expected to do very well as the results from the Super Tuesday contests come in tonight, but don’t listen to the pundits and Trump supporters who claim that the race is over.
Right now, Trump has 87 delegates, Ted Cruz has 17, and Marco Rubio has 16. Trump may win every state but Texas and take close to 300 of the 595 delegates up for grabs tonight. (See this detailed state-by-state analysis by Henry Olsen.) But no matter how well Trump does, he will still be a long way from the 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination.
“I think over 300 [delegates] would be a phenomenal night for Trump, under 250 would be a sub-par night,” says the Cook Political Report‘s Dave Wasserman. “Anything in between would be about what we would expect.”
But even if Trump does very well, Wasserman adds, “I don’t think the nomination will be wrapped up. The most important day on the calendar is March 15.” That’s when Ohio (66 delegates) and Florida (99 delegates) will hold their winner-take-all primaries. Missouri (52 delegates) and Illinois (69 delegates) also hold primaries that day and use a hybrid system that could allow one candidate to walk away with almost all of the delegates. So March 15 presents a real opportunity to turn the race around.
There’s obviously not a lot of time between now and March 15, and Trump leads the field in both Ohio and Florida in recent polls. If Trump sweeps tonight that will make it even more difficult to change the dynamic in the race. But in 2012, Mitt Romney was trailing Newt Gingrich in Florida by 9 points a week before the primary. Romney ended up winning that crucial contest by 14 points.
If Trump wins both Ohio and Florida on March 15, he’ll be in a very strong position to win the nomination. But even a split decision could make it difficult for him to get to 1,237 delegates. “That’s the only way that Kasich’s presence in the race can help Rubio,” says Wasserman. “It’s possible that Florida could be a knockout punch for Rubio. But if it’s extremely close and Trump still wins, but Kasich still wins Ohio, you can make the case that Rubio will have more delegates than Kasich and Trump might be stopped from winning 1,237.”
Trump now has the likeliest path to the nomination, but in a year filled with political surprises don’t discount the possibility of being surprised again.
