Republican officeholders, including the party’s 2008 presidential nominee and the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, are abandoning Donald Trump as uproar spreads over his lewd video. The next 24 hours will tell whether the significant but still manageable number of defections will turn into a stampede, or whether Trump can find a way to contain the damage and keep the rest of his congressional support on board.

Beyond that, even if a full-scale GOP stampede away from Trump breaks out, it remains unclear precisely what that would mean. Would it end Trump’s days as a viable candidate? Or would it actually strengthen his support with a core of Republican voters that will never be big enough to win a general election but would be big enough to cause trouble for those GOP lawmakers who ran away from the party’s nominee?