There is now fairly broad agreement that Donald Trump can capture the Republican nomination even if he doesn’t quite get to the magic number of 1,237 delegates, as long as he’s close enough. But there’s no clear consensus on what constitutes “close enough.” So I decided to get a firmer sense of that by looking at the key variable: How many delegates will be unbound, or up for grabs, going into the Cleveland convention?
To start, let’s see where the race stands. Following Trump’s crushing victory in New York, he now has 843 delegates who are bound to vote for him on the first ballot. There are 620 bound delegates still to be allocated in remaining contests between now and June 7, and Trump would need to win nearly 64 percent of them to capture the nomination outright. But that’s where the unbound delegates come into play.
Trump has an argument to make to them that the GOP should nominate the person who won the most delegates and popular votes, and that failing to do so would trigger a massive backlash against a system that Trump and his allies have been portraying as “rigged.” Add in promises, personal wooing, and it’s conceivable that Trump could win over some degree of these delegates. But how many will even be available to pitch in the first place?
According to information provided to the Washington Examiner by the RNC, the following delegates will be technically unbound from the first ballot of the convention: American Samoa (9); Colorado (37); Guam (9); North Dakota (28); Pennsylvania (54); Virgin Islands (9) and Wyoming (29). In addition, there are some Sen. Marco Rubio delegates that will be considered unbound going into the convention based on state rules. National Review’s Eliana Johnson has counted 36 unbound Rubio delegates in New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Add all of that up, and you theoretically get 211 unbound delegates. The exact number could vary based on various rules and assumptions, but this is a good ballpark figure.
Looking at the list, right off the bat, one can see that delegations in Colorado, Wyoming and North Dakota (representing a combined 94 delegates) are technically considered unbound. But Sen. Ted Cruz dominated the state and county-level conventions in those states, which are all in a region that has been the most resistant to Trump. It’s difficult to see how Trump could pluck more than a handful of delegates from those states.
That would mean his more realistic universe would be the remaining 117 or so unbound delegates. Based on this, it seems plausible that Trump could capture the nomination if he were to win at least 1,200 delegates. If that were the case, he’d only have to win over about a third of the unbound delegates (not including any he could peel off in Colorado, North Dakota or Wyoming). Given that reaching 1,200 will likely have meant that Trump won Pennsylvania, he’d have a strong case to make to the 54 unbound delegates representing that state.
However, were Trump to finish closer to 1,150, the math would become fairly daunting. If he finishes there, he’d have to win over 87 unbound delegates, or nearly three-fourths of those 117.
My best guess, then, is that Trump would likely win the nomination with 1,200 and would likely lose it at 1,150, and that the bubble is likely somewhere in between those two points.
So, what would it take for Trump to end the primary season at these thresholds? Well, to get to 1,200 delegates heading into the convention, Trump would need to win about 58 percent of the bound delegates in the remaining states. If Trump instead wins delegates at the rate he has in contests up until this point (49 percent), he’d end up with 1,149 delegates.
Given these facts, which scenario is more likely based on the states remaining?
First, the easy part. There are five winner-take-all states, of which Trump is expected to win two (Delaware and New Jersey) totaling 67 delegates and Cruz is expected to win three (Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota) totaling 92 delegates.
When I adjust my calculations to take that into account, suddenly Trump needs 63 percent of the other outstanding delegates to reach 1,200 and 52 percent to get to 1,150.
Beyond that, trying to project out the math gets a bit more complicated. But thinking of the other remaining states in broad strokes, we can say this. There are four states with a total of 115 delegates that allocate proportionally (Rhode Island, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico) – meaning that even if Trump wins them all, he won’t be able to make huge delegate gains. Accounting for these states would drive up the percentage he needs to win even further. For instance, if he took home about half of the delegates in these states (likely optimistic), he’d end up needing to win nearly two-thirds of delegates in other states to get to 1,200.
That may sound like an impossibly high-hurdle, but it’s important to keep in mind that the other states that haven’t been mentioned yet include several states in which Trump is heavily favored and that have allocation rules highly favorable to the winners. Remember, South Carolina, Missouri, Illinois and New York were not technically winner-take-all states, but because of their rules favorable to winners, Trump took roughly 86 percent of the delegates. He has an opportunity to make similar gains in states where he’s already heavily favored: Connecticut, Maryland and West Virginia (100 combined delegates). Should he do so, suddenly he’d be back to needing only about 59 percent of outstanding delegates to get to 1,200.
This is why the two remaining states yet to be mentioned loom so large: Indiana and California. Both states give some delegates to the statewide winner, but leave most delegates to be allocated by congressional district. There hasn’t been any polling yet in Indiana, which carries 57 bound delegates and on the surface seems winnable for both Cruz and Trump. A Wisconsin-like win for Cruz there, and it becomes highly unlikely that Trump can secure a bound delegate majority.
In California, which has a massive 172 vote delegate haul, there has been more polling, which has shown Trump ahead, but Cruz has been close enough in a sufficient number of polls to turn it into a battleground, especially given that there’s plenty of time remaining to campaign there and close the gap. Furthermore, given that 153 of the delegates will be allocated in 51 separate congressional districts, there will be plenty of opportunity for Cruz to target certain areas with a high concentration of ideologically very conservative voters.
To sum up: Trump’s real magic number is probably closer to 1,200 than 1,237 and his chances fade rapidly as he gets closer to 1,150. His path to victory will involve some combination of racking up huge victories in states that heavily reward the winner; winning Indiana or having a crushing victory in California; and winning Pennsylvania in a convincing enough fashion to strengthen the case to the state’s 54 unbound delegates going into the convention.
