Everyone is wrapped up in Nevada — and that includes me. But I am not sure people realize just how close Trump is to the nomination. The SC polling is fluid — and an upset is certainly possible. But unless Trump loses SC today, the GOP is going to have a very hard time stopping him.
The calculation behind these numbers is here.
The key rows in this table are the total after Super Tuesday and the total on March 16th. The primaries on March 1 are mostly proportional. I project Trump with a 229 vote lead on March 2nd — significant , but not insurmountable.
But the real problem is shown in the numbers for 3/16. At that point Trump will have 856 delegates (you only need 1,236 for a majority of pledged delegates). At that point he will have over a 550 delegate lead. Most importantly, Trump would only need to win 30% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination.
For GOP the problem is clearly on March 15, when 4 states, Florida (99), Illinois (66), Missouri (49) and Ohio (63) hold winner take all primaries. The establishment might hope Kasich is still around to win Ohio (not likely) and that if Bush drops out Rubio could win Florida (the polling suggests otherwise).
The point here is that it will take something very big to happen very quickly to deny Trump the nomination.
Delegate ProjectionWhat must be particularly worrying to the GOP is how stable this race has been. I have been running these projections for months. Little has changed since Carson has collapsed in November.
Trump is a terrible General Election candidate. I honestly think either Sanders or Clinton will desrtoy him.
For the GOP, with each passing day the sounds on the click get a bit louder.