The FiveThirtyEight deep-dive into the delegate math of the Republican nomination is useful but also just bizarre.
The first thing they do is assume that Rubio will emerge as the savior the Establishment rallies around to stop Cruz and Trump. That’s a contentious assumption, as both Christie and Kasich are showing enough strength in New Hampshire to make a claim for this prize.
Then they decide that Trump will do best in the stupidest states (measured by educational attainment), while Cruz will dominate with evangelicals and throughout the South, and Rubio will do best wherever Mitt Romney did best, which is in rich, mainly coastal states and areas of the Midwest.
Finally, they give us a thought experiment that shows how all three candidates could attain the 1,237 delegates they would need to secure the nomination.
In their scenario, Trump could reach the threshold without winning too many contests. Here are the states where they show Trump (winning by) getting the most delegates: Iowa, Nevada, Alaska, Minnesota, Louisiana, Idaho, Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Nebraska, West Virginia, and South Dakota.
That’s 12 states out of 50 and don’t forget that there are also contests in Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.
So, Trump can win the nomination by winning 12 out of 56 contests, and he can do this by getting all the delegates from winner-take-all Ohio, Florida, and Arizona.
Well, he could do this in theory, except try to imagine a scenario like the (best case for The Donald) one presented where Trump wins Iowa, comes in second in New Hampshire and South Carolina, wins Nevada, and then this happens on Super Tuesday:
Ted Cruz wins: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming
Marco Rubio wins: Massachusetts, Vermont, and Virginia
Donald Trump wins: Alaska and Minnesota
From a delegate point of view, these results would be acceptable to all three candidates. But I think that would be a long night for Trump, don’t you?
Would he be able to maintain that he’s still winning like Charlie Sheen?
What’s useful in this piece is the information on the nuts and bolts of how delegates are awarded. But it’s not helpful for predicting where or why each candidate is likely to do well.