Donald Trump had another great Tuesday. The GOP front-runner swept all five contests in what the nickname-loving East Coast media dubbed the Acela Primary, winning by even-larger-than-expected margins in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. With a few votes left to be tallied—and seven bound delegates yet to be awarded—Trump has already been projected to claim at least 105 of the 118 bound delegates that were up for grabs in the primaries.
Just where does that leave Trump on his quest to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to avoid a messy, multiballot contested convention and clinch the GOP nomination outright? Let’s run the numbers. (Note: I’m working off the Associated Press’ delegate tracker.)
The current delegate scoreboard looks like this as of Wednesday morning:
- Donald Trump has 950 delegates, or 77 percent of the 1,237 needed
- Ted Cruz has 560 delegates, or 45 percent of the 1,237 needed
- John Kasich has 153 delegates, or 12 percent of the 1,237 needed
The number of delegates each candidate needs to win to reach 1,237:
- Donald Trump needs 287 delegates
- Cruz needs 677 delegates
- Kasich needs 1,084 delegates
There are only 502 delegates up for grabs in the 10 remaining contests on the calendar.
- Trump needs to win 57 percent of them to reach 1,237
- Cruz needs to win 135 percent of them to reach 1,237*
- Kasich needs to win 216 percent of them to reach 1,237
Hitting that number won’t be easy for Trump, but he’s clearly trending in the right direction. The celebrity billionaire continues to add to his support in national polls and, more troubling for his rivals, has easily outperformed his polling average in the most recent half-dozen state contests. (Though, to be fair, those were all in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, which has been particularly friendly territory for the New York City tycoon.) He also has at least one big-ticket gimme left on the map: New Jersey, where he’s long been favored to win the 51 delegates at stake in its winner-take-all primary on June 7. And he’s also expected to win in West Virginia on May 10, though the state’s rather bizarre rules make it somewhat difficult to predict just how many of the 34 delegates Trump will claim, although it would be a surprise if he didn’t snag a majority.
The remaining eight states can be broken down into two groups of three and one group of two:
Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska (combined delegates: 92): Trump is considered an underdog in these three states, all of which hold winner-take-all contests. It’s very possible he walks away with zero delegates from this group.
Washington, Oregon, and New Mexico (combined delegates 96): These states are harder to predict, though all three will divvy up their delegates proportionally so they are unlikely to swing Trump’s fortunes drastically either way. A likely outcome here is that Trump wins a plurality but not a majority of delegates from this trio.
Indiana and California (combined delegates 229): These are both winner-take-most contests, and are likely to decide whether Trump clinches the nomination before the convention or falls short. He’s currently up by an average of 6 points in the polls in Indiana (which votes on May 3) and 17 points in California (June 7), but it’s possible his advantage in the former could shrink if the Cruz-Kasich pact (as delusional and deficient as it has been) helps consolidate anti-Trump voters around Cruz.
Will Trump reach 1,237 by the time the primary race wraps up on June 7? It’s going to be close! FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and the Upshot’s Nate Cohn both think Trump most likely needs to win both Indiana and California to close the deal and avoid the drama of a floor flight at the convention.
Trump, though, won’t necessarily be DOA in Cleveland even if he comes up short in the primary season. He’d still have the chance to find the remaining delegates he needs from the 200 or so unbound delegates who will be at the convention. Many of those will be local party officials or Cruz supporters, yes, but the closer Trump is to 1,237, the more sympathetic many of them will likely be to his cause—or at least the will of those voters who cast ballots for him. Pennsylvania Republicans, for instance, bound 17 delegates to Trump as a result of Tuesday’s primary, but they also elected another 54 unbound delegates who will arrive in Cleveland free to vote however they want. While we don’t have an official slate of those winners yet, many of the candidates suggested they’d vote for whichever candidate won their particular district. Unbound delegates from other states that Trump won will be under similar pressure.
The race isn’t over yet, but Trump now looks to be a better bet to win the GOP nomination than he has in nearly two months—and depending on how much of a Trump-skeptic you were earlier this year, possibly since the race began.
Read more Slate coverage of the Republican primary.
Correction April 27, 2016: An earlier version of this post misstated the percentage of yet-to-be-contested bound delegates Cruz would need to win to clinch the nomination. He needs to win 135 percent of them, not 134 percent.
This post was updated with more recent AP estimates as they became available.