FIVETHIRTYEIGHT
If it’s not obvious by now, a ship called the Republican Party is perilously close to being hijacked by a populist pirate named Donald Trump. At the last three ports of call — New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — Trump overpowered his rivals, even capturing all 50 of the Palmetto State’s delegates. Armed with a blue-collar following, Trump could continue to win majorities of delegates without winning majorities of voters, and if he does, he could become unstoppable in as soon as three weeks.
Yet there is still a possibility, albeit a narrowing one, that Marco Rubio could turn the tide and ultimately win more delegates than Trump — even if he wins fewer overall primary votes.
Rubio’s increasingly tenuous path depends on his ability to win a series of winner-take-all states with high proportions of white-collar, college-educated Republicans, most critically his home state of Florida on March 15. [Where Fivethirtyeight's own analysis shows Rubio behind Trump at present--Esco.].
-----
Rubio might hope to win large delegate margins with relatively small raw vote margins, while Trump wins far more votes elsewhere but reaps more modest delegate payoffs — raising the prospect of an unusual split votes/delegates verdict enabled by the GOP’s uneven delegate allocation rules. However, to move beyond wishful thinking and achieve such tactical victories, Rubio will need to consolidate much more of the non-Trump vote and rapidly grow his support in Democratic-leaning areas in an extremely compressed window of time. That’s a tall order, but it may be GOP leaders’ last hope to stop Trump, who clearly has the best chance of winning the nomination outright by the final primaries in June.
-----
After March 1, 52 percent of Republican delegates will be awarded on a winner-take-all basis, keeping alive the possibility that a large early Trump delegate lead could be erased quickly by modest losses later. March 15 is truly the GOP’s “day of reckoning,” and Florida may be the most pivotal state on the entire calendar.... if Rubio wins over enough of Jeb Bush’s old supporters to claim Florida’s 99-delegate jackpot, it could mark a long-awaited turning point in the race. At the very least, he could leverage such an outcome to try to prevent Trump from winning a majority of delegates by June.
The continued candidacies of Cruz, Ben Carson and Kasich are of great significance even if none of them any longer have a credible path to the nomination. The more delegates they siphon off on Super Tuesday and beyond, the greater the odds neither Rubio nor Trump racks up 1,237 delegates by June, raising the prospect of a multi-ballot Cleveland convention in July.
And what could possibly compound the chaos of a contested convention? Just imagine a convoluted scenario in which Trump winds up with fewer delegates than Rubio despite having won the most votes heading into a contested convention, while Cruz and Kasich delegates are the ultimate arbiters of the nomination on a second or third ballot. Cue an angry press conference at which a red-faced Trump accuses the Republican National Committee of fixing the rules against him and thwarting the will of GOP voters. But the RNC’s rules predate Trump’s rise, and they may be party leaders’ only hope of averting a likely Trump shipwreck in November. [But, in such a scenario, do not rule out Trump opting to run as an Independent.-Esco]
OTHER LAST CHANCE SCENARIOS:
Billionaires get into the game
Top Republican donors have shied away from confronting Mr. Trump, but at some point the party’s bankrollers may get serious about saving it from a man they view as a catastrophe. If they did, this could represent a serious threat to Mr. Trump. Imagine tens of millions of dollars in attack ads blanketing the landscape of primary states.
Debates turn disastrous
The stage may get even tougher for him starting Thursday night in Houston: He can no longer count on a large field of opponents to shield him from a formidable puncher like Mr. Cruz, or from Mr. Rubio, who is also seeking to break through.
His own worst enemy
Republicans have bet for months that Mr. Trump would destroy his own campaign through sheer intemperance or incompetence. So far, they have been disappointed.
But just because Mr. Trump has not yet paid a price for his lack of discipline does not mean he never will. A monumental blunder could be much costlier now than it would have been earlier in the race. For many Republican leaders, the question is whether Mr. Trump’s eventual self-immolation comes before he wins the nomination, or in November.