Trump's actually in a pretty strong position in the race to be the Republican nominee.
The republican race is down to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich (why Kasich is still running, I’m not sure). It’s been generally thought for a while now that if Trump doesn’t get to the 1237 magic number of delegates needed for the nomination, that he would be denied the nomination at a contested convention in Cleveland. And Ted Cruz has been making a lot of inroads in securing delegates loyal to him, even for delegate slots that will have to vote for Trump on the first ballot. However, a few things that have happened in the past two weeks have led me to believe that Trump is in a much stronger position than commonly believed.
Firstly, and most importantly, there seems to be consensus forming that Trump doesn’t have to get to 1237, he just needs to get close enough. Well, what’s close enough? RNC Rules Committee member Randy Evans, predicted that if Trump got over 1100 delegates, he’d get the nomination. So the question is not whether Trump will get to 1237, but will he get close enough that the optics of denying him the nomination become prohibitive? Evans thinks 1100 is the magic number, I would suggest that 1100 is on the lower end, but with Evans going on record with that number, any Trump total over 1100, especially substantially over 1100, will be hard to deny. Indeed, recent polls have shown that the majority of republicans believe that the person who gets the most delegates (even if he falls short of 1237) should be the nominee.
Secondly, Ted Cruz has been mathematically eliminated from getting to 1237 via bound delegates.
According to Taniel, Cruz will also be mathematically eliminated from getting to 1237 via bound and unbound delegates after the results of April 26. In other words, Ted Cruz will be eliminated from reaching 1237 on Tuesday — he will have lost when he put his candidacy to the voters, and his only remaining path is to have the delegates at the convention hand the nomination to him. If there’s one thing Donald Trump understands, it is the dynamics of winning and losing — Ted Cruz will be a loser after Tuesday, and Trump will use his media platform to emphasize that.
What are unbound delegates? The republican nomination process has so-called unbound delegates in some states, ie delegates who can vote however they like, despite how their state votes. The largest remaining pool of unbound delegates are from Pennsylvania (54 of PA’s 71 delegates are unbound, so only 17 will be allocated on Tuesday. However, a recent survey of the people running to fill these delegate slots, showed that slightly more than half intend to vote for the winner of PA or of their district. Trump is favored to win Pennsylvania by a large margin come Tuesday.
Thirdly, upcoming races look very favorable for Trump. According to 538’s path for Trump to get to 1237, he would need to sweep the northeast, win California and win Indiana. He’s won New York in a rout and he’ll likely have big wins in PA, DE, CT, RI and MD on Tuesday April 26. California polls are starting to look favorable for him. That leaves Indiana, where the very first polls there (including some private ones) have shown Trump with a narrow lead.
So it seems very possible that Trump can indeed get to 1237. But that’s besides the point. We already established that he just needs to get close enough. 538’s projections have him finishing between 1150-1160 delegates, and that’s with him losing Indiana. If he wins Indiana then he’s going to finish closer to 1200, maybe even slightly above 1200. In any case, it seems like there’s a very high chance that Trump gets easily over 1100 (Randy Evans’ minimum number too seal Trump’s nomination).
If Trump gets to 1237, it’s over — he’ll be the nominee. What happens if Trump falls short of that, but close enough (say over 1150)? If that happens, during the six weeks between the last primary and the Republican convention, there’ll be intense pressure on the (at least) 132 unbound delegates (including the 54 from Pennsylvania). If Trump is close to that 1237 number, as I think he will be, there will almost certainly be enough public support for him among these 132 unbound delegates to get him to the 1237 total before the convention, especially if polls of republican voters continue to show that the person who gets the most votes/delegates should be the nominee. In other words, it seems unlikely to me that there will be a contested republican convention, and instead, Donald Trump is likely to have locked up the nomination before the convention starts.