Could Donald Trump win the Republican presidential nomination

Sandy Levinson

The quick and dirty answer to the question is yes.  And the reason has to do with the formal rules adopted by the Republican Party with regard to the allocation of delegates to the 2016 Convention, to be held in Cleveland in June.  Four states are allowed to have their primaries in February--Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Nevada--and then the scramble begins.  A whole bunch of states will have their primaries before March 15.  AND THE RULES REQUIRE THAT ALL OF THESE STATES OPERATE ON THE BASIS OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION (as is true for the first four states).  Then things get interesting, for it is up to the states themselves to decide whether delegates will be allocated by proportional representation or winner take all.  The current calendar for the Republican primaries indicates that the following states will be holding their primaries after March 15:  Arizona, Utah, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Indiana, Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and DC.  Apparently dates are not yet firmed up for New York, North Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Washington, and Wyoming.  Game theory suggests that there will be advantages to coming late precisely because it looks almost certain that there will be at least five or six candidates still duking it out by the Spring.  (I was on a program several weeks ago with the leader of the Travis County Republican Party, who predicted that there will be at least 5 or 6 candidates in the Texas primary on Super Tuesday, March 1.  It seems altogether likely that Trump will have more delegates on March 15 than any other single candidate, even if, as I am assuming, he has, say, "only" 30% of the total.  But if six or seven others are dividing up the remaining 70%, that obviously means that none of the others is likely to be all that close to Trump.

 More to the point, it seems highly unlikely that there will be any selfless falling on the sword by the others who decide that the way to stop Trump is to agree on the most plausible alternative, who, I must say, seems to be John Kasich.  But that requires, obviously, Jeb! to realize that his campaign is a disaster and that he is not going to be 45.  There are no conceivable circumstances under which Ted Cruz will join a top Trump movement in favor of a more electable candidate since Cruz really cares far more about 2020--and picking up the pieces of a totally destroyed GOP--than about helping Kasich or anyone else other than Ted Cruz who not only might win but presumptively would mean that Cruz has to wait until 2024 to run.  One can offer similar, though somewhat more generous analyses, of, say, Rand Paul. 

So it becomes crucial whether states chose to run proportional representation or winner-take-all votes.  The allocation of delegates can be found here.  The key to winner-take-all, obviously but crucially, is that all that Trump has to do is come in first, and it doesn't matter what his actual percentage is.  If he gets 30% of the vote in California, which traditionally does winner-take-all and has he gets 100% of the 172 delegates, unless the three "party leaders" are entitled to vote independently.  New York could give 95 delegates to their "favorite son" (assuming they reject Pataki!), while Pennsylvania could also contribute another 71 delegates. 

I am assuming that Trump could not possibly win a two-candidate race within the Republican Party, and perhaps he couldn't even prevail in a three-candidate showdown.  But, at least right now, it seems far more likely to be seven or eight (Jeb!, Kasich, Walker, Paul, Carson (!), Cruz,Rubio,  perhaps even Fiorina), and Trump seems to be a good bet to come in first unless one of the others unpredictably catches fire.  So under this scenario, he arrives in Cleveland with a hefty lead over the second-place candidate.  To be sure, Trump can easily be stopped, if but only if, a great spirit of self-sacrifice manifests itself. 

So the real question at the next debate should not be whether Trump will pledge to support the nominee, but, instead, whether each and every one of the others will promise, on national TV, that they will support Trump.  Enquiring minds want to know.

Once again, we should realize that FORMAL RULES MATTER.  There are no fancy theories of constitutional interpretation to be addressed.  There may be play in the joints inasmuch as states "may" (rather than "shall") adopt winner-take-all after March 15.  Should California, e.g., change its historic practice of winner-take-all, Trump will certainly be entitled to view this as an unfriendly measure and, more to the point, it will make far more likely what all of us political junkies are praying for, which is a "genuine" convention where it will take a number of ballots to decide who the candidate is.

I am not at all interested in sparking a debate about whether Donald Trump is qualified to be President.  He isn't (but, then, neither are most of the Republican candidates).  And, at this time, I'm not interested in debates about whether he would in fact be a viable candidate against Hillary Clinton.  (I doubt it, but who really knows?)  What I am interested in is whether anyone strongly objects to the empirics of this analysis. 
Posted 6:07 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]