Trump on Track to Clinch Nomination in March — or Even Earlier

Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

While there remains some forlorn hope that someone — maybe Nikki Haley, maybe Supreme Court justices — can knock Donald Trump off schedule in his march to the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the schedule itself is becoming pretty clear. As the Washington Post reports, Team Trump has calculated when he’ll clinch the nomination if he wins every caucus and primary, which at the moment the polls show he is likely to do:

The campaign’s analysis of its own internal polling mixed with public surveys puts former president Donald Trump on track to potentially win 973 delegates by Super Tuesday on March 5, and 1,478 by March 19, a senior campaign official told reporters here on Monday. It takes 1,215 delegates to claim the Republican nomination.

As the Post points out, it’s not just a matter of the former president smoking his opponents … he’s also rigged the game a bit by making it easier to pile up delegates fast:

The anticipated delegate tally reflects rule changes that the campaign pushed through state party committees earlier this year, such as awarding all of California’s delegates to any candidate winning more than 50 percent.

And yes, a mid-March clincher would happen before anyone could possibly see the much-indicted former president being led out of court in leg-irons as a convicted felon:

Winning the nomination in March would overlap with the scheduled start of Trump’s trial in Washington on charges of trying to interfere with the 2020 election results. That case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, is on hold pending an appeal to the Supreme Court to consider Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution for actions taken as president.

But actually this Trump comeback scenario is a tad pessimistic. He may not mathematically clinch the nomination until March. But there’s no race without horses. And right now the front-runner is on a path to put an end to any real competition on February 24.

Assuming, as you should, that Trump wins Iowa (he’s up by 32 points in the RealClearPolitics polling averages for the January 15 caucuses), then eight days later he will be favored to win New Hampshire (where he’s up by a mere 23 points per RCP). Sure, it’s possible Nikki Haley could overtake him in the Granite State (she’s within 15 points of him in a new CBS News poll). But that would probably require either Ron DeSantis to drop out after Iowa (not likely if, as seems probable, he finishes second there) or Chris Christie to drop out before New Hampshire (which he’s sworn not to do). Either way, presumably Haley will soldier on to her home state of South Carolina … where Trump seems in a good position (49 percent in the RCP polling averages) to croak her candidacy once and for all.

If Haley somehow wins her home state, there will be a lot of excitement about her in anti-Trump circles, but she would have a very heavy lift cutting into Trump’s national lead. He’s at an incredible 62.9 percent in the national RCP polling averages, which should put him in a commanding position going into the 14-state Super Tuesday abattoir on March 5.

The key takeaway here is that the deal is likely to go down very quickly in the 2024 GOP nomination contest. If it doesn’t, things could get quite messy. But don’t bet the farm on it.