It might seem to you as though an awful lot has already happened in the seemingly endless presidential campaign. But in reality, when you boil it all the way down, just four states—relatively small ones—have held their primaries or caucuses.
Or to put it in numerical terms: Donald Trump has been awarded 81 delegates to date, and still needs 1,156 more to clinch the Republican nomination.
That means that there is still plenty of time for the party’s voters to change their minds and reject Trump, before he racks up enough delegates to ensure his ascendance.
If you are one of the remaining candidates, then, it remains possible to believe that the Trump phenomenon will collapse—leaving just four people, including you, who could end up with the prize.
That timetable starts counting down quickly, however, when polls open this Tuesday morning. In place of the one-at-a-time progression of table-setting caucuses and primaries, the race now becomes a national scramble. As of this writing, just 5 percent of GOP delegates have been claimed; by two weeks from Tuesday, that figure climbs to 60 percent.
Those numbers explain the urgency the campaigns are feeling—and the concern they feel about another set of numbers: the ones in the polls.
A new CNN/ORC poll just out shows Trump with 49 percent Republican support nationwide, with the other four remaining hopefuls trailing badly. Marco Rubio has 16 percent, Ted Cruz 15 percent, Ben Carson 10 percent, and John Kasich 6 percent.
That poll is either an error or a sign of a huge shift in the race. In other recent polls, Trump has claimed only about one-third of Republican voters’ support in national polls. Ted Cruz averages around 20 percent, Marco Rubio a little less than that, John Kasich roughly 10 percent, and Ben Carson in high single digits.
Another important set of numbers, unknown to us but much whispered about, are the candidates’ fundraising figures in the month of February—since the Iowa caucuses—and even more important, the cash remaining in their committees and Super PACs as this heavy voting period begins.
Those whispers say that Cruz is badly depleted. His third-place finish in South Carolina’s primary shook supporters’ faith that he can rack up enough delegates in the South to make up for his unpopularity in other parts of the country.
That makes this Tuesday, heavily stacked with Southern states, critically important for Cruz. He needs to bounce back by not only winning his home state of Texas, but also pulling off victories somewhere in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
Rubio has reportedly been flooded with funding since his second-place South Carolina showing—and Jeb Bush’s subsequent withdrawal from the race.
That should sustain him through the upcoming contests. But, the delegate numbers game can start getting tough for him very quickly if he continues securing seconds and thirds, rather than firsts.
Virginia is considered Rubio’s best chance for a win on Tuesday. He did a four-stop swing through that state on Sunday; unfortunately for him, polls have shown him trailing Trump badly there.
One more important number for Rubio: the 20 percent floor in Texas, to qualify for delegates.
With a massive 155 delegates at stake there, most proportionally assigned by result within congressional districts, the difference between getting his share and getting nothing is substantial.
Money is said to be very tight for Kasich, and he doesn’t appear to have any winnable states this week to help prime the pump. The one state thought to be good for him, Massachusetts, looks like solid Trump country according to polls.
Kasich’s hope, frankly, is that the numbers don’t add up for Rubio on Tuesday. If Rubio flops, the thinking goes, establishment Republican hopes to stop Trump will be rest entirely on Kasich. They will turn to him, as his home state of Ohio and other moderate states’ primaries come up on the calendar.
As for the final candidate … well, at this point Carson’s campaign is serving mostly as a low-bar measure: Any candidate who finishes below Carson in a state is probably on his way out of the race.
But let me suggest one final number that the four Trump-chasing candidates should know: Mitt Romney’s phone number.
Romney, I hear, has kept close tabs on all the campaigns. He has eyes and ears in all of them, and in every state’s GOP operation. He thinks of himself now as a party elder, with the responsibility to see that order is kept. And he clearly does not want Trump to win the party’s nomination.
If Trump does stumble, and the four others see hope that the nomination will ultimately slip from his hands, there is a real chance that they will all stagger on toward the national convention without hope of any of them holding a majority of delegates. Romney, then, could be the one person to step up and play kingmaker among them.
