Washington – After South Carolina caucus on Saturday night, Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush suspended his campaign for the 2017 race. Marco Rubio took over the second place, topping Ted Cruz by two-tenths of a percentage point and Donald Trump took the gold medal, one more time, affirming him as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
“After tonight, this has become a three-person race, and we will win the nomination,” Rubio told a crowd of cheering supporters at his primary night rally.
Now, the question is: will supporters move from one establishment candidate to another?
In the most recent NBC News/SurveyMonkey national poll, respondents were asked to name their second-choice candidate. The results showed that 19% of Bush supporters said they’d switch their support to Rubio while 16% said they’d go to Kasich, 12% to Cruz, 11% to Trump, and 9% to Ben Carson.
But, even though Bush supporters didn’t show enough second-choice support to Trump, after winning in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, another victory would propel Trump to taking the nomination.
On March 1, GOP voters in 12 states and American Samoa are heading to the polls and could push him as the clear favorite to win the nomination.
Is Trump heading to win the Republican nomination?
Nevada GOP voters will caucus Tuesday in the latest critical primary contest in the Republican 2016 race, and it seems the businessman is the winner in the state, according to recent polls which give Trump 39% support of Nevada Republican voters.
After Trump’s decisive win in Saturday’s South Carolina primary and Jeb Bush suspending his campaign, it seems that everything is on his side. The Cook Political Report explained that 35% of support could be enough to win the nomination over a five-person race, but given the three-way race emerging between Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Trump could win the nomination with minority support.
Dave Wasserman from The Cook Political Report explained that 38% of the 2,472 Republican convention delegates are enough to win the contests. Besides, a number of the other states that award delegates proportionately, Cruz and Rubio are in danger of slipping below the 20% threshold required to get a share of the delegates. This increases the odds that nobody will get the 1,237 needed, or that somebody will without winning a majority of votes.
Source: The Washington Post