Following his stunning success in New York, grabbing 89 of the State’s 95 delegates with two still to be decided, Republican front-runner Donald Trump is now gung ho not just on getting to the magic number of 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination, but going on to accumulate over 1,400.
An internal memo of the Trump campaign speaks of the billionaire businessman aiming for and accumulating over 1,400 delegates, thus securing the nomination in the very first ballot at the Republican convention that gets underway in Cleveland on July 18.
“We will get most of the delegates and we will, in just another week, close the door on other candidates getting to 1,237 before the convention,” The Washington Post reported, citing the memo.
The Trump campaign is looking at the possibility of another strong showing in next Tuesday’s primaries in five States — Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware.
Polls suggest Trump is the strong favourite to win in all the five States. In Pennsylvania, the biggest of the lot with 71 delegates, Trump has a near 20 percentage point lead over main rival Ted Cruz in a Real Clear Politics average of polls. In Maryland and Connecticut, he leads Ohio Governor John Kasich by about 15 and 12 percentage points respectively. A single poll in Delaware puts him ahead of Kasich by 37 percentage points.
Trump, who has 845 delegates and needs another 392, has started asserting at his campaign meetings that after New York, Cruz has been “mathematically eliminated” from getting to the magic number.
But Cruz, who drew a blank in New York and is not expected to do well in next week’s contests, remains unfazed, rejecting Trump’s claims and insisting that there is no escape from a contested convention.
“We are headed to a contested convention,” Cruz said in a radio interview. “At this point, nobody is getting 1,237. Donald is going to talk all the time about other folks not getting to 1,237; he’s not getting there either. None of us are getting to 1,237.”
Cruz, while criticizing Trump saying he has no path to nomination, took the same line while talking to reporters about Kasich’s prospects and saying he should quit the race. At one point, Cruz suggested that Kasich may be “auditioning” to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick, but added that a Trump-Kasich ticket, if it came to that, would lose to Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.
“The Cruz spin machine produces more lies than anything else,” says the Trump campaign memo. Its push for 1,400 delegates is apparently aimed at warding off any surprises that Cruz may spring with his skills in mobilising delegates.
The campaign expects Trump to get past its own target of 1,400 not only by winning the remaining primaries between now and June, but also by courting about 200 or so convention delegates who are unbound.