David Wasserman: “Rubio’s increasingly tenuous path depends on his ability to win a series of winner-take-all states with high proportions of white-collar, college-educated Republicans, most critically his home state of Florida on March 15. Rubio’s path may also depend on his ability to claim delegates from low-turnout territories like Puerto Rico (which, amazingly, will select the same number of delegates as New Hampshire despite having a fraction of the GOP voters) as well as blue-leaning congressional districts with few GOP voters but many available delegates, such as those in Chicago, Maryland and coastal California.”
“In each instance, Rubio might hope to win large delegate margins with relatively small raw vote margins, while Trump wins far more votes elsewhere but reaps more modest delegate payoffs — raising the prospect of an unusual split votes/delegates verdict enabled by the GOP’s uneven delegate allocation rules.”
“However, to move beyond wishful thinking and achieve such tactical victories, Rubio will need to consolidate much more of the non-Trump vote and rapidly grow his support in Democratic-leaning areas in an extremely compressed window of time. That’s a tall order, but it may be GOP leaders’ last hope to stop Trump, who clearly has the best chance of winning the nomination outright by the final primaries in June.”
