Mainstream G.O.P. Field of Three Faces Brutal Delegate Math

The New York Times reports:

If the Republican Party remains divided for much longer, it will start getting more difficult for a mainstream candidate to win the nomination.

Yet Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich all have incentives to stay in the race, preventing the party from getting behind one candidate.

On Super Tuesday, March 1, 25 percent of the delegates to the Republican national convention will be awarded. If the mainstream field hasn’t been narrowed by that point, it will become very hard to avoid serious damage to the candidate who ultimately emerges as the party’s anointed favorite. The top mainstream candidate could easily fall more than 100 delegates short of what he might have earned in a winnowed field. He would even be in danger of earning no delegates at all in several of the largest states because of one number: 20 percent.

That’s the threshold for earning delegates in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Vermont, which combine to award 57 percent of the delegates on Super Tuesday and 14 percent of all of the delegates in the Republican race. If candidates don’t get 20 percent of the vote, they get no delegates (unless they finish in the top two of a congressional district, in which case they get a delegate). Oklahoma and Arkansas, worth an additional 13 percent of Super Tuesday delegates, have a 15 percent threshold.

An article well worth your time.