But the big enchilada is March 15, the second Super Tuesday where all of the big states are winner take all: FL, MO, IL, OH, and NC. Trump leads pretty big in all of those. That’s a total of 358 delegates. So there is a pretty good chance that by March 15, Trump will have almost 2/3 of the delegates he needs before he ever goes to the Northeast areas where he will just sweep (another 358 by my count in NY, RI, CT, WV, MD, DE, and PA). Even allowing for a few losses like UT or AZ (and he led the last poll I saw out of AZ), by the time you get to CA (172) Trump is at 1318. And, again, I’m not even looking at states where I haven’t seen polling or where it has not been favorable to Trump, such as MT, ND, UT, OR, WA, AZ, NJ (which he’ll win easy for another 57 delegates), SD, NM, IN, WI, or NE, plus the territories, all of which hold another 372 delegates. Many of these are winner take all, but not all, and even if he loses in many of these, Trump would still walk away with probably 20% at minimum, or another 50-60 delegates, bringing his total to about 1360.
But last I saw, Trump was leading in AZ, WI, OR, WA, IN, so it’s more likely he would come into the convention with closer to 1400 delegates. (please let me know if you have other updates on some of these in-state polls)