Trump's 60% in primary polls could be more like 90% in delegate math

His leads pushes him just past most states' winner-takes-all delegate thresholds

Here is a short Friday notebook post. I hope you have a restful weekend before the storm. (I’m talking about Iowa, but here in DC we’re also expecting a nor'easter!)

Repeat after me: Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the 2024 Republican Party nomination for president. My polls-based model puts his odds somewhere around 95% - 99% to win. No candidate ever with this large a lead in national and state level has gone on to lose their party’s nod. That doesn’t mean something truly surprising and out of our historical training set couldn’t happen, but there’s a relatively low probability of that. Still, caveats have been issued.

So good are Trump’s odds, in fact, that I’ve said a loss at this point would be one of the most surprising political events ever — even more surprising than his shock win in 2016. But how he gets to that point matters a great deal; Winning a bare majority of delegates would be fairly weak showing for a former president. A rout, by contrast, would be a …