Donald Trump handily won nearly all of the March 15 primary states, all but assuring a long slog to the Republican National Convention in July, but does he have the GOP nomination on lock?

“Donald Trump’s primary victories Tuesday present the Republican Party with a stark choice,” The Washington Post editorial board wrote Wednesday.

“Should leaders unite behind Mr. Trump, who has collected the most delegates but may reach the convention in July without a nominating majority? Or should they do everything they can to deny him the nomination?”

Gathered below are six ways that Trump could still fail to secure the Republican nomination this election season.

1. He could fail to secure 1,237 delegates — After Tuesday’s round of primaries, Donald Trump had received 694 delegates in total, roughly half the number he would need to win a majority — that is, more than 50 percent — of all delegates. According to The New York Times, Trump will reach 1,237-delegate threshold during the June 7 primaries if he continues to win the same percentage of the vote he has in previous states. If his vote share dips by 3 percent or more, however, he is unlikely to reach a majority, leading to a brokered convention.

2. He could lose the West — “The bad news for Trump is pretty clear: even with a Missouri win, he would still have won only a little more than 47 percent of the delegates allocated so far,” statistics website FiveThirtyEight reported on Wednesday. “He’ll need to win a little more than 54 percent of the remaining delegates to win the nomination . . . My own delegate estimate has Trump falling short of the 1,237 delegates he needs because he has done poorly in the west so far, and many of those states haven’t voted yet.”

3. Cruz could gain momentum after a Utah win — In the very conservative state of Utah, Cruz has the support of Sen. Mike Lee, and the closed caucus has historically helped him more than Trump. “His campaign expects to win a majority of the vote in Utah, the threshold at which it can sweep all 40 delegates,” wrote the Texas Tribune of the March 22 contest.

4. Cruz and Kasich could team up — Ted Cruz and John Kasich could team up to create a ticket that appeals to both conservatives and moderates, and overwhelm Trump in the remaining primaries. During the last contested Republican convention in 1976, President Gerald Ford and Gov. Ronald Reagan both entered without a majority of the vote. In an attempt to draw party moderates to his side, Reagan said he would name Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as vice president should he be chosen as the nominee. The gambit ultimately failed, but only by “little more than 100” delegates, according to Boston.com.

5. He would likely lose a contested convention — “The rules for a contested convention give the edge to the front-runner on the first ballot, but if no one breaks the 1,237 mark, it gets interesting,” The Chicago Tribune explained in an editorial on Wednesday. “Nearly 75 percent of the delegates are released from any voting obligation for the second round of balloting, and even more delegates become free agents in succeeding rounds. Trump getting bumped? It could happen.”

6. Convention Rule 16 could sink him — Roger Stone, a former advisor to the Trump campaign, wrote in a Thursday op-ed that the Republican convention rulemakers could decide Trump’s fate at a contested convention. “Here is how they plan to do it: Rule 16 (d). This byzantine concoction of legalese, simply put, says that nobody can be a delegate if he is from a state where voters who are not registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary . . . The GOP bigwigs plan on challenging Trump’s delegates from those states.”

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/donald-trump-lose-nomination/2016/03/17/id/719567/