Contested conventions haven’t been kind to the guy who starts out ahead, like Donald Trump
By Philip Bump March 30 at 8:00 AM
washingtonpost.com
Let's say that Donald Trump doesn't get the 1,237 delegates he needs in order to clinch the nomination before the Republican convention this July. Let's say, just to pick a number, that he gets 1,234. He walks into Cleveland at the front of an army of 1,234 people, all of whom will vote for him on the first ballot of the Republican nomination contest. That's bad news for Donald Trump.
The problem for Trump is that if he doesn't hit that 1,237 number, all bets are off. Once he walks into the doors of the convention, he has those 1,234 delegates for one vote. After that one vote, if he doesn't have a majority, a subset of those delegates get to vote for someone else, if they want. And as we noted last week, Ted Cruz's campaign is doing its best to make sure that the people who make up Trump's delegate total want to vote for Cruz, not Trump, as the voting progresses.
But come on, you might be thinking. Clearly, if Trump is that close to a majority, he'll end up taking it, right?
And the answer is: Not if history is any guide.
Using CQ's Guide to U.S. Elections, we looked up every convention in which no one had a majority on the first vote since 1872. And in the majority of those, the person who had the most votes on the first ballot did not end up as the party's nominee.
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