“Stop Trump Tuesday” in Florida and Ohio

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 10, 2016. In this screw­ball year, it’s dan­ger­ous to say any­thing defin­it­ively, but it sure looks like Tues­day’s Ohio Re­pub­lic­an primary will be the make-or-break point for the “Stop Trump” move­ment. This is as­sum­ing that Don­ald Trump beats Marco Ru­bio in Flor­ida, which seems a bit more likely than not. Then it comes down to Ohio, where John Kasich has been hold­ing a mod­est lead in the polls. If Kasich holds Ohio, which is his home state, the del­eg­ate climb for Trump gets very steep. Trump has won 44 per­cent of all del­eg­ates se­lec­ted so far. Ima­gine a straight, di­ag­on­al line from zero del­eg­ates in the bot­tom left corner at the be­gin­ning of the race, up to the num­ber 1,237 in the up­per right corner, the barest ma­jor­ity that se­cures a nom­in­a­tion. Every week, take a look and see if Trump is above or be­low that tra­ject­ory to the ma­gic num­ber. A Trump loss in the Buck­eye State would lift the share of the re­main­ing del­eg­ates that he would need to