There are 50 States, Washington DC, Puerto Rico and 4 other territories that are authorized a total of 2472 delegates to the Republican Convention to be held in Cleveland during the week of July 18th to the 21st of 2016; and 1237 votes are needed to win on the first ballet.  If no candidate has 1237 votes the convention goes into an open convention where all the candidates try and get the support of others to change their votes and at agreed to times votes are taken until a candidate gets over 1237 votes. If no candidate that has been in the primaries can get the required 1237 votes other names can be presented for nomination the only requirement is that a person must have 1237 votes to be the presidential candidate for the party. At this point it appears that the front runner Donald J. Trump is not well liked by the party elders and donors which is creating a contentious situation where Supper PAC’s, with tact support of the RNC, are running negative ads against Trump to stop him.

Trumps base of middle class America who are losing their jobs to a wave of illegal immigration and trade policies that move the production (higher paying jobs) out of the country and see their way of life being destroyed.  This group of disenfranchised citizens is very supported of trump and is a movement with a life of its own pulling in citizens that have not voted before and from other faction which would not normally vote Republican. Since trump is self-funded he is not beholding to the power and money brokers and so the citizens see that as a plus and the party sees that as a negative so there is the real potential for the party to split in two and from a new party as was done prior to the civil war where the Democrat party split off those that disliked slavery and they formed the Republican party and elected Abraham Lincoln. Today this could create a three party system with a Right wing party (old remains of the Republican Party) a Centrist party (formed from the middle/working class from both parties) and a Left wing party (old remains of the Democrat party).

By the end of March Trump will have 788 delegates and 21 states or territories, Cruz will have 523 delegates and 14 states or territories and Kasich will have 166 delegates and one state (we’ll ignore the rest of those with delegates till the end).

By the end of April Trump will have 1028 delegates and 27 states or territories, Cruz will have 584 delegates and 15 states or territories and Kasich will have 174 delegates and one state (we’ll ignore the rest of those with delegates till the end).

By the end of May Trump will have 1313 delegates and 29 states or territories, Cruz will have 694 delegates and 20 states or territories and Kasich will have 178 delegates and one state (we’ll ignore the rest of those with delegates till the end).

By the end of June Trump will have 1386 delegates and 32 states or territories, Cruz will have 899 delegates and 23 states or territories and Kasich will have 187 delegates and one state. The 184 delegates and 3 states or territories from the other 6 candidates were apportioned to the three remaining ones.

I predict Trump the winner with 149 votes more than required and even if Kasich gave all his votes to Cruz he would still be short 151 votes. Kasich has shown no ability to win outside of Ohio and even there he was under 50%. Cruz basically winds in the Midwest but those states don’t have the votes required to offset the east where Trump is strong as that is where the jobs have been lost.