Analysis: Trump has a stranglehold on the GOP nomination, so why isn’t he getting credit?

Donald Trump cruised to a double-digit win over the Republican field on Saturday in South Carolina. It was his second straight easy win - coming 11 days after he swept the New Hampshire primary by nearly 17 points.

Those back-to-back victories coupled with Trump’s second-place finish in Iowa’s caucuses - in which he took the second-most votes of any Republican candidate ever - affirm a very simple yet still not fully grasped fact: Donald Trump is the now heavy favourite to be the Republican presidential nominee this fall.

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Let’s start with the delegate math through the first three votes. Trump won all 50 of South Carolina’s delegates Saturday, bringing his total delegate count to 67. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is in second place with 11 delegates. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has 10. Of the 102 total delegates allocated in the race to date, Trump has won 66 per cent.

Now look forward. On Tuesday, Nevada will hold its Republican caucuses. According to a CNN-ORC poll released Wednesday, Trump leads in the Silver State by almost 30 points - an edge likely to hold steady or even grow in the wake of his convincing South Carolina win.

Then comes the March 1 “SEC” primary, when voters in 13 states across the country, including seven Southern states, cast their ballots. And polling puts Trump first in most of them. If he sweeps these states, or comes close, he will have a massive delegate lead that even winner-take-all delegate-allocation states such as Ohio and Florida, both of which vote March 15, won’t be able to erase.