Our Presidential Republican Primary Forecast is a now-cast - it uses the current polling to estimate how voters in every state would vote if the election were held tomorrow. We expect the polling to shift significantly over time, and our forecast is updated every day to reflect that.

In presidential primaries, the popular vote doesn’t decide the election. Instead, to secure the GOP nomination without a contested convention, a candidate needs 1235 delegates, which are won based on the vote in every state. Our primary forecast is designed to adapt to the unique rules of every state in order to project how many delegates each candidate will win.

Timing can mean everything. One candidate may be the most popular by the end of the primary, but if they haven’t amassed enough delegates early on, their pathway to victory can become near-impossible. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina are the first four states of the primary, and they play a crucial role in consolidating the field to two or three candidates.

On Super Tuesday on March 5th, over 1/5th of the nation’s delegates will be up for grabs, including in the nation’s two biggest states: California and Texas. For any challenger to beat Donald Trump, they’ll likely need to either consolidate the field to two candidates, or the remaining candidates will have to be thoroughly defeated and viewed by most voters as afterthoughts. Otherwise, they risk trailing Trump by a large delegate margin that will be very difficult to narrow.

We’ve taken great pains to show you exactly how the delegate process works in every state - because the specific rules matter. Some states - like California - can become winner-take-all states if and only if one candidate wins at least 50% of the vote. Donald Trump could secure a huge early lead in the delegates if he achieves this threshold in a state like California - or a challenger could prove they are a force to be reckoned with if they peak at the perfect time and take the state’Our forecast is designed to adapt to the electorate in live time. If a candidate drops out, we refer to polling that shows those specific voters' second-choice preferences to estimate where their support will go. We also adjust states that have outdated polling for recent shifts in the national polling.

In general, expect much bigger misses here than our general election forecast. While our other forecast takes into account many factors, like fundraising or the last election, this forecast is more simplistic and is based purely on polling. To explore the latest polling in every state instead of the GOP Primary Forecast, click here.

In 2022, RacetotheWH called the highest percentage of Senate and Governor races correctly of any forecaster and came within one seat of perfectly predicting the GOP’s final number of seats in the House.

More RacetotheWH Interactive Features