Winner-take-all states will likely further Trump's lead

(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

last updated 24 February 2016

Coming off his decisive win in Nevada, Donald Trump will likely enjoy a special advantage in regards to winner-take-all Republican races going forward. The handful of states with pure winner-take-all allocation rules all hold their primaries relatively late in the lineup, too late for Trump's challengers to use them to play catch-up in the delegates game.

Some states use a hybrid system to allocate Republican delegates, and if Trump's momentum holds, those systems are likely to benefit him, too. For instance, in Arkansas, a Super Tuesday state, a candidate must win at least 15 percent of the vote to receive any delegates, but if he or she tops 50 percent, it shifts to winner-take-all. Based on performances in South Carolina and Nevada, Ben Carson and John Kasich would receive no Arkansas delegates, and Trump would be in striking distance to take all 40 available.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.