Well, That's Just Super

Yesterday, I referenced how on Super Tuesday, the Trump team had worked with the RNC to make their primaries “functionally” winner-take-all, which would help Trump.  (“Functionally” was Steve Kornacki’s word.  I had originally written “essentially,” but I decided I liked his choice better.) 
 
I thought it would be nice if I explained what I meant.
 
Going into this election, the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday were, in fact, proportional.  Delegates were given out according to how well each candidate did in each state’s primary results.  And officially, the primaries are still “proportional.”  But that wasn’t good enough for Trump, who wanted to guarantee his victory in as crushing a way as possible.  And so, they worked with the RNC to – and this is so pure Trump projection – rig the elections.
 
The way the state primaries now work on Super Tuesday is this –
 
The winner of the state does not get all the delegates.  But…delegates are given out “proportionally” (sic) according to who wins a district.  If you win a district, you get all its delegates.  If you win half the districts, you get those delegates, and if your opponents split winning the other half of the districts, they’ll win all these other delegates.
 
Sounds cool, fair, right?

Except, no.

Under an actual “proportional” race, if you get 55% of the vote, you get 55% of the delegates.  If the second place finisher gets 30% of the votes, that candidate will get 30% of the delegates.  Right?
 
But in this new Trump-pushed system.  If those same percentages occur in every individual district, the first place finisher (in this case most surely Trump, as the leading candidate by far) will get…100% of the votes.  Because he won each district.
 
Now, it’s certainly possible that Nikki Haley will win some districts.  It’s possible.  It’s also worth keeping the concept of “some” in mind.  After all, in Iowa, there were 99 districts, and Trump won 98 of them.  Haley won some.  In this case, that translated to one.
 
So, essentially – or functionally – these “proportional” states in the Republican Super Tuesday races are winner-take-all.  And that’s why Trump will swamp Nkki Haley (and would have swamped whatever candidates had still been in the race).  He’ll sweep the table.  And the Republican race for the presidential nomination will be over, or close to over.
 
Trump likely would have won the nomination in today’s GOP easily without this.  But this just made it brain-dead easy.  And the sheer whimsy of it all is that it’s done by Trump himself openly rigging the election.
 
But then, that’s the old Trump Rule.  When he charges you with doing something bad, you can rest assured he’s projecting his own actions.