… If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, he’s probably screwed.
The basic reason is simple. Most of the 2,472 delegates with a vote in Cleveland probably aren’t going to like Trump.
Let’s back up a bit. In most of our discussions about delegates here at FiveThirtyEight, we treat them as though they’re some sort of statistical unit. We might say a candidate “racked up 44 delegates” in the same way we’d say Steph Curry scored 44 points. But those delegates aren’t just a scoring mechanism: Delegates are people, my friends. Delegates are people! CONT.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight