[...] Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159. I wouldn’t make a huge deal of the differences given the considerable uncertainty in the race, however. Basically, flipping Indiana from a probable win to a probable loss outweighs the gains I have Trump making relative to our original projections in New York and Connecticut. In other states, the differences from the original projections are minor. At the same time, the path-to-1,237 scenario doesn’t look all that far- fetched — certainly not as compared with, say, Bernie Sanders’s quixotic path to catch Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates. Our path-to-1,237 path has Trump sweeping almost everything in the Northeast, winning Indiana and winning California by a solid-but-not-spectacular margin. I wouldn’t bet on that parlay at even odds, but it’s far from impossible. There’s also a reasonable variation; Trump could win slightly fewer delegates than I’m expecting in New York and Connecticut but make them up with a bigger win in California. So we’re not yet at the point where absolutely everything has to go right for Trump to clinch 1,237 delegates after California; although he can’t afford major setbacks such as losing Indiana or Maryland.
Keep in mind, however, that the question of whether Trump will get 1,237 bound delegates by California is not the same as the question of whether he’ll win the Republican nomination. If he’s close, Trump could still get some uncommitted delegates to come along with him — especially some of the 54 from Pennsylvania if he wins that state. [...]
