Now that the primaries are underway, votes and delegates matter more than polls. On the Republican side, one candidate would need to capture 1,237 of 2,472 delegates to the Cleveland convention to clinch the nomination. To help you keep track of who's ahead, the Cook Political Report has devised a delegate scorecard estimating how many delegates each of the five leading GOP contenders would need to win in each state and territory to attain 1,237 delegates by June. Three factors make the odds of a contested GOP convention higher than in past years. First, this year's Republican field is quite crowded, and even after the New Hampshire primary there are five serious contenders: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush. Second, GOP voters's allegiances seem to be split into three different "lanes" that don't look likely to merge anytime soon. And third, over 60 percent of GOP delegates will be awarded on a proportional rather than winner-take-all basis. To arrived at state-by-state delegate targets, we first analyzed demographic patterns of support in national polls as well
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