Why AP called GOP primaries for Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press was able to declare former President Donald Trump the winner in a string of Republican presidential primaries Tuesday as initial vote results revealed no path for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to overtake him.
AP called races across several states shortly after polls closed. In some places, Trump was leading Haley by margins of three- or four-to-one.
In North Carolina, Trump was declared the winner at 8 p.m. EST, or 30 minutes after polls closed, when some votes had been reported from more than half of the state’s 100 counties. The initial results showed Trump tripling the number of votes Haley had received. While Haley was running competitively with Trump in the state’s Democratic strongholds of Charlotte and Raleigh, Trump had huge leads in eastern, central and western North Carolina.
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In Oklahoma, where polls closed at 8 p.m. EST, Trump was declared the winner at 8:16 p.m. EST. At that point, Trump had an even larger lead over Haley than in North Carolina, with some votes reported from 65 out of the state’s 77 counties. He led in every geographic region of the state and in areas that spanned the state’s political spectrum, from heavily Democratic areas to heavily Republican areas.
In both states, the AP analyzed where the votes had been reported at the time the winner was declared and compared them to places where votes had not yet been reported. The AP concluded that even if Haley significantly improved her performance in areas where the vote had yet to be counted, she would not be able to overtake Trump for the lead.
In Tennessee, Trump was declared the winner at 8:08 p.m. EST, or eight minutes after polls closed. Trump had more than four times Haley’s vote total among the first votes reported in the state. The results showed Trump winning with big margins in central, eastern and western Tennessee. An estimated 2 percent of the statewide vote had been counted, from a handful of counties, but the AP’s analysis of Tennessee’s voting history found that Trump’s sizable lead in the areas that had reported votes was highly likely to hold. The analysis also showed that, even if later updates swung the margin by an unprecedently large amount, Trump would still maintain the lead.
Earlier in the evening AP declared Trump the winner in Virginia, his first Super Tuesday victory. By the time that race was called at 7:25 p.m. EST, he had nearly a two-to-one lead over Haley with some votes reported from almost half of Virginia’s 133 counties and independent cities. The results showed Trump winning in most of the state, except in the heavily Democratic suburbs of Washington, D.C.
In the run-up to Super Tuesday, Trump had won by wide margins in eight of the nine contests where he and Haley both appeared on the ballot. His 11-point win in New Hampshire was the narrowest of his victories.
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Trump started the day with a big delegate lead over Haley, but despite the 854 GOP delegates at stake on Super Tuesday, the earliest he could win enough delegates to clinch the nomination is March 12. He would need to win about 90 percent of the nearly 1,100 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday through March 12 to wrap up the nomination by that date.
Super Tuesday is made up of presidential contests in 16 states and American Samoa. More than 70 percent of the delegates needed to mathematically clinch either the Democratic or Republican presidential nominations will be decided based on Tuesday’s contests.