LAS VEGAS — It’s going to be a long ride.

Rather than anointing a presumptive nominee, the early voting states have narrowed the Republican primary to a three-man race heading into Tuesday’s Nevada Caucuses and the 12-state delegate bonanza on March 1.


Donald Trump leads nationally and in most state polls, but both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio will likely be armed with the rationales and the resources to stay in the race through at least March, if not right up to the Republican National Convention in July.

Despite Trump’s polling lead, there are significant obstacles to his running away with the nomination in the coming weeks. With Rubio buoyed by momentum, Nevada’s organizing-heavy caucuses set for Tuesday, and the first half of March weighted toward states where Cruz is poised to finish strongly, there is little space for Trump to translate that lead into a certain nomination in the coming weeks.

“We’re still in February. We’re three states in to this. Trump’s off to a good start but the dynamic of the race is changing after tonight,” said Republican strategist Henry Barbour, a critic of Trump’s.

Meanwhile, Rubio’s strength makes him the standard-bearer of center-right Republicans and their deep-pocketed backers as Jeb Bush’s departure from the race frees resources for the Florida senator and clears out a cluttered field before the real action begins.

“Until it clears out, it’s an advantage for Trump,” said one person close to the New York billionaire.

After that, Republicans seeking to block Trump from the nomination believe the polarizing businessman will struggle to bring new supporters into the fold.

“He has a low ceiling that’s going to make it hard for him to close the deal as the field narrows,” said Barbour. “His core vote’s going to stick with him, but I have serious doubts that he can grow it to where he needs to to get to 1,237 delegates.” Trump, for his part, maintains he will pick up a healthy chunk of the supporters freed up as his rivals drop out.

Time will tell. The results so far have only been a prelude. Including South Carolina, 4 percent of delegates have been awarded up to this point.

Despite favorable conditions in South Carolina — his campaign’s director there is a former majority leader of the state’s House of Representatives and for much of the race he enjoyed 20-point polling leads there — Trump did not achieve the same scale of blowout victory that he did in New Hampshire.

And one person intimately involved with the billionaire’s political operation described the remainder of the race as an “uphill delegate scratch.”

Tuesday’s caucuses in Nevada will be only a blip — bringing the delegates awarded to 5 percent of the total — but one that could deprive Trump of momentum if he is out-organized here as he was in the first caucus state, Iowa.

“Nevada is basically a wash. Nobody will care about it unless Trump doesn’t win," said a Trump insider.

Tuesday will also test whether Trump’s second-place finish in Iowa was a one-off event caused by Cruz’s extraordinary investment there or a sign that the businessman is not equipped to win caucus states — which award more than 300 delegates.

After Nevada, the next phase of the race offers an opportunity for Cruz to give Trump a run for his money.

On March 1, 12 states with a combined total of 588 delegates – nearly a third of the total — will get their turn. Delegate totals on that day are titled heavily toward the six Southern states, where Cruz and the outside groups supporting him are better organized than their rivals. That includes March 1’s biggest prize, Cruz’s home state of Texas, which awards 152 delegates and where the most recent polling shows him ahead of Trump.

“The SEC primary is very, very good for Senator Cruz,” said Maria Strollo Zack, the Georgia-based chair of the pro-Cruz Stand for Principle PAC. Across Southern states that vote on March 1, Zack said Cruz enjoys an organizing advantage. “The ground game is very strong,” she said.

Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana, three Cruz-friendly states with a combined 132 delegates to award, will hold their contests four days later on March 5, along with Maine.

Winner-take-all states do not begin voting until March 15, by which point more than 40 percent of delegates will have already been awarded. Both Ohio, with its 63 delegates and Florida with its 99 will vote that day – and the prospect of John Kasich hanging in long enough to capture his home state would only further muddle the delegate math.

Deeper into the map, major prizes like 95-delegate New York, which votes on April 19, and 172-delegate California, which votes on the last day of primary contests on June 7, will award delegates by congressional district.

Given the bitter divides Trump’s candidacy has inspired in the party, even if he continues to lead, his opponents would face less pressure to bow out of the race than they would in a more traditional nominating fight. That makes it more likely that one or more rivals hangs on to contest California and the five other states that conclude the primary calendar in an effort to deny Trump a majority of the delegates, even they cannot beat him outright before July’s convention.

Despite the obstacles ahead, many of Trump’s allies greeted Saturday’s win with the same trademark confidence that the candidate himself often displays. “The race for the Republican nomination,” said Seth Weathers, who briefly served as Trump’s Georgia state director, “is over.”

