A new poll conducted by CNN suggests that Republican voters agree with Trump. Six in 10 say that if no candidate wins a majority of the delegates in the first ballot at the Republican convention, then the delegates should vote for "the candidate with the most support in the primaries and caucuses."

That will almost certainly be Trump. Here’s where the delegate count stands today:

Trump has 681 delegates. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has 425. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio has just 143. Trump is likely to pad that delegate lead in tonight’s voting; he is the favorite to take all of Arizona’s 58 delegates (it’s a winner-take-all state), and most people don’t expect Cruz to get to 50 percent in Utah, meaning he will have to share its 40 delegates.

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Cruz still feints at overtaking Trump in the delegate chase, but it looks more like a pipe dream than an actual plan as of today. And, as the primary process slows over the next few months — the next meaningful vote in terms of delegates will be in Wisconsin on April 5 — the Trump delegate lead will get emphasized over and over again. Every time you turn on cable TV, you’ll see some version of the graphic above that shows Trump winning the delegate chase. That repetition could well help Trump convince even more Republicans why he should be the nominee even if he doesn’t get to 1,237 pre-Cleveland convention.

It’s also uniquely possible that Trump gets to the number he needs and all of this debate is rendered moot. He needs to win only 52.6 percent of the remaining delegates to formally claim the nomination.