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With the prospect of a contested convention looming over the Republican presidential primary, Donald J. Trump on Sunday complained about the party’s rules requiring a candidate to have a majority of delegates to clinch the nomination outright.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” why he should be “guaranteed the nomination” if he failed to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win it on the first ballot, Mr. Trump said that he might be unable to clear that threshold. But he blamed the number of contenders in the Republican field.

“If I’m a little bit short – and one of the reasons was we had so many candidates,” he said. “I mean, we started off with 17 candidates.”

He added: “There are so many candidates, so it’s very hard to get over that number. It’s very unfair.”

He said that denying him the nomination under those circumstances would “disenfranchise” people who voted for him.

But the party’s national chairman, Reince Priebus, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” defended the system for how Republicans choose their standard-bearer as a “delegate-driven process.” He noted that his own floor battle to win the chairmanship went to the seventh ballot, and said that a plurality alone would not be treated as a majority.

“History would show, whether it be Walter Mondale, Gerald Ford, when someone’s a little bit short, you know, you let the process play out,” he said. “And generally if it’s that close, generally that’s what happens. But certainly what I would say is that the minority of delegates doesn’t rule for the majority.”

He and Mr. Trump were in agreement, however, on what would happen if a “stop-Trump” movement of Republicans recruited a conservative to run an independent third-party candidacy: Both said in separate interviews on ABC’s “This Week” that such a gambit would doom Republicans from winning the White House.

“Well, sure it would,” Mr. Priebus said. “Of course it would. But I also think it’s far too late. Some folks find it to be interesting and that’s great. But it isn’t likely and it’s probably too late and there is no definitive answer right now as to who the nominee is going to be of our party.”

