There is "less than [a] 50 percent" chance that Donald Trump will get the 1,237 delegates by the June 7 primaries and clinch the GOP presidential nomination, and the front-runner needs to be careful while making the pivot to act "more presidential" not to alienate his base supporters, former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour said Thursday morning.
"He picked up 89 votes on Tuesday and he's up to about 855 votes, and it gets him closer to the nomination," the former Mississippi governor told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "He has to win 1,237. And the talk out of his campaign that he's going to try to be more presidential, that he's going to try to be calmer, more deliberate, that he's going to make serious policy speeches, this is a pivot and we'll see how it turns out, we'll see how it's accepted. "
However, that pivot is needed if Trump is to turn around his negative ratings and win the presidential race this fall, Barbour said.
"He's going to get, if things keep going like they are, about 12 million votes for the nomination, maybe 13 [million]," said Barbour. "Let's say he gets 15 million votes for the nomination, which is more than he'll actually get. That's still less than a fourth of all the votes he has to get in November to win. It takes more than 60 million votes to win. So, he's got to make a pivot because he can't go into the election with 68 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of him."
However, it's "not a given" that Trump will get the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch that nomination, as he has to get about 58 percent of the vote, and "he's been getting into the 40s. His percentage of the vote in New York is the first time he's gotten over 50.
If Trump arrives in Cleveland with fewer than that number, Barbour thinks he'll still get more votes on the first ballot than he'll get at any other time, if it moves to more than one ballot."
But still, the closer Trump is to the top number, the more likely he'll get the nomination, as "if you have 1,200, another 37 will come across and they want to be part of putting you over the top," Barbour said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.