The Donald Trump campaign team expects he will have enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination in March and get an early start on focusing his efforts exclusively on beating President Joe Biden, The Washington Post reported.
The campaign bases its primary victory timeline on the combination of the team's analysis of its own internal polling and public surveys.
It takes 1,215 delegates to win the Republican nomination. The Post noted the campaign anticipates Trump could potentially win 973 delegates on Super Tuesday, March 5. And the campaign says Trump could win 1,478 by March 19.
The newspaper attributed the information to a senior campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The campaign team is also readying itself for the Republican National Convention in July. It is already looking at the party committees dealing with the platform, rules and primary contests.
Meanwhile, current polling would produce a victory for Trump of 292 electoral votes to Biden's 246, the campaign official said.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday shows Trump holding a slight lead over Biden, with registered voters saying they favor Trump over Biden by 46% to 44%.
In addition, the poll shows Biden's job approval rating has dropped to 37%, down 2 percentage points from July. However, the race flips regarding people who said they are "very certain" to vote, with Biden edging out Trump.
The official also noted that ads in New Hampshire from a super PAC backing Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., are warning Trump could beat Biden. The ads are helping to weaken the case that some of Trump's Republican rivals have tried to make against his electability, the newspaper reported.
The Post said winning the nomination in March would conflict with the scheduled start of Trump's trial on charges from his contesting the 2020 election.
However, that case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, is now on hold because of the pending an appeal to the Supreme Court to consider Trump's claim he is immune from prosecution for actions taken as president.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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