By: Johannes Sorto
Special to the Chronicle

With Super Tuesday now over, the Republican race is clearer than ever before. Donald Trump won the majority of states that voted last Tuesday, fueling his rise to the top.

Ted Cruz – who won Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska – performed well enough to stay in the race and can argue that he has the best chance of beating Trump, while Marco Rubio avoided a complete nightmare by winning his first state, Minnesota. Still, given the current state of the race and the next series of states that are up for grabs, Trump looks to be the favorite to win the nomination.

It seems that Trump holds all the cards now. He has enormous momentum going into the final stretch of the election: the winner-take-all series. Trump has the unique ability to put this to an end if he can defeat Rubio in Florida, although we can expect the senator to not go down without a fight.

While Cruz is currently looking strong after racking up several wins, the odds of him winning the nomination are low. Cruz was hoping to win the majority of southern states on Super Tuesday, which would have allowed him to close out the race.

However, with most of the southern states going to Trump, it will be difficult for Cruz to win the nomination, since the election is now moving towards the Midwest. While it is not impossible for Cruz to win there, he will have a tough time getting his message out because there are less evangelicals and more college educated, white-collar voters.

This gives Rubio hope because he does best with white-collar suburban voters. But before we get ahead of ourselves, the first obstacle Rubio has in front of him is winning his home state of Florida.

Before Super Tuesday, the polls had Rubio losing Florida to Trump by a considerable margin. Seeing that Rubio did not have a breakthrough on Super Tuesday, it is unlikely we will see any surge from him immediately following Tuesday’s election. We should expect Rubio to gain in the polls and put up a fight in Florida as he begins to campaign down there, but anything short of victory will put his campaign on life support.

It is difficult to envision Trump losing at this point. Many pundits have said that his campaign will implode on numerous occasions, yet he is still leading the race.

This should also worry the Clinton campaign to some degree. If none of the million things he’s done or said has not killed him, then what will? While this does not mean that Trump is favorite to win a general election in November, he should not be written off so easily.

If there is one thing we have learned in this unpredictable election, it is to never write off Donald Trump.

Johannes Sorto is the president of the Republicans of Hofstra University.

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