Is the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination race OVER?

Actually?

NOPE…..

Realistically ?

Absent something REALLY unseen?

Yup….

The lay of the land for Republicans is spelled out by Nate Cohn @ The NY Times….

 

It’s Fair to Ask: Is the Republican Race Over?

Is the Republican presidential primary over already?

Not quite, but it’s a reasonable question after New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary delivered a clear victory for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night. And if your definition of “over” is whether Mr. Trump is now on track to win without a serious contest, the answer is probably “yes.”

With nearly all the counting done, he won 55 percent of the vote. His only remaining rival, Nikki Haley, won 44 percent.

Mr. Trump’s 11-point margin of victory is not extraordinarily impressive in its own right. In fact, he won by a smaller margin than many pre-election polls suggested.

What makes Mr. Trump’s victory so important — and what raises the question about whether the race is over — is that New Hampshire was Ms. Haley’s very best opportunity to change the trajectory of the race. It was arguably her very best opportunity to win a state, period….

…

If Ms. Haley had won New Hampshire, the possibility of riding the momentum into later states and broadening her appeal would have remained. Not anymore. Instead, it’s Mr. Trump who has the momentum. He has gained nationwide in polls taken since the Iowa caucuses. Even skeptical Republican officials who were seen as Ms. Haley’s likeliest allies, like Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, have gotten behind the former president in recent days.

Whether the race is “over” or not, the New Hampshire result puts Mr. Trump on a comfortable path to the nomination. The Republican Party’s rules for awarding delegates, which allow states to award all of their delegates to the winner, could let him clinch the nomination in early March. Mr. Trump’s legal challenges add an extra twist — if he’s convicted of a crime, perhaps he’ll lose the nomination at the convention. But by the usual rules of primary elections, there’s just not much time for the race to change….

More…

Note….

Somewhere Joe Biden IS smiling…..