This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That's me. It's powered by digital media. Today's sponsor is SoFi. SoFi finds great people to invest in and backs them for life. Besides great rate loans, they offer career services and events for every member. Find out more at SoFi.com. That's S-O-F-F-I.com. Terms and Conditions Apply at Sofi.com. Today's show is also sponsored by Mac Weldon. They make the most comfortable hoodie, sweatpants, underwear, and socks you'll ever wear. I can attest to that because I'm wearing the socks right now. Can you see you see Nate? I can totally see. You can see through the desk. If you could, you could see these awesome Mac Weldon socks I'm wearing. I bought them with my own money. That is the best endorsement

I can give. They're also naturally antimicrobial, which means you will stink less when you wear them. You may not even stink at all. There's smart design, premium fabrics. It's easy to get this stuff. You go to macwelden.com. You get 20% off your order for the promo code recode. That's macwellden.com, promo code recode.

If for some reason you do not love these beautiful, comfortable, nice smelling socks, keep it, but you love them. 20% off, that's good for you. It's good for me. If you use that code, it's macwellden.com, promo code recode. I'm here with Nate Silver from 538.com. actually Nate runs 538.com, which does awesome political analysis, sports analysis. Anything else I'm missing, Nate? No, that's it. I forget I run the site sometimes. Like, sometimes I'm like, I can't believe they're making us work so hard. And like, I'm the day in this case. But thank you. Happy to be on. Thanks for coming. I want to talk about politics right now. That's what you're best known for. Well, actually, you're famous for a bunch of things, but currently you're famous for being a political analyst. Analyst. Prognosticator. Yeah. All the above, I guess, right? So tell us what is going on today this week. We're going to do a little time warp because when this thing drops, I think we'll have gone through another primary. But as of today,

as of this week, where do we stand with Trump first and foremost? So as of this week,

we're, and I wouldn't quite call it a holding pattern isn't quite the right metaphor, but it looks

as though Donald Trump is tracking very close to the 1,237 delegates he'd need to clinch the nomination before the convention.

But close means that if he had one state where, that was a winner-take-all state,

where he didn't win, where he was supposed to win, he would fall off track.

If he had a state or two where he overperforms, he would pass the bar more easily.

But it's really close. So far he's won 47%

of delegates. You now have other candidates who have dropped out. And so he needs about

57% of the remaining pledge delegates. There are some complications we don't need to get into

about what are bound versus unbound delegates. But he's got to do well. He has a lot of states that look pretty good for him. New York, for example, is one of the most important states where he'll probably win a lot of delegates. But still, this is not the nomination process that the Republican party would have wanted. Right, but just to be clear, you're saying he's got a path that's a straightforward path, basically, to win the nomination prior to the actual convention.

I would not say it's a straightforward. It's a straightforward in the sense that you're on the highway and you're not quite sure if you have enough fuel to make it to the next gas station, right? So, you know, the stretch of land is flat, but if something goes wrong, if a truck pulls up in front of you and you lose speed, well,

that might be all it takes to make you run out of fuel. Now, to torture this metaphor more,

what happens if he does run out of fuel doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden

snap John Kasich is the nominee. It might mean instead that he has to make a deal, which Trump is

known to do, and that he talks to Kasich delegates or talks to undeclared delegates, and before Cleveland brokers a deal. But right now, it's like he, you know, we had a panel we convened of eight experts. I'm doing the air quotes around experts, but eight people who really track this delegate math. I think we hate Trump getting to 1209. That's the column he put out today.

The column we put out today, yeah. 1209 versus 1237. So that's a sign of how razor thin it might be either way.

And then just as a sidebar, when it comes to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that's a non-question for you. That's Hillary Clinton.

It's not really. I mean, you would need something very dramatic to happen to Clinton, where so far the Democratic race is easier to figure out math-wise, because number one, it's all proportional. If you get 62% of the vote, you get 62% of the delegates, roughly speaking. So so far Clinton has gotten 58% to Bernie's 42%.

And we're halfway through.

...