2016 Republican Party presidential primaries

and caucuses of the Republican Party took place within all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories between February 1 and June 7, 2016. These elections selected the 2,472 delegates that were sent to the Republican National Convention. Businessman and reality television personality Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
A total of 17 major candidates entered the race. Prior to the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, this was the largest presidential primary field for any political party in American history. From early in the primary season, the race was characterized as a wide and diverse contest with no clear frontrunner. Early polling leaders included former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, among others. The race was disrupted by the entry of Trump in June 2015, who quickly and unexpectedly rose to lead polls for the rest of the primary season, with the exception of a period in the fall when neurosurgeon Ben Carson experienced a surge in support.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas won the Iowa caucuses, while Trump won the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries as well as the Nevada caucuses. On Super Tuesday, Trump and Cruz traded states with Trump receiving the plurality of the day's delegates. From March 16 to May 3, only three candidates remained in the race: Trump, Cruz, and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Cruz won four Western contests and won in Wisconsin, keeping open a credible path to denying Trump the nomination on first ballot with 1,237 delegates. Trump scored landslide victories in New York and five northeastern states in April, before taking every delegate in the Indiana primary on May 3. Without any further chances of forcing a contested convention, Cruz suspended his campaign. Trump was declared the presumptive Republican nominee by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on May 3. Kasich ended his campaign the following day. After winning the Washington primary and gaining support from unbound North Dakota delegates on May 26, Trump passed the threshold of 1,237 delegates required to guarantee his nomination. By the end of the primary voting process, Trump had a commanding lead in the number of pledged delegates, ensuring a very smooth process for being declared the nominee. Trump received over 14 million votes, the most for any candidate in Republican primary history. However, at 44.95%, Trump had the lowest percentage of the popular primary vote for a major party nominee since the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
On July 19, 2016, Trump and his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, were officially nominated as the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates at the Republican National Convention. The pair won the general election on November 8, defeating the Democratic Party ticket of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her running mate, U.S. Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine, despite the Democratic ticket consistently leading in polls.

Candidates and results

Seventeen major candidates were listed in major independent nationwide polls and filed as candidates with the Federal Election Commission. A total of 2,472 delegates attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, and the winning candidate needed a simple majority of 1,237 votes to become the Republican nominee.

Delegate breakdown

Fifty-six primary contests were conducted to choose 2,472 delegates. In 50 states and territories the delegates were allocated to candidates by popular vote either statewide or on the congressional district level and then elected according to state rules. In six states and territories, the first-instance popular vote did not allocate any delegates; they were elected later at local conventions and either bound to a candidate or uncommitted.
Most delegates were elected as bound delegates, meaning that they were required to vote for a specific candidate on the first ballot at the national convention. Some delegates attended the convention as unbound or uncommitted delegates, meaning that they were free to vote for anyone at the first ballot. These 130 uncommitted delegates included 18 unbound RNC delegates and 112 delegates that have been elected or allocated as uncommitted.
Uncommitted delegates were still at liberty to express a preference for a candidate, although that preference was not binding. Among the 901 delegates elected for candidates who later dropped out of the race, 155 were still bound to vote for their candidate on the first ballot and 34 were released according to the local rules of each state party.
If no candidate were elected in the first round of voting, a progressively larger number of delegates would have been allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice. The voting rules on subsequent ballots were determined by individual states: most states released their delegates on the second round of voting, and only four states kept them bound on the third round and beyond.
This table shows how many bound delegates each candidate had won before suspending his or her campaign. It does not show how many unbound delegates pledged their support to any candidate during the primaries, nor does it show the expected result of the vote at the national convention. Although a state is considered won by a candidate if a plurality of the state's delegates are bound, RNC Rule 40 required a candidate to demonstrate support from a majority of delegates in eight states to be eligible as the nominee.
Convention rules are based on delegate votes, not the popular vote. In the context of Republican primaries, the term "states" refers collectively to the fifty states, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited territories as specified in RNC Rule 1. In the following table, states and territories where the candidates achieved a majority of bound delegates are marked in bold. States and territories where a candidate won a majority of delegates but not a majority of bound delegates are marked in italics.

Nominee

Withdrew during the primaries

Withdrew before the primaries

Candidate

Born

position

Home state

Campaign announced

Campaign suspended

Campaign

Bound
delegates

Popular
vote

Contests won

Ref.

George Pataki

Peekskill, New York

Governor of New York

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Results by delegates (hard total)

Results by state popular vote

Results by county popular vote

Timeline of the race

Background

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, lost the 2012 election to incumbent Democratic president Barack Obama. The Republican National Committee, believing that the long, drawn-out 2012 primary season had politically and personally damaged Romney, drafted plans to condense the 2016 primary season. As part of these plans, the 2016 Republican National Convention was scheduled for the relatively early date of July 18–21, 2016, the earliest date since Republicans nominated Thomas Dewey in June 1948.
Elements of the Republican establishment, including Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell had been grooming then Kansas governor Sam Brownback as the party's favorite mostly due to his aggressive 2012 fiscal overhaul of state finances dubbed the "Kansas experiment." The experiment, engineered primarily by Koch Industries veteran economist Steve Anderson ultimately caused a financial crisis. The state would see a $687.9 million loss in revenue after predicting its massive tax cuts would grow the economy by $323 million. Brownback would narrowly win in overwhelmingly Republican Kansas during his 2014 re-election bid dashing his national aspirations and further opening the primary.
When John Kasich entered the race on July 21, 2015, the field reached 16 candidates, making it the largest presidential field in the history of the Republican Party, surpassing the 1948 primaries. With Jim Gilmore's announcement to enter the race for a second time on July 30, 2015, the field reached 17 candidates, becoming the largest presidential field in American history, surpassing the 16 candidates in the Democratic Party presidential primaries of 1972 and 1976.
In mid-December 2014, Jeb Bush—widely seen as a possible frontrunner for the nomination due to his relatively moderate stances, record as former governor of a crucial swing state, name recognition and access to high-paying donors—was the first candidate to form a political action committee and an exploratory committee. Many other candidates followed suit. The first candidate to declare his candidacy was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was popular among grassroots conservatives due to his association with the Tea Party movement, and who also received early backing of several prominent Republican donors including Robert Mercer.
The 2016 candidates were roughly divided into three camps. Grassroots conservatives were represented by Cruz and Carson, the Christian right was represented by Huckabee and Santorum. Moderates, or the establishment, were represented by Bush and Christie. Several—such as Rubio, Walker, and Kasich—were seen as having political backgrounds that may be appealing to both conservatives and moderates. Not all of these candidates clearly toed the grassroots/establishment divide. For instance, Rubio and Cruz were both elected to the Senate in the early 2010s as members of the Tea Party movement, but by 2015 had been courting the support of prominent party elders, political operatives, and large donors with significant success.
Only three of the candidates, Carson, Trump and Fiorina, were true non-establishment candidates in the sense that they had no formal political experience. Fiorina is widely considered to have views in line with the establishment wing led by Bush and Christie. Some called the diversity of candidates representing different wings of the party symptomatic of a struggle for the future direction of the party.
The field was noted for its diversity, and was even called the most diverse presidential field in American history. It included two Latinos, a woman, an Indian-American, and an African-American. Five were the children of immigrants: Cruz, Jindal, Rubio, Santorum and Trump.