Donald Trump is trumping the rules of the game at Republican Convention

Now that Donald Trump has formally secured the Republican nomination to be its presidential candidate, notwithstanding an unprecedented level of hostility within his own party, media analysis will inevitably focus on whether he can heal the damage that his candidacy has done and close the gap between his support and that of Hillary Clinton. But it is worthwhile turning the clock back a few months and examining how Trump did win and put the Republican Party, particularly the party elite, in the position it now finds itself – having a presidential candidate it doesn't want.

Trump will point to the fact that he accumulated more than enough delegates during the nomination process to give him a majority at the Convention and that he won the nomination through open and democratic primaries and caucuses, securing more votes in those contests than any previous Republican presidential nominee.

That is all true, but final voting tallies for the Republican nomination contest show that Trump's 14,009,098 votes in primaries and caucuses amounted to less than a majority of the vote cast – 44.96 per cent to be exact. By contrast, the Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton secured over 55 per cent of the Democratic vote.

And Trump's less-than-a-majority victory in the primaries looks even more unconvincing when turnout is taken into account. Republican turnout may have been higher than in previous years, but, nevertheless, more registered Republicans stayed at home than participated in the primaries.

In New York State, for example, where Trump had one of his best victories in the nomination contest, just 936,527 Republicans voted in the April 19 primary, yet there are currently over 2.7 million registered Republicans in New York State. So, on a 34 per cent turnout, Trump's 554,522 votes represented just over 20 per cent of eligible Republican voters.

So, how did Trump secure a majority of Convention delegates with less than a majority of votes in the nomination contest? The short answer is that he was the major beneficiary of the winner-take-all primaries, most, but not all of which occurred after March 15. In Florida, for example, Trump took 100 per cent of the delegates on 45.7 per cent of the total vote. In Arizona, he won all the delegates with 47 per cent of the vote and in Illinois (a "winner-take-more" system) he won 75 per cent of the delegates for just 39 per cent of the primary vote. In the one exception to the ban on winner-take-all primaries, South Carolina, Trump won all 50 delegates with just 32.5 per cent of the vote.

Even in the California primary on June 7, when Trump was the only candidate left in the race, he secured all 172 delegates with less than three-quarters of the vote.

During the period in which winner-take-all primaries were banned from February 1 to March 15, Trump failed to reach 50 per cent of the vote in any of the 25 contests. In fact, he averaged only 33.1 per cent of the total vote and lost 10 of those contests to other candidates in the first six weeks of the nomination race.

So, early on, Trump was held in check by the rules of the game and by the large field of candidates splitting the Republican vote. But the ban on winner-take-all primaries ended just about the time when the other favourites dropped out of the race. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush suspended their campaigns after the Florida primary on March 15, the first day of the winner-take-all contests. Then, when Ted Cruz and John Kasich exited after the Indiana primary and there was no one else left but Trump, Trump's share of the vote improved.

Had the Republican Party's nomination race been conducted under the same rules as the Democratic Party – that is, a complete ban on winner-take-all primaries – then it is unlikely that Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Cruz and even Ben Carson would have made early exits, and it is more than probable that the Republicans would have been facing a deadlocked convention this week.

Furthermore, Trump was aided unintentionally by the same Republican Party elite that so abhors him. They changed the rules of the nomination contest this year to counter the long, drawn-out and divisive nomination contest in 2012 that subsequently damaged Mitt Romney's election prospects. In order to shorten the period of divisiveness, the new rules shortened the period in which winner-take-all primaries were banned and lengthened the period in which they were permitted. It was intended to favour the front-runner and settle the nomination as soon as possible. They succeeded completely. The front runner was the beneficiary of the rules, only it wasn't the front runner that the party's establishment wanted.

The Republican Party will, inevitably, have to change its nomination rules again. It won't be done at this week's convention because, like all US party conventions in the media age, it is stage-managed to avoid conflict and damaging floor fights among the delegates on prime-time television. Reform can only come when Trump disappears from the scene, presumably after an election defeat in November.

Donald Trump was aided unintentionally by the same Republican Party elite that so abhors him.

The Republicans will have to change the nomination rules again and re-examine their faith in winner-take-all elections to find a way of giving a voice in the nomination process to the party establishment and the party professionals so that the interests of party can be expressed along with the interests of causes, candidates, and minority factions.

This may challenge the ultra-democratic nature of American party nomination process, but when the most important decision that a political party makes – the choice of the presidential nominee – almost totally excludes the interest of the party then something needs to be done to give meaning to the existence of of political parties.

John Hart is a Visitor in the ANU's School of History and a specialist in American politics.