The study in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy aims to be the most authoritative review to date of so-called “sore loser” laws. Such laws either explicitly or effectively prevent a candidate from running as an independent or third-party candidate if they’ve previously run in the same race under a different banner. (Think: Joe Lieberman running for reelection to the Senate as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary.)

The study’s conclusion: It would be “effectively impossible” for Trump to win as a third-party or independent candidate, because he would fail to make the ballot in as many as a majority of states.

“Such a candidate would be denied ballot access in 28 states totaling 290 electoral votes if sore-loser laws are applied as written,” the study says. It notes those 290 electoral votes are a majority of electoral votes on offer, and a candidate needs a majority to win.

[Texas is one of those states, and no Republican can win without it. However, as Blake also points out, winning may not be the goal. Trump might run third-party just as a dog-in-the-manger ploy to punish the GOP if they nominate someone else. But even the risk of that is probably overblown; it takes a lot of organization to get on the ballot in any state, even if they do allow “sore loser” independents to do so. Trump would have to spend a lot of money and invest a lot of effort just to make the ballot, and he wouldn’t have a lot of time to do so by the time the primaries allocated enough delegates to show that Trump couldn’t win the nomination. If the primaries are close, it might not be apparent until late spring or even early summer, by which time some state deadlines for independents would have already passed. — Ed]