On March 7 2000, Super Tuesday 2000 occured with several crucial primaries in big states, including New York and California, both primaries won by George W. Bush, after which John McCain dropped out of the race.
But a Quinnipiac poll published one week before Super Tuesday showed McCain leading Bush in New York by 7 percentage points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York#Polling_2And according to this article, California had a blanket primary at the time, meaning all candidates of all parties were on the same ballot, but the state parties, exploiting a loophole in the election law, used color-coded ballots so that only votes from party members would count. Thus, many votes for McCain -- nearly 800,000 -- were discounted. So that means that if these 800,000 votes for McCain were actually counted, that would have brought McCain to the top with 2,580,570 votes over Bush's 2,168,466 votes and so he would have won California with over 50 % of the vote and so would have won all the 162 delegates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_California_Republican_primarySo what if McCain won both New York and California on Super Tuesday 2000 and so got much more momentum for the primary race? Would he have won the nomination or would have Bush still won the nomination or would it result to a brokered convention depending on the performances of Bush and McCain in the remaining primary contests?
If you want some help and reference in your reflection about the possible outcome of the race in such scenario, here's how the 2000 Republican primary schedule looked like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries#Statewide
