Love him or loathe him, give Donald Trump this: Anyone else who had won 11 of the first 15 Republican primary or caucus votes, with strong polling numbers in states ahead, would be deemed the presumptive nominee.

Instead, the primary presumption happening the day after Super Tuesday is party leaders coast to coast trying to devise a way to put out a (figurative) hit on his campaign. The secondary presumption is among Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich as to which two of them should bow out for the good of the party.

Trump, in his typically rambling and entertaining post-election address/news conference Tuesday night, said two things worth examining more closely.

“I’m a unifier,” Trump said. “Once we get all of this finished, I’m going after one person and that’s Hillary Clinton, on the assumption she’s allowed to run.”

And this: “Our party is expanding and all you have to do is take a look at the primary states where I’ve won. We’ve gone from one number to a much larger number. That hasn’t happened to the Republican Party in many, many decades. So I think we’re going to be more inclusive, more unified and a much bigger party, and I think we’re going to win in November.”

Trump the unifier? Possible, as most things are, but certainly unproved. Exactly the opposite, in many cases. Many Mexicans, most Muslims, Megyn Kelly, John McCain, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz might beg to differ.

At least it was a recognition from a not-stupid man that if he really is going to carry the GOP flag into November, he can’t do it with so much of the party not just ignoring but actively opposing him.

That feeds into his other statement, which does appear to have some basis in fact. When he is on the ballot, turnout spikes. Whether this means a “much bigger party” or the draw of a Harold Hill-quality salesman with lots of trombones, that remains to be seen.

Let’s look at a state that Trump did not win: Texas.

Turnout was rocking all across the state on the GOP side. The final tally was 2,830,275 Republican voters making their marks for president. That’s nearly double the 1,449,477 who showed up to vote in the 2012 GOP presidential primary. And it’s a 108 percent increase over the 2008 number.

To be fair, the 2012 turnout may have been affected by the lateness of the Texas primary. It was shoved back to May 29 by court challenges to the legislative map, by which time Mitt Romney was whatever step rests between presumptive and actual nominee.

Still, a turnout jump that big in four years is not happenstance.

The question is how much Trump voters made up that increase — or, more precisely, did pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters combine for the “much larger number”?

Trump attracted 757,204 votes in Texas, a very respectable total but far short of Cruz’s 1,238,662 Tuesday or even Romney’s 1,001,387 in 2012.

Obviously, the potential is strong here for a post hoc fallacy of assuming any single factor causing a particular statistical outcome. Still, conventional wisdom before the vote was that Trump was ascending across the board, even in Texas, and Cruz was falling apart.

Instead, Cruz picked up three more wins, with Oklahoma and Alaska to go with his home state. Even with a more challenging map, less reliant on evangelicals and the hard right, he has a strong argument to keep going.

Rubio struggled on Super Tuesday, but he did get his first win, Minnesota, and has a more favorable road ahead, compared to Cruz. So does Kasich, who remains winless and was competitive only in Vermont.

Kasich is the choice of the Dallas Morning News’ editorial board, but it’s hard to see how his apparent strategy of rallying to wins in Michigan (March 8) and his home state of Ohio makes a lot of sense, given his lack of effort to date. If Cruz has the best argument to go forward and Rubio the next best, Kasich’s a complete Hail Mary.

Florida and Ohio are winner-take-all states March 15, along with decent delegate counts in North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri. At this point, Pro wrestling star Ric Flair would tell us that to be the man, you gotta beat the man.

And if the challengers all stay in and split the vote over the next two fractious weeks, Trump will be the man the night of March 15. Then he can start putting his mind to that unifying piece.