Tag: Nebraska

Indiana: Trump Wins Bigly

Donald Trump’s decisive win in Indiana on Tuesday and Ted Cruz’ suspending his campaign have effectively ended the GOP race.  We had projected him winning by two points over Ted Cruz and getting 42 of the 57 delegates in play, which would have put him on pace for around 1,210 delegates on the first ballot.  Instead, he won by 17 points and took all of the delegates.  With Cruz dropping out, we now think he will get around 1,390 delegates of the 1,237 needed.  This includes possible Kasich pickups and protest votes, so he could go higher still.

With Cruz out, Trump should easily surpass the required 1,237 delegate bar to win the GOP nomination.
With Cruz out, Trump should easily surpass the required 1,237 delegate bar to win the GOP nomination.

Should Cruz have dropped out?

After last week (and, really, after March 15), Cruz was never running to win.  He was just the last candidate running against Trump.  Were he more of a player within the GOP establishment, the correct answer would probably be that he should have stayed in through the convention.  We expected him to win Nebraska (36 winner-take-all delegates), Montana (27 WTA), and South Dakota (29 WTA).  He had a slim chance of blocking a Trump nomination through California, which would have been the ultimate determiner.  Here’s how we thought that might work:

Should Cruz have stayed in? Yes, if his goal was to block Trump. No, if his goal was to become president.
Should Cruz have stayed in? Yes, if his goal was to block Trump. No, if his goal was to become president.

However, without an even-more-impressive showing in California than we predicted, the #NeverTrump crowd likely would have lost on the first ballot, with the unbound Pennsylvania delegates putting Trump just over.  As it stands, Trump should easily win the nomination in Cleveland, as basically the whole world is now reporting.

A Note On Democrats

Sanders got a nice win in Indiana to keep his campaign hobbling along through the convention, as he has pledged to do.  We had projected him losing by two points and getting 41 delegates to Clinton’s 42.  Instead, he won by 6 points and pulled in 44 to Clinton’s 39.  Ultimately, the 6-delegate swing will do little to alter the math; we think he needs about 69% of the remaining delegates to pull even.  We’ll do a full post on the Democratic race later this week, and will focus exclusively on that race until the delegate math, like in the GOP race, no longer matters.

Will GOP have a contested convention? They already are.

After Donald Trump’s big day on Tuesday, he’s the only GOP candidate with a chance of getting the 1,237 delegates before the July 18-21 convention in Cleveland.  There’s very little polling in the remaining states, so most of our model is based on national polling. There’s additional uncertainty, as California is essentially 54 separate winner-take-all contests, and we only have polling for one of them.

With all of those caveats aside, we see Trump entering Cleveland with 1,206 pledged delegates.  This number assumes he loses Indiana (he currently leads), but wins Nebraska (which could be Cruz country).  It does not include the unbound delegates that he is likely to woo from Pennsylvania and others that he could patch together to get 1,237.  We think it is more likely than not that Trump gets 1,237 votes on the first ballot.

The question everyone will be asking before that first convention ballot is cast is whether the Republicans will have a contested convention.  Answer: they already are.  With Trump the only candidate that can win outright, the fact that there are still candidates running against him – and that he could still lose states to those candidates – is a form of contested convention.  Any non-Trump vote from now until June 7 is a vote for a contested convention. The fact that Trump can’t get Cruz and Kasich to drop out, even when (in a traditional year), he has already won, suggests strongly against party unity in July and August.

Does the #NeverTrump crowd have a chance? Sure, but not a strong one. They essentially need a shutout for the next two weeks in order to keep a blocking action in play.