Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won Tuesday night’s biggest prize by taking the Arizona primary, but Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders struck back in the caucus states.
Both Cruz and Sanders easily won Utah. Sanders also picked up a landslide victory in Idaho’s Democratic caucuses. This kept both of their campaigns alive, but did not change the fact that Trump and Clinton remain their party’s front-runners.
The Western Tuesday primaries and caucuses were the latest test of whether the rest of the Republican presidential field can hold Trump below the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination on the first ballot. He passed the first test in winner-take-all Arizona, but Cruz seems poised to walk away with all the delegates in Utah.
Once the comparatively libertarian home of Barry Goldwater, Arizona has been hit hard by illegal immigration in recent years and has become a hospitable environment for Trump’s hardline approach to the issue, although the state’s two Republican senators back comprehensive immigration reform.
Trump has been endorsed by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Gov. Jan Brewer, both prominent immigration hawks. Brewer championed Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law while Arpaio’s main claim to fame is being tough on illegal aliens.
Some of Cruz supporters had hoped a strategic anti-Trump vote would help the Texas senator to an upset in Arizona. But Cruz devoted relatively little resources to the state and if there was any organized anti-Trump vote to speak of, it was outweighed by a big early vote featuring many candidates no longer running. There was a particularly large vote for Marco Rubio, who only dropped out this month and finished ahead of John Kasich.
Cruz was heavily favored in Utah, where the limited polling data showed the Texan within striking distance of the 50 percent threshold that would award him all the state’s delegates.
More than three-fifths of Utah’s residents are Mormons, who tend to dislike Trump for all the reasons — vulgarity, braggadocio, past social liberalism, lack of obvious religiosity, coarse rhetoric — that analysts said would be a deal-breaker for evangelicals before the Republican primaries began.
In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Mitt Romney urged Republicans to vote for Cruz in order to stop Trump. He recorded robocalls saying a vote for Kasich, the third surviving major candidate for the GOP nomination, was a vote for Trump.
“Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism. Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence,” Romney said. “I am repulsed by each and every one of these.”
“The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention,” Romney wrote. “At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Sen. Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible.”
Although Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts, the Mormon businessman has deep roots in Utah and is popular in the state. He won 93 percent of the vote in Utah’s 2012 Republican primary, taking 73 percent against Barack Obama in the general election in November. He received 89 percent in the 2008 primary.
Utah was also a caucus this year. Cruz has often been able to out-organize Trump in the caucus states. Finally, despite strong showings in regions as disparate as the South and the Northeast, Trump has been relatively weak out West.
On the Democratic side, there is less suspense as Clinton appears to have built an insurmountable delegate lead. Clinton was favored in the Arizona polling and had a strong base among Hispanic voters in the state. They delivered Tuesday.
But Utah and Idaho could be the beginning of a small winning streak for Sanders after the Vermont senator was shut out in the previous wave of voting that includes Ohio and Missouri. Even if Sanders can continue to do well in caucus states with heavily white electorates where Clinton has often struggled, he still will have difficulty catching up to Clinton in the delegate count. What he can do with such victories, however, is keep his campaign going even as Democratic senators are starting to urge him to wind down his “revolution.”
Cruz is seeking to fight Trump at a contested GOP convention or, if possible, overtake him in the delegate count in order to win the nomination outright. Can he force a dynamic more similar to the caucuses in closed Republican primaries coming up, or will Trump dominate in the big states that seem like favorable territory for him and where he is often well ahead in the polls?
Sanders is fighting to preserve the perception the Democratic race is genuinely competitive while maintaining his influence over Clinton’s policy platform.
Both men did what they needed to do to stay in the race and Cruz helped himself in the delegate hunt with his strong Utah showing. But Clinton and Trump are still the candidates with the most plausible paths to the general election.
