Five states voted in the Republican presidential primary Tuesday, and Donald Trump has swept the statewide vote in all five. Here are a few thoughts:
Pennsylvania
Whether you’re a Trump fan, in the #NeverTrump camp or somewhere in between, you should cool your excitement/disappointment over his Pennsylvania victory. While the state’s 71 delegates are a major prize, only 17 of them are guaranteed to go to Trump. The other 54 delegates are officially unbound from any candidate. Of course, those delegates still have preferences, and the campaigns are allowed to inform voters which delegate candidates support them. This is something the Ted Cruz campaign has tended to excel at.
Given the result, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Trump say later that the game is rigged, especially if it’s later revealed that a majority of those unbound candidates support Cruz. But the game isn’t rigged: The rules were the same for everyone going into the primary. The Trump campaign could have done a better job of campaigning for those unbound delegates, but the ground game isn’t its speciality. It hasn’t cost him too much so far, but it could keep him just below a majority of delegates on the first convention ballot.
Expectations Game
Yes, Trump won all five states, and that’s good for him. But polls predicted that would happen, so it’s no surprise. It’s more interesting to look at how Trump performed relative to those high expectations. According to electionbettingodds.com, as of 7:56 p.m. Tuesday, Trump had a 73.8 percent chance to win the GOP nomination, and a 17.5 percent chance of winning the presidency.
As of 10:09 p.m., all five of Tuesday’s states have counted more than half of their votes. Trump appears to have slightly over-performed his expectations. Trump now has a 74.6 percent chance of being the GOP nominee and a 17.9 percent chance of winning the presidency. For what it’s worth, the odds of a brokered convention went from 27.9 percent to 27.2 percent.
What’s next?
Believe it or not, ten states still have to vote in the GOP primary. Combined, 45 percent of the delegates required to clinch the nomination are still up for grabs. Five of those states don’t vote until June 7, and who knows what the landscape will look like then. Three will vote in the first half of May: Indiana, Nebraska and West Virginia.
Indiana votes in a week, on May 3. The latest polls give Trump a 5-8 percentage point lead there. Thirty of the state’s 57 delegates go to the statewide winner, with the rest going to the winners of the state’s nine congressional districts. It would be huge for Cruz if he could close that polling gap in the next week and pull off the upset.
Nebraska and West Virginia haven’t been polled since February. Keep in mind Nebraska is a winner-take-all state and Cruz won four of the five neighboring states that have voted. In West Virginia, delegates are directly elected with the presidential preference listed on the ballot. Cruz has tended to do better in states where this is the case.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
