The March 1 "Super Tuesday" presidential election contests clarified matters for both parties, putting Hillary Clinton in the driver's seat for the Democratic nomination and giving Donald Trump the inside track for the Republican nomination. By itself, Super Tuesday didn't clinch things for either front-runner. But it did make things a whole lot tougher for the pursuers. Both races are like a football game with one team 21 points ahead at halftime. We'll look first at the Democrats and then the Republicans. If you want more, here's a link to an excellent Wall Street Journal spread on the delegate race and the upcoming calendar.
Democrats Hillary Clinton did well on Super Tuesday. She captured 7 states and 504 delegates. Bernie Sanders took 4 states and 340 delegates. Clinton thus increased her delegate lead by 164. She now has earned 599 pledged delegates to Bernie Sanders's 407, a margin of 192. There will be about 4,000 pledged delegates at the convention, so to secure a majority of them in Philadelphia Secretary Clinton would need to win 1402 of the remaining 3000 to be elected, or 47% of them. Senator Sanders would need 1594, or 53%. So, since in the Democratic contest there are no "winner take all" primaries, it would seem Sanders is definitely still in the race. He would need to consistently outperform Clinton by about 6% from now on to win.
But then there are the "Superdelegates." These are about 700 Democratic elected officials who automatically also get a vote at the convention. They can vote for whomever they wish, unlike pledged delegates elected in primaries or in the voter caucuses who are obligated to vote for the candidate they were elected to represent on the first ballot at the convention. About 70% of these superdelegates have already committed to a candidate; 457 of them have said they will be voting for Hillary Clinton and only 22 have declared for Bernie Sanders. If you add the supers in with the primary delegates, Clinton now has 1056 convention delegates and Sanders has just 429. It's going to take 2,383 delegates (of the 4775 at the convention) to get the nomination. So that means there are 3290 delegates left. With 1056 already in her tote bag, Clinton needs only 1,327 of them to secure the nomination. That's just 41%. Bernie Sanders would need 1,954, or 59% to clinch. Winning by an average of 6% in every contest would be difficult but conceivable. But winning primary after primary by an average of 18% is a near impossibility. Given this reality, a Sanders nomination is a real longshot.
To look a little more closely, Clinton won in blowout fashion across the South, carrying the six states of Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas all by better than two to one majorities. She also took an upset win in Massachusetts, edging Sanders there by 1 %. The four states Sanders won were by solid margins: Oklahoma by 10 points, his home state of Vermont in a 72-point landslide, and caucuses by 24 points in Minnesota and 19 in Colorado. So does that mean that since most of the remaining states won't be in the South that Bernie has a great chance to catch up? Well, not if the polls are right. Clinton's average lead in polls of the March 8 Michigan primary is 17%. She is up by an average of 24 points in Florida and 15 points in Ohio for those two March 15 contests. Those are big states with lots of delegates. Sanders needs to make up a lot of ground in less than two weeks or his chances will evaporate. Unless the FBI investigation of her e-mail problems mortally wounds the former Secretary of State, it appears her message of experience, detailed policy proposals and her strength with women and minorities will carry her through to victory and the Democratic nomination.
Republicans Donald Trump had a very good night on Super Tuesday. Like Clinton, he won 7 states, in the process taking 221 delegates of the 523 at stake. Ted Cruz had a good night too. The Texas Senator won three states and garnered 195 delegates. Florida Senator Marco Rubio remained relevant, winning one state and 85 delegates. Ohio Governor John Kasich got 19 delegates and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson got 3 before dropping out of the race. There will be 2,473 delegates at the Republican convention in Cleveland, with 1237 needed to win. In the overall race Trump now has 319 delegates, Cruz 226, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. Carson has 8 and Jeb Bush has 3. That means about 690 delegates have been allotted. There are still about 1783 still to be won.
To get to 1237 Trump would need 918 of those 1783, a little over 51%. That certainly seems to be a reasonable prospect for his candidacy. It becomes even more probable given a unique feature of the GOP nomination process. They don't have superdelegates, but they do have some "winner take all" primaries. These include some big states with major delegate hauls up for grabs. On March 15 Florida will offer a 99-delegate winner-take-all contest and Ohio will have 66-delegate prize. Those states are assuming a "do or die" level of importance for Marco Rubio and John Kasich, respectively. If Rubio gets shut out in his home state of Florida it's hard to see a credible victory scenario for him going forward. He's only won one state, Minnesota, and that was a caucus. If anything, Kasich is even more dependent on winning his home state of Ohio. Though he came close to beating Trump in Vermont, Kasich has yet to score a win in 2016. Victory in Ohio is the only realistic way he can establish his viability and set up chances to contend in other nearby Great Lakes states such as Pennsylvania, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Looking more closely at Tuesday's results, Trump was the only candidate who showed solid popularity across the board. He won substantial pluralities in the Southern states of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, and ran up a lopsided plurality in Massachusetts. He narrowly edged out Cruz in Arkansas, Rubio in Virginia and Kasich in Vermont. Trump came in second everywhere he didn't win except Minnesota. Cruz won a 6-point victory in Oklahoma, a 16-point triumph in Texas and a 2-point squeaker in the Alaska caucuses. He came in second in Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Minnesota. Rubio managed his first win by 8 points in the Minnesota caucuses and came in second in Georgia, Virginia and Massachusetts. So the good news for Trump is that his muscular persona and positions seem to have adherents throughout the GOP electorate. Cruz is strong with evangelicals and does well in conservative areas. Rubio is the current establishment hope, and Kasich seeks to become that. He has certainly cornered the market on being the picture of the mature, responsible candidate in this group. The anti-Trump candidates can take heart in the knowledge that the mogul has yet to crack 50% in any of these contests. Yet even so, they still have to beat him, and the polls offer little cause for optimism. Polls give the New York businessman a 17-point lead in Michigan and 24 in Mississippi, which vote Tuesday, March 8. He's up by 18 in Florida's March 15 primary, and has a narrow 5-point lead on Kasich in Ohio, which will be decided on the same day. The next couple of weeks should tell the tale. It could be down to Trump and Cruz, with Trump the prohibitive favorite, 10 days from today.
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