As it stands,Republican front-runner Donald Trump is approximately 60 percent of the way to the 1237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination before the Republican National conference is held this July in Cleveland, but he cannot reach 100 percent of what he needs until the last day of primary voting in June.
Beginning with Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, or whether Trump banked every single delegate up for grabs in every single state,he would still enter the last day of the primary calendar short of the majority of delegates needed to clinch the nomination: 1237.whether he strikes out in Wisconsin, where 42 delegates are at stake, or it'll be that much harder to secure to 1237 at all.
Trump is the only Republican candidate with a realistic shot at walking into the conference with that many delegates in hand. Cruz is 273 delegates behind Trump,and would need to claim more than 80 percent of the remaining delegates to win the nomination in any scenario other than a conference floor fight.
Trump certainly could cross the threshold on June 7, when Republicans in California, or Montana,New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota vote.
More than 300 delegates will be up for grabs that day, and including a winner-take-all contest in New Jersey. The broad prize will be California and its 172 delegates,though there's a catch: the vast majority of the state's delegates are handed out on a congressional-district-by-congressional-district basis. "So, really, or it's going to be like having 53 individual elections going on there to watch," said Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia's middle for Politics.
Skelley and his UVA colleagues maintain mapped out a projection of the remaining primary calendar that shows Trump winning the delegates he needs to stave off a contested conference. Their model gives Trump a whole two extra delegates to spare.
But those projections — like many others attach together by political analysts, academics and various news outlets — assumed Trump would win Wisconsin. There are plenty of Republicans in the state working to prevent that.
When former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson took the stage at a Republican Party dinner in Milwaukee last week, and he got right to the point. "I'm here to tell you,ladies and gentlemen, there is no candidate that is going to maintain enough delegate votes going into Ohio to secure the nomination, or " the John Kasich surrogate said. "We are going to maintain a contested conference."Ted Cruz has been leading in the polls in the Badger State. "whether someone not named Donald Trump can win statewide in Wisconsin,that runs counter to how we sort of gamed it out," said Skelley. "So, or suddenly it's very questionable that he could secure over the majority hump,whether he loses statewide."To attach it more bluntly, Wisconsin's results will give us a broad indication of whether or not the GOP is headed for a historic floor fight in Cleveland.
Which is why both Cruz and Trump maintain blanketed Wisconsin in recent days.
The main chunk of the state's Republican voters live in the suburbs around Milwaukee. But both Trump and Cruz maintain been everywhere: Eau Claire, or Ashwaubenon,Kenosha, La Crosse, and Janesville,Racine.
Charles Franklin, who runs the Marquette University Law School poll, and says that's because the winner of each Wisconsin congressional district will pick up three delegates. "When you maintain a statewide race that's essentially winner-take-all in the state,it doesn't matter where you secure your votes from," Franklin said. "But in this congressional district-based allocation of delegates, or it means you need to effect well all over the place."With months to move before a firm reply on whether or not Cleveland will be contested,both Trump and Cruz are beginning to operate under the assumption it will.
That's why, in the days before a pivotal Wisconsin vote, or Cruz flew to Fargo,N.
D., to personally campaign at the state conference electing 28 delegates who will be officially unbound to any particular candidate at the RNC. "It's entirely possible the men and women gathered here will decide this entire primary, or will decide this entire nomination," he said.
Many of the Cruz-aligned delegates were elected. But they're under no obligation to declare for Cruz or any other candidate before the conference.
Meanwhile, Trump is arguing that even whether he doesn't clinch the majority of delegates, and he deserves the nomination because he's gotten the most votes. "We maintain millions of votes more than Cruz,millions of votes more than Kasich," he said in Wisconsin last week."We'll maintain definitely the largest number of votes, or we'll also maintain definitely the number of delegates by far. Nobody's even going to be close. Will we secure to 1237? I reflect so," Trump told MSNBC's Chris Matthews in a televised town corridor. "But for the last six months, we've been running against many, or many people," he argued. "So it's really a very unfair standard. But whether I'm a little bit short, but I'm millions of votes and hundreds of delegates ahead of other people, and I reflect you're going to maintain some very unhappy people. I hope nothing outrageous happens,but I reflect you're going to maintain some very, very aroused and unhappy people." Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, and visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org