On perhaps the most critical “Super Tuesday” of this election, frontrunners Hillary Clinton (D) and Donald Trump (R) won sweeping victories in key general election states. Clinton, with key wins in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio, will look to begin consolidating party support throughout the rest of the country even as insurgent opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders fights on until the convention. Trump’s road to victory is far less certain, but with victories in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, he has won more than half the delegates needed to win a majority at the GOP convention. Only Gov. John Kasich’s victory in his home state of Ohio prevented a total Trump domination. Neither race is over, but Tuesday night had a sense of inevitability in the air.
Is it time for Clinton’s coronation?
As the election results rolled in, the Clinton camp must have exhaled a collective sigh of relief. The question on everyone’s mind Tuesday night was whether Sanders could repeat his surprise Michigan victory in a handful of critical general election states. But he failed to do so, and slips even farther behind Clinton in the delegate count. There’s still a path to the nomination for Sanders, but he’ll need large victories in the western states, particularly California, as well as a strong showing in New York (the state Clinton served as a senator).
It’s too early to declare Clinton the nominee – as much as the DNC and some pundits might want to – but she’s safely in the lead, and it will certainly take a monumental event to change that. Sanders has racked up enough victories to be a credible contender and continue to pull her further to the left. It’s clear that he has not made enough inroads with minority communities, particularly African-Americans, that heavily support Democrats. Furthermore, the specter of Donald Trump has pushed Democrats worried about electability to vote for Clinton, who dominated on that concern in Tuesday exit polls.
In short, Clinton can’t stop campaigning and differentiating herself from Sanders, but she needs to start returning her focus to the general election campaign. First, she needs to reconcile with strong progressives who supported Sanders religiously and who seem to have a difficult time trusting her. Then she has the (relatively easy) job of campaigning against Trump as long as he remains the frontrunner. Presenting herself as an experienced, steady leader will be about all she needs to do if she faces Trump in the general election.
And then there were three.
Seventeen Republican candidates once populated the GOP field. Now there’s just three very different candidates. Donald Trump, a businessman and reality television star, is outspoken frontrunner running an unorthodox, right-wing populist campaign. Sen. Ted Cruz is a younger, ideologically pure conservative who is an outsider in Washington. Kasich, a mere shadow in the campaign six months ago, is now the leading “establishment” conservative with the departure of Sen. Marco Rubio. We’ll discuss the delegate math below, but its clear that the candidates offer three different messages and have varying chances at the nomination.
The GOP race to 1,237.
A Republican candidate needs 1,237 delegates to win a simple majority of party delegates, and thus, the nomination. Several news sites have displayed slightly different delegate counts, but it appears that 1,079 delegates remain, according to Politico. The three remaining candidates have delegate totals as follows: Trump with 661, Cruz with 406 and Kasich with 142. About 190 delegates are “stranded,” which means they belong to candidates who have dropped out or are otherwise uncommitted.
No candidate has a majority of candidates currently. If no one wins a majority by the convention, the Republicans will have a “brokered convention” where the delegates will select a presidential candidate (as I detail here). Trump clearly is closest to the magic number, with Cruz retaining the potential to hit it. Kasich is mathematically alive, but with proportional delegate allocations, it’s unlikely he will win a majority.
At this point, Kasich plays for the brokered convention. He will probably gather much of the financial and voter support Rubio retained. But it’s unlikely he will gather a majority of delegates, so the best he can hope for is a plurality and the advantage entering the convention. Otherwise he simply uses his delegates to tip the scales toward (presumably) Cruz in return for some political position, presumably the vice presidency.
Cruz will continue to bill himself as the only alternative to Donald Trump, as well as the true conservative and outsider in the race. He can still realistically try to win an outright majority; otherwise, he will pursue the “Kasich convention strategy” above.
Trump is in the strongest position, but he is not on pace to win a majority of delegates. He needs to target the bigger winner-take-all states and rack up delegates to reach the 1,237 needed. A split convention would actually be a nightmare situation for Trump, even if he had a plurality of delegates. With other candidates, party leaders and much of the conservative wing opposing a Trump presidency, delegates may rally around the “anti-Trump” candidate, whether that is Kasich or Cruz. He must win a majority outright, or be just a few delegates away, if he wants the nomination.
Who wins?
The GOP will suffer through a brokered convention that ultimately creates a Cruz-Kasich ticket, though who’s the presidential nominee is still up in the air. GOP leaders would far prefer either candidate to Trump, and though a convention pick might cost them 2016, it’ll preserve the party from a permanent split with a Trump nomination.
Clinton will win the nomination comfortably, even as Sanders stays in the race to pull her left and in case her email scandal takes a turn for the worse. Sanders will also work to corral his supporters to support the Democratic nominee as they threaten to defect to third-party candidates or just refuse to vote. Voter turnout will certainly be an issue for both parties, no matter the nominee.
Regardless, the drama will only continue as the candidates fight for majorities in their respective parties. At the very least, the next few days will provide us with more outrageous and baffling soundbites to discuss in next week’s update.
Matt Dragonette, opinion editor, is a senior accounting and government and politics major. He can be reached at mdragonettedbk@gmail.com.
