Guest Post by Joe Hoft
On April 2nd we predicted that even with a Wisconsin win, Cruz would be mathematically unable to reach the delegate count required for him to win the Republican Presidential nomination by the end of April. “Actually” we noted, “in only 3 weeks, on April 26th, Cruz will be no longer able to win enough delegates to win the Republican nomination.”
The delegate count now looks much worse for Senator Cruz.
Shortly before Wisconsin Cruz had 463 delegates and Trump 736, now two weeks later Cruz has 545 and Trump 755. Cruz picked up less delegates than we predicted in Wisconsin (36 to 40) but he did manage to ‘gain’ delegates in Colorado in the shady ‘voter-less’contest Real Clear Politics calls a caucus.
Below is our estimate of the delegate count by the end of April as reported April 2nd –
(Chart by Joe Hoft)
It seems that the Colorado debacle may have hurt Cruz more than it helped him. Trump is leading in all of the East Coast states coming up for election – New York 53% (+32), Pennsylvania 43% (+16), Maryland 40% (+14), Connecticut 50% (+24) with no recent data from Rhode Island and Delaware. Based on the current poll data and assuming Rhode Island and Delaware are consistent with their sister states, it looks like Trump could win all the delegates in New York, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland based on the primary rules in these states while cleaning up in the other two.
Ted Cruz is currently polling in third place in all these states except Pennsylvania.
As we noted on the 2nd, “Even if Cruz wins a third of the delegates in Rhode Island or Connecticut or any of these states, it will not be enough to keep him mathematically in the race.”
Now it looks like Cruz will not only be mathematically eliminated from obtaining enough delegates to win the election outright by April 26th, he may also have fallen to third place in the polls by the end of April, too.
(Chart by Joe Hoft)
Based on current conservative estimates, come April 26th, Cruz will need 657 delegates to win the election but only 585 will be left leaving him mathematically out of the race.
Trump will only need 279 delegates or less than 50% of the delegates remaining to win the nomination.
And according to our conservative estimates – Trump should gain 1237 delegates by June 7th making him the Republican nominee.
