What Went Down In The Indiana Primary

All the fancy analyses of whether Trump could hit the magic number of 1,237 delegates probably go out the window with tonight’s results. According to FiveThirtyEight friend and expert delegate tracker Daniel Nichanian, who has tracked both unbound and bound delegates, Trump entered tonight with 991 delegates, needing only 246 more to reach a majority. From here, it’s pretty easy to see how Trump could run the table and end up with more than 1,400. Indiana will probably provide Trump an additional 57 delegates tonight. It’s also easy to see how Trump could sweep New Jersey (51 delegates), Montana (27 delegates) and all 53 districts in California (172 delegates). West Virginia has a convoluted delegate selection process, but it’s possible Trump could win 30 of its 34 delegates. Trump now also may have a chance at winning Nebraska (36 delegates) and South Dakota (29 delegates). New Mexico, Oregon and Washington award their delegates on a proportional basis, but let’s suppose Trump wins half of that pool of 96 delegates. That’s 48 delegates. Add it all together, and Trump would enter the GOP convention with 1,441 delegates. Wow.

Note that Kasich’s numbers did collapse at the end — he only has 9 percent of the Republican vote so far — suggesting that there was some tactical voting on the GOP side. None of it matters when the winner gets 50 percent.

We now have 9 percent of the vote in for both the Democratic and Republican side. Trump’s lead is holding at 20 percentage points. The Republican side looks like it’s going to be a blowout at this point. The race is far closer on the Democratic side, with Clinton up 4 percentage points. Clinton is doing very well in the pre-election-day vote, while Sanders is doing far better in the ballots that were cast today. That said, a lot of vote is still out in Gary and Indianapolis, both of which should be strong Clinton areas.