What Went Down In The Indiana Primary

We’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks talking about Trump’s strategic decision to call the GOP primary process unfair; in our Slack chat earlier today, Nate pointed out that “Trump’s gains in the polls coincided with the period when he started pressing the case about the Republican primary system being rigged against him.” But it looks like that’s not necessarily a message that’s playing in any particularly meaningful way with voters in Indiana. According to the exit polls, only a third of voters agreed with Trump’s argument that the GOP nomination process is “rigged.”

Trump is leading Hamilton County (the wealthy Indianapolis suburbs) 47 percent to 31 percent in early returns. Get out the broom: barring a dramatic change, it’s a Trump sweep of all 57 delegates.

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.