How The States Voted On Semi-Super Saturday

Where are there still returns outstanding in Louisiana?

• About half of Caddo Parish, which has been good for Cruz so far, has yet to report.
• Lots of votes left in East Baton Rouge Parish, which has also been good for Cruz.
• About 70 precincts in Jefferson Parish have yet to report; Jefferson has been good for Trump.
• Lots of precincts in Orleans Parish haven’t reported, but there aren’t a lot of Republican votes there. Trump is slightly ahead of Cruz in the ones reported so far, but Rubio and Kasich also do comparatively well.
• Significant amounts of St. Tammany Parish, which has been good for Trump, have yet to report.

Overall, our guess is that Trump will just barely hold on, but these were not the sorts of margins some networks were expecting when they called Louisiana for Trump just after 9 p.m..

By the way, kudos to the state of Louisiana for reporting its results very quickly and efficiently tonight. The states you might be inclined to stereotype as being being slow to report returns are often among the best instead.

You keep hearing from people like me that Trump has a floor of about one-third of the vote. For instance, he averaged 35 percent in the Super Tuesday contests. Today, it’s the same story. His average vote percentage in the four states that voted today is 33 percent. The big difference from other days is that Cruz was able to coalesce a lot of the anti-Trump bloc, which led to at least two victories.