How The March 22 Primary Elections Went Down

Here’s part of the reason I think Trump’s apparently easy win in Arizona is important. I know Arizona looked like a good state for Trump all along. And I know we’re all into the delegate math here at FiveThirtyEight. It’s our thing. But the delegate math suggests that Trump’s quest for 1,237 delegates could be close. He might just get over the finish line, or he might finish 10, 50, 100 delegates short. Or maybe something goes wrong and he finishes 200 delegates short instead, in which case he’d have a lot more work left to do. To the extent Trump doesn’t clinch outright, however, and needs help from unpledged delegates or even delegates on the convention floor, there’s going to be a question of whether Trump has a mandate from Republican voters. It’s not so hard to deny him the nomination if everything is a big mess. It’s harder if Trump’s winning the strong majority of high-profile states, no one else is close, and Trump is just happening to come up a few delegates short. In my view, Cruz not only has to keep Trump below 1,237 — he probably has to create some real doubt about what Republican voters really want. He didn’t do that in Arizona tonight.

According to our delegate tracker, Sanders needs about 58 percent of the delegates from here on out to overtake Clinton in the pledged delegate count. Some of tonight’s results might give Bernie backers false hope: He could easily reach that share of the vote in Idaho and Utah. But as our scorecard indicates, wins of that magnitude won’t help Sanders meaningfully chip away at Clinton’s 300-pledged delegate lead. And, as Nate has noted, Arizona could easily negate Sanders delegate leads out of Idaho and Utah.

I’m not going to second guess the networks calling races, but one wonders about the ethics of calling a race when people are still standing in line to vote, as they are in Arizona.