How The March 22 Primary Elections Went Down

Tonight’s likely result of a split verdict — Trump winning Arizona and Cruz stomping him in Utah — would seem to suggest a close fight between the two from here on out. But the problem for Cruz is the same one we’ve been talking about for over a month: There just aren’t a ton of great states for him later in the calendar. Almost every state with a high share of evangelical Protestants have already voted, and the two states with the highest shares of Mormons — Trump’s worst group by a mile — will have already voted after tonight (Idaho and Utah). In fact, between now and June, the only states left where more than 3-in-10 residents are either evangelical Protestants or Mormons are Indiana (32 percent), Montana (32 percent), Oregon (33 percent) and West Virginia (41 percent). Together, these states account for just 146 of the 905 delegates at stake in remaining contests. And, West Virginia is probably Trump’s prototypical state, not Cruz’s. To me, these are the most damning statistics when it comes to Cruz’s bid to prevent Trump from winning 1,237 delegates.

There’s been an ongoing question during the Democratic campaign about which candidate is winning the Latino vote. In Nevada, the exit polls suggested Sanders carried the Latino vote, while an examination of precinct-level results argued Clinton did. In Florida and Texas, it was clear Clinton won Latinos. We don’t have any exit polls tonight, but it would seem that Clinton is again winning the Latino vote. In the votes counted so far from Santa Cruz County (83 percent Latino), Clinton is winning 70 percent of the vote. In Yuma County (62 percent Latino), she’s taking 67 percent of the vote.

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.