What Went Down In The New York Primaries

Why was this primary-night speech different from all other primary-night speeches for Trump? Well, for one thing it was pretty short on invective. This is not to say that Trump wasn’t Trump — he walked to the podium to strains of Sinatra’s “New York New York,” and proceeded to dismantle his opponents, but not in the rambling manner we’ve seen before. Tonight, his words were, as they say in the business that Trump claims to disdain (politics), “on message.” “Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated,” he said. “We’ve won close to 300 more delegates than Senator Cruz.” “It’s really nice to win the delegates with the votes. It’s really nice.” “It’s a crooked system, the system is rigged.” Trump’s team has been on a hiring spree of late, adding seasoned political operatives. It seems abundantly clear that since the campaign has been losing what you might think of as the “sub primary” — the hunt for second-ballot delegate allies if no candidate clinches the nomination with 1,237 votes on the first ballot in Cleveland — they are focusing on pointing out how unfair the Republican nominating process is. While he continues to win big with voters, Trump’s loss of delegates is a big problem — he’s losing second-ballot delegates to Cruz left and right, which could kill his candidacy in the increasing likelihood of a brokered convention. Trump rather surprisingly expressed sympathy for Bernie Sanders in his speech. “I am no fan of Bernie, but you watch him win, win, win,” Trump said, seeming to indicate that both men are victims of their respective party nominating systems.

Throughout the night, my colleagues have been writing about Trump’s numbers, and whether he’s over the threshold needed to secure all three delegates from a given district. Kasich and Cruz have been hoping to pick off a delegate here or there from districts where Trump doesn’t clear that bar. I commend my colleagues for their astute analysis, and I commend all but one of them for not using an expression to describe this that Clare has recently introduced to the elections podcast: “delegate leakage.” Everyone has showed admirable restraint in not using this phrase. Except Harry, who actually invented it. Harry used it at 9:37 p.m. C’mon, Harry.

If you want an idea of why the exit polls were off on the Democratic side, look no further than the 15th district. The 15th, which is the most Hispanic in the state, is favoring Clinton by over 40 percentage points. The exit poll had Clinton winning Hispanics statewide by 18 percentage points.