Primary Housecleaning

With this week being an off week for both parties (the next primary is the Wisconsin primary on April 5. North Dakota is technically up next for the Republicans on April 3 but since their delegates are not bound until the convention it does not got into the totals) I have decided to do a little housecleaning with the current delegates to make sure that everything is as up to date as possible.

On the Republican side we still have three candidates in the race; Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. Below you will see the delegates that they won last week along with their current total. As before I will post the number of delegates needed to win the nomination along with how many delegates are left. I will also include the difference between the two front runners

Last week delegate total:

Donald Trump - 58 delegates

Ted Cruz - 40 delegates

John Kasich - 0 delegates

Total delegates:

Donald Trump - 739 delegates

Ted Cruz - 465 delegates

John Kasich - 143 delegates

Other delegates - 181 delegates

DIFFERENCE:

Cruz is 274 delegates behind Trump

1,237 delegates needed to win nomination, 944 delegates left to win.

Simply put John Kasich cannot win the nomination with what is left of the delegates. If he were to win the remaining delegates he would be sitting at 1,087 delegates; well short of the number needed to win the nomination. He has to hope for a brokered convention and then hope he can convince enough of the already delegates tied to candidates already dropped out to come to him as well as delegates from either Trump or Cruz.

Donald Trump needs to win around 53% of the remaining delegates while Ted Cruz needs to win 82% of the remaining delegates. What Cruz needs to be looking at is winning enough of the remaining delegates to keep Trump from winning the nomination and force a brokered convention and then try to win the nomination at the convention.

For Cruz to accomplish this he needs to win as many of the winner take all primaries as he can, starting with Wisconsin. His best chances are in Indiana, Montana, and South Dakota. Then after that he needs John Kasich to keep the delegate count close in New York and Pennsylvania. The next few months will be a fun ride.

Democrats:

Now the delegate count is quite a bit different in this race. The math seems fairly straight forward since all states are proportional and there are only two candidates in the race. Having said that it is up to the states to deliver an official delegate count, so the numbers that you see below are estimates of where we are right now.

Delegate count for last week:

Bernie Sanders - 180 delegates

Hillary Clinton - 93 delegates

Total delegates:

Clinton - 1,237 delegates

Sanders - 1,022 delegates

DIFFERENCE:

Bernie Sanders is 215 delegates behind Hillary Clinton.

Delegates needed to win and left:

2,383 delegates needed to win; roughly 2,049 delegates left.

Now the delegates left is an estimation that also includes an assumption on my part that it does not include the mythical super delegates. Keeping with that number Hillary needs to win 56% of the remaining delegates to hit that number, while Bernie needs to win 66% of the remaining delegates. This is where the super delegates will actually come in. As each member that has a super delegate vote will not actually cast their vote until the convention, if neither candidate wins the needed number of delegates prior to the convention it is assumed that whoever is in the lead is who the super delegates would vote for.

It is assumed.

I would like you, however, to focus on a different number. Bernie is currently trailing Hillary by 215 delegates. That is closer than the 274 delegates that Cruz is trailing Trump. The media considers the Republican race a close race but considers the Democratic race over. Why is this? Simple, because of the super delegates who have not cast a vote. All of the major media outlets use the super delegate numbers added into the actual delegates and it does give Hillary quite the lead. That is extremely misleading (and most assume it is because the mainstream media, even Fox News, has a rooting interest in seeing Hillary win the nomination).

This was attempted during the 2008 race between Hillary and Obama. Hillary had unpledged super delegates 3 to 1 over Obama and the media was pushing those number but as Obama continued to win state after state and her lead began to disappear and then turn into trailing, the media stopped using the super delegate numbers because the people were not paying attention to their math.

Wisconsin is next on the list for both parties and they are expecting wide spread pandemonium as a law signed by the current Governor (Scott Walker) in 2011 strictly curtails what types of IDs are considered valid. To be honest the polling that has been done in the state and will be done in the state, frankly does not matter.