I am Joe. I am a techy at heart, a self-taught psephologist (political number cruncher), a pleasure cyclist, and someone who just calls things as he sees them.

Mar 1, 2016

State of the races after Super Tuesday

Estimated number of delegates pledged to each candidate. Data courtesy The Green Papers.

Democratic Party

Hillary Clinton extended her lead over Bernie Sanders last night, though not really by that much. Mrs. Clinton won an estimated 495 delegates, compared to Mr. Sanders with 380. However, the superdelegates continue to support Mrs. Clinton by an extremely lopsided margin (452–19), and that will be the chief reason that she clinches the nomination.

The victories that she’s taking are not particularly overwhelming, but she will continue to slowly crawl towards the winning post. If she continues to win pledged delegates at the rate she’s going, this should happen around the end of April. (If not for the superdelegates, we might have to wait until California’s 546 delegates come in, which isn’t until June.)

Republican Party

While Donald Trump won the most states, his delegate lead over Ted Cruz is not that great, and certainly not insurmountable (as I predicted last week). He has now dropped to less than 50% of the total number of delegates awarded so far, making the winner-take-all primaries later this month that much more important.

None of the five candidates who came into Super Tuesday have yet dropped out of the race (not even Ben Carson or John Kasich, who now need over 70% of the remaining delegates in order to win). This means that the anti-Trump vote will continue to be split between Mr. Cruz and Mr. Rubio. There are 286 delegates up for grabs in 4 winner-take-all or winner-take-most states (99 FL, 69 IL, 66 OH, and 52 MO) on 15 March, and in the three states where recent polling data is available, Mr. Trump is leading by considerable margins. If Mr. Trump wins all four, it would put him more than half of the way to the winning post, and failing to win in their respective home states will make it impossible for Mr. Rubio (FL) and Mr. Kasich (OH) to continue.

There are 107 winner-take-all or winner-take-most delegates up for grabs in March after the 16th, and 406 in April (including 95 in Mr. Trump’s home state of NY). If it’s still a three (or more) horse race throughout, then Mr. Trump will become the presumptive nominee in early May by winning in all of these states. If it’s down to Trump vs Cruz, then it may turn out that Mr. Rubio’s delegates become kingmakers, keeping us all guessing until July’s convention.