On the face of it, the GOP and Democratic races look
extremely similar. The frontrunners,
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have enormous delegate leads over their
opponents, and when the five eastern state primaries being held tomorrow are
over those leads will only have increased.
And yet the two races are in very different places.
The Democratic side is behaving more conventionally. Hillary Clinton, with her nomination all but
assured, is no longer focused on Bernie Sanders, and instead has turned her
sites on the GOP and the general election.
The media attention has shifted Democratic coverage from the race for
delegates to Hillary’s potential VP choices.
The clamor for Sanders to exit is rising. If there is any drama left in this race at
all, it lies in the files of the FBI, and the unlikely chance that they might
have found an indictable offense in their investigation of Clinton’s email
fiasco.
Nothing on the GOP side, however, is conventional, and
despite Trump’s enormous (dare I say “huge”?) delegate lead, the focus remains
on the primaries and specifically the delegate count. And the reason is simple – the mainstream
GOP, which now, incredibly, is fronted by Ted Cruz – has the goal of creating a
brokered convention that could deny Trump the GOP nomination. To prevent this, Trump needs to secure 1,237
delegates within the primary season, and it will be close. Every delegate counts, and the minutiae of
delegate allocation methods are now the stuff of headlines.
According to BTRTN’s own “Trump Tracker,” Trump is just
about on track to reach the 1,237 threshold.
Tomorrow is a big day, with both parties holding primaries in
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island. Polls show Trump comfortably ahead in all five
states.
Word came this morning that Kasich and Cruz have decided to
team up to try to head off Trump by focusing on separate states, Kasich in
Oregon and New Mexico and Cruz in Indiana.
I actually think Trump got this right, in his quick tweet: “Desperate!”
I am not at all certain it is a good strategy on the merits; Cruz and
Kasich are hardly ideological bedfellows, and a potential supporter neglected
by them might actually turn to Trump rather than the other. Since their bases are different, I would
think the best way to thwart Trump in, say, Indiana, would be for both Cruz and
Kasich to maximize the turnout of their people.
For what it’s worth, Clinton has led in all but one of the
16 polls conducted in April across the five states, the lone Sanders lead being
recorded in one poll in Rhode Island.
Sanders’ best shots to pick off a win are in that tiny state and also in
Connecticut, where the race has tightened.
But he remains quite far back in the two biggest states, Pennsylvania
(where he has campaigned extensively) and Maryland, which should be a Clinton
rout.
BTRTN
predicts that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will sweep the five eastern
primaries, Trump by landslides and Clinton by a wide margin in Maryland,
convincingly in Pennsylvania and Delaware, and by squeakers in Connecticut and
Rhode Island.
|
4/26
GOP
BTRTN
Prediction
|
PA
|
MD
|
CT
|
DE
|
RI
|
|
Trump
|
51
|
46
|
58
|
62
|
61
|
|
Cruz
|
26
|
30
|
16
|
17
|
14
|
|
Kasich
|
23
|
24
|
26
|
21
|
25
|
|
4/26
DEM
BTRTN Prediction
|
PA
|
MD
|
CT
|
DE
|
RI
|
|
Clinton
|
56
|
62
|
51
|
54
|
51
|
|
Sanders
|
44
|
38
|
49
|
46
|
49
|
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