Republican and Democratic candidates must hit a magic number of delegates to win their party’s nomination, and run in general election in the fall. Democrat Bernie Sanders picked up his home state of Vermont, as well as Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota, but failed to broaden his appeal with minority voters who are crucial to the party in presidential elections. Georgia offers the second most Republican delegates of Super Tuesday with 76. He emerged with his first victory in Minnesota but failed to live up to the wider hopes of the numerous Republican officeholders who have promoted him as the party’s best alternative to Trump.
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“Republicans and Democrats have a lot of action going on and a lot of swing states”. 451 of those super delegates are pledged to Clinton.
The Washington Post is tracking the turnout for the presidential primaries and according to their calculations, one million more Republicans than Democrats have turned out to vote in the 2016 primaries. Sanders will definitely pick up delegates. “That 100 delegate mark – a lead of that much – will make it very hard for Sanders to equalize”, Josh Putnam, a University of Georgia professor who specializes in campaigns and elections, told ABC News. So far, Trump has won 82 delegates, more than any other Republican candidate.
As for the Republicans, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have gained more political endorsements from Virginia’s legislators than any other Republican candidates. Even as Trump professed to have good relationships with his party’s elite, he issued a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who declared earlier in the day that “this party does not prey on people’s prejudices”.
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Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and SC have all had their say in this race. Rubio has 16 and Cruz has 17. A presumptive nominee needs 1,237 to secure the nomination. If a candidate receives less than the required threshold, the votes that would have gone to them are often reallocated to the state victor. And when we move to the winner-takes-all delegate allocation, this could be enough to inch one of the remaining candidates ahead of Trump. In contrast to the primaries occurring later in the year, Republican primaries held prior to March 15 allocate delegates on a proportional basis. And of course, the bigger Cruz’s lead is in Texas, the more delegates he will amass.
