And a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey shows Cruz trailing Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among likely Republican primary voters. Trump only needs 242 delegates to do so. “So I think it might be all over but the shoutin’ if Trump wins IN”. Earlier Tuesday Trump had rehashed unsubstantiated claims that the Texan’s father, Rafael Cruz, appeared in a 1963 photograph with John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald – citing a report first published by the National Enquirer. “Right prior to his being shot, and nobody brings it up”.
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And nationwide, Cruz’s numbers with millennials, minorities, and women are nearly as bad as Trump’s. Cruz is slated to make a campaign stop in the southern in city of Evansville later Tuesday morning, then he will take the afternoon off before his primary night gathering in Indianapolis.
“Will you support him as the nominee?”
Some central IN polling stations are seeing steady crowds as voters cast their ballots IN the state’s primary election.
It’s “virtually impossible” for Hillary Clinton to win a convention-delegate majority, Sanders said Sunday, and his campaign intends to flip the superdelegates she needs “to take her over the top”. He would have crossed the 1,000-delegate threshold and be 85 percent of the way to the magic number of 1,237 needed for the Republican nomination with nine contests remaining.
Sanders has conceded that he faces a hard path to overtake Clinton, one that hinges on convincing superdelegates to back him over the former secretary of state. It was the first time in three months that Clinton outraised Sanders. With only a few employees on the ground at this time four years ago, the RNC now has more than 200 in general election battlegrounds such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado.
Donald Trump has narrowed the gap on the Democratic frontrunner: In a theoretical match-up, 43 percent of registered voters would support Clinton and 37 percent would support Trump.
Herein lies the problem with Cruz and many of his loyal followers: they ignore – no, actually, they despise – political math. It’s not only limited to his race with Trump, but also the general election.
Indiana delegate Kyle Babcock, treasurer of the Indiana Republican Congressional 3rd district, was also leaning towards Kasich before the Cruz-Kasich deal was announced. Cruz exits the race with 565, while Kasich has 152.
While Trump can’t mathematically clinch the GOP nomination with his victory in IN, his path now becomes easier and he has more room for error in the remaining primary contests. After Cruz’s comments in Evansville, he said in a statement the Texas senator was “a desperate candidate trying to save his failing campaign”. He described the character as “a braggadocious, arrogant buffoon who builds giant casinos with giant pictures of him everywhere he looks”. The betting odds on Trump are -500 and the over/under on the primary vote is a 6.5 point Trump victory. “In essence, we’re not going to nominate Hillary Clinton with a penis”, Steve Lonegan, Cruz’s New Jersey campaign director, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “At This Hour”. In the RealClearPolitics average Trump now leads by over 9 points.
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Yet the billionaire’s aides acknowledged they’ll tap into the resources of the party’s establishment – the Republican National Committee, above all – as the scale and scope of the 2016 contest grow exponentially.
