The results may also place extra pressure on Cruz to perform well in Tuesday’s in primary, where recent polls show his support flagging in the face of Trump’s momentum.
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Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, his chief rival, continued to voice confidence that he could keep Trump, the Republican front-runner, from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination either before the convention or on the first ballot.
The Trump backers reminded Cruz that it is mathematically impossible for him to win a majority of convention delegates on a first ballot and demanded that he drop out.
Cruz does not pick up a significant number of delegates and win statewide, it makes it very hard to see any way to stop Trump.
“I trust the people of IN to differentiate”, Cruz said on Monday at a campaign stop.
But Mr Cruz, who chose former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina as his running mate last week in a bid to revitalise his campaign, pleaded with voters to be wary.
Ted Cruz on Monday found himself locked in a heated exchange with ardent Donald Trump supporters lasting more than six minutes.
“In the interest of party unity, I am willing to reschedule the vote at an in person meeting”, Horn wrote in the email.
A loss in IN would be particularly crushing for Cruz, who has argued that his brand of religious conservatism is a natural draw for heartland Republicans.
But Saturday, he gave up a full day of IN politicking to appear at California’s state Republican convention with Fiorina. Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a tighter race on the Democratic side.
So in the days leading up to the primary, Cruz has been campaigning in full force.
On April 24, Kasich agreed to step back from IN and Cruz said he’d stay out of OR and New Mexico, which hold primaries later this month. Not only do about half of the state’s voters live in the Indianapolis media market, but five of Indiana’s nine congressional districts include or are adjacent to Marion County, which is home to Indianapolis.
But Indiana could also provide some insight into whether Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton will be able to win over the constituencies that have been most resistant to their candidacies. Clark says she likes Trump because of his business success and because he’s not a politician.
It wasn’t the only unfortunate incident that befell Cruz’s campaign over the weekend as he’s struggling to catch Trump ahead of Tuesday’s crucial vote.
“After the Acela primary, there is an aura of inevitability surrounding the Trump and Clinton candidacies”, Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said.
Pence told CNN he’s solidly behind Cruz. His holier-than-thou approach to early talk of a contested convention showed his delusions with delegate math. Just weeks ago, Cruz said, “Anytime you hear people talking of a brokered convention, that is of the Washington establishment”.
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But even as his crowds swelled and endorsements poured in, Trump could not escape his own greatest foe – his mouth. Trump has 56 percent support, his highest support yet in the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll. He’s already confidently looking past Cruz and engaging the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
