FRONTRUNNER STILL FACES DIFFICULT PATH TO GOP NOMINATION
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump scored an emphatic victory in his home state of New York last night – earning a whopping 60.5 percent of the vote (and a slew of new delegates) in the Empire State’s “Republican” primary election.
Of course the real news wasn’t so much Trump’s decisive win as it was the crushing defeat of Ted Cruz – who finished a distant third behind pandering Ohio governor John Kasich.
With only 14.5 percent of the vote, Cruz received precisely zero delegates in New York … meaning he, like Kasich, is now mathematically excluded from winning the GOP nomination prior to this summer’s “Republican” convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
In other words, the only way Ted Cruz (or anyone not named Donald Trump) will become the “Republican” nominee is via a contested convention.
Trump – who picked up at least 89 delegates in New York – still has his work cut out for him, though. The latest projections show he will need to win at least 64 percent of the bound delegates in the remaining fifteen states holding primaries in order to hit the magic number of 1,237 prior to the convention.
Can he do that?
It won’t be easy … in fact most projections show Trump falling roughly 30-80 delegates shy of the threshold, which would result in a contested convention exposing the GOP’s deep divisions. Such a scenario would likely wind up with establishment “Republicans” handing the nomination to Cruz (possibly on the third ballot) – or nominating a candidate of their own from the floor of the convention hall.
Either path is fraught with peril.
In his victory speech in New York, Trump bristled at the prospect of being denied the nomination.
“Nobody should get delegates unless they get those delegates from voters and voting,” he said. “It’s a crooked system; it’s a system that’s rigged. We’re going to be going back to the old ways: You get votes and you win.”
Bottom line? Trump did better than expected in New York (vote-wise and delegate-wise), but his path to the GOP nomination remains rocky.