Two more states vote on Tuesday, Utah and Arizona. After Donald Trump’s big win last week, many might expect him to win big tomorrow, too. That might happen in Arizona, but don’t bet on The Donald winning Utah.
Trump leads the polls in Arizona, the biggest remaining winner-take-all state in the GOP primary — with 58 delegates up for grabs. Arizona has a closed primary, however, which means that only registered Republicans can vote — a style that has tended to help Ted Cruz. Word on the ground in the state gives Cruz and Trump nearly equal odds of winning.
“I think Cruz will pull the upset,” Kurt Davis, a neutral Republican in Arizona and close confidante of Senator John McCain, told The Hill. “He’s the only candidate with any kind of organization out here and they have him positioned to spring the upset. They just have to deliver.” In the two polls released this month, Trump leads Cruz by 12 and 14 points, but much of Marco Rubio’s old support has swung behind the Texas senator. Cruz may have a fighting chance in Arizona only because Rubio dropped out last week.
In Utah, Trump and John Kasich are fighting to keep Cruz under the 50 percent threshold. If Cruz wins more than half of the state’s vote, he will win all 40 of its delegates. The most recent poll, conducted March 17-19, shows Cruz well in the lead, with 53 percent. Notably, Cruz seems to have picked up a large percentage of Rubio’s support, while Kasich has also gained ground over Trump.
Mormons have been one of the most predictable anti-Trump constituencies in the Republican primaries this year. Ted Cruz walloped him in Wyoming (the third most Mormon state) and Idaho (the second most Mormon state). The polls show Cruz performing similarly well against him in Utah.
Why Trump is going to get annihilated in Utah pic.twitter.com/Z9oS5KGK6u
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 18, 2016
The reasons for this are manifold. Trump’s positions on illegal immigration and his attacks on Muslims have been seen as less than compassionate and an assault on religious liberty by many in the Mormon community. His religious illiteracy, his onstage cursing, his crude insults at women, and his boasts of sleeping with many women tend to grate upon the wholesome, family-first lifestyle Mormons cherish. Mitt Romney recently declared he would be voting for Ted Cruz, merely to stop Trump and lead to a contested convention. Next Page: So What if Cruz Pulls the Upset and Wins Everything Tuesday? Even if Cruz pulls off the upset in Arizona and takes all of Utah’s delegates, he will still trail Trump badly in the overall delegate race. Trump currently leads with 678 to Cruz’s 423, and Kasich holds 143. If Cruz were to win Utah by over 50 percent and squeak ahead of Trump, he would only have 521 delegates, but he would have deprived Trump from 98 extra delegates, making a contested convention all the more likely. Trump needs to win 53 percent of the remaining 1,059 delegates to win the race outright. After Tuesday, in the case of a Cruz double win, that number drops to 961, and Trump has to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates. So far, the real estate tycoon has won 46 percent of the available delegates.
Cruz has a more difficult path forward. Even after a Cruz sweep on Tuesday — which is far from assured — he would still need 75 percent of all remaining delegates to win outright. However, the numbers may then make it possible for Cruz to keep Trump from winning outright, pushing the race to a contested convention. Such a convention may enable the Republican “establishment” to foist their own candidate above the wishes of the people, but that seems unlikely. If Trump and Cruz get to the convention with roughly equal delegate counts — and millions of votes behind each of them — one of them will still likely win the nomination. If Trump still leads Cruz by a wide margin, it would be exceedingly difficult to force the party to back a candidate who hasn’t won a single vote or a single state in the primaries.
Last Tuesday, Cruz explained the difference between a brokered and a contested convention. He argued that Republicans must oppose a brokered convention, where elites push their own, unelected candidate, but support a contested convention, where two candidates are nearly tied for delegates and must hash it out at the convention. This difference may seem trite, but it is important to explain the convention process in these terms, lest Cruz or Trump supporters feel betrayed when their candidate does not emerge as the nominee.
.@tedcruz explains the difference b/t a brokered and a contested convention to @hughhewitt https://t.co/wK9hT7ShtP pic.twitter.com/3cqVJ05jz5 — Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) March 15, 2016
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