Both Trump and Clinton Should Do Well in New York Primary

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton haven’t been doing very well lately. But that should change come April 16, with both candidates projected to be big winners in the New York primary.

The Washington Post:

Trump and Clinton have long been favored in New York, the home state (adopted in Clinton’s case) of each. In the new Fox survey, each still has a big lead.

Trump gets 54 percent of the vote to 22 for John Kasich. Ted “lol New York values” Cruz is in third, with 15 percent.

That Trump tops 50 percent is key. If Trump gets 50 percent of the vote in the primary, he gets all of the state’s at-large delegates, and three delegates in each congressional district that he wins with 50 percent of the vote. If he’s below 50 percent, statewide or in the congressional districts, he splits the delegates, too. And for a guy scrambling to hit the 1,237-delegate mark to clinch the nomination, that counts. It’s why he canceled plans to campaign in California so that he could hold down the fort at home.

Clinton’s up 53 percent to Sanders’s 37 percent in New York. It’s a narrower lead than in past polls (particularly one from Emerson College at the end of last month that showed her getting more than 70 percent of the vote), but it’s still a wide margin. If that result holds, Clinton will get about 145 delegates to Sanders’s 102 — increasing her delegate lead by 43, which is just shy of what Sanders earned by winning Washington by a wide margin. That was Sanders’s biggest win in his recent string of victories — and his biggest net delegate haul overall.

That string of victories, as we’ve noted so many times before, was largely a function of being in states that had smaller black populations and held caucuses. In New York, according to the new Fox poll, Clinton gets 61 percent of support from black voters to Sanders’s 29 percent. But Clinton also wins among whites in her adopted home state, by a 13-point margin. Sanders wins among men (by four points) and people younger than 45 (by 11). Clinton wins everywhere else.

Cruz should start rooting for Kasich in New York. His unforced error about “New York values” is killing him. A push by Kasich to deny Trump his 50% vote total  is the only thing that can keep Trump from scoring a big win — and a huge cache of delegates.

The Fox poll doesn’t hold any good news for Cruz in Pennsylvania either, although Trump’s 16-point lead that poll is somewhat offset by a Morning Call poll that shows Trump up by only 8. That suggests a volatility in the Pennsylvania electorate not present in New York.