STATE OF THE RACE: Here’s the current delegate counts and what you can expect tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big primary election day that everyone’s been talking about for weeks now. There are a lot of delegates at stake and most of them are winner-take-all. But before we get to that, let’s see where things currently are.

Below are the delegate counts from the big three we’ve been following.

AP:

ap_delegates_march14

NBC NEWS:

nbcnews_delegates_march14

CNN:

cnn_delegates_march14

I know all these are somewhat different, but the bottom line is that Trump is ahead by close to 90 delegates, give or take a few.

Now there are 367 delegates available tomorrow from 5 states and a US territory:
 

Tuesday, March 15 -- 367 Delegates Total

Florida.......99 Delegates, Winner Take All, Closed Primary
Illinois......69 Delegates, Winner Take All*, Open Primary
Missouri......52 Delegates, Winner Take All*, Open Primary
N Carolina....72 Delegates, Proportional, Open Primary
N Mariana Is...9 Delegates, Winner Take All, Closed Caucus
Ohio..........66 Delegates, Winner Take All, Open Primary

 

*=sorta (see below)

Here’s a CNN map if this helps:

super_tues_iii_delegate_map_xl

 
Note that North Carolina is the only one that is truly proportional. But some of the other states do get interesting and could go either way. Here is what Five Thirty Eight has to say about it:

Sure, far more delegates were at stake on Super Tuesday (595) than will be awarded March 15 (367), but the Super Tuesday delegates were all awarded proportionally. By the Republican National Committee’s rules, March 15 is the kickoff of the high-stakes winner-take-all season. Of the five states voting Tuesday — Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio — only North Carolina will truly award its delegates on a proportional basis, making it the least valuable prize of the night.

Florida and Ohio are hyped up not only because of their favorite sons (for good reason), but also because they are the only “true” winner-take-all states: The Florida winner will claim 99 delegates, and the Ohio winner will claim 66 — no ifs, ands or buts. However, Illinois and Missouri could functionally become winner-take-all too. Both states award their delegates on a congressional-district level. So if Trump (or someone else) sweeps their congressional districts, that candidate will win all the delegates. Together, Missouri and Illinois will award 121 delegates — which would go a long way in helping Trump stay “on track” for the nomination even if he loses either Florida or Ohio.

And so Illinois and Missouri are a big part of the reason Tuesday is such a huge fork in the road. If Trump sweeps Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, he will have at least 748 delegates and would need to win only 44 percent of all remaining delegates, 2 a remarkably low bar, potentially ending the nomination fight.

So winning Illinois and Missouri at the congressional district level is very important.

Also, I normally would post polls in those states, but so often these polls are just wrong that I don’t want it to deter anyone from voting tomorrow, thinking that Trump is just going to sweep everything.

So if you are voting tomorrow, make sure you get out and do some voting! And vote for Cruz! Everything depends on it!

As always I hope this helps.


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