Saturday, April 30, 2016

In Decisive California Primary, Ted Cruz Is in Control

The question of whether business tycoon Donald Trump clinches the 1,237 pledged first-ballot delegate votes needed to win at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July will only be decided in delegate-rich California.
The race for the Republican nomination was not decided Tuesday, with Trump’s sweep through the liberal northeastern states. Nor will the battle end with the GOP primaries throughout May in Indiana, Oregon (or as Trump pronounces it “Or-E-Gone”) or Washington State.
When the polls close on June 7, only then will we know whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will have stopped Trump, and set the stage for a convention showdown.
California will ultimately be a Trump-Cruz contest. While Ohio Governor John Kasich will, no doubt, still be running, his anemic effort to show that the establishment still has a horse in the race will be irrelevant to those California GOP voters who do not want Trump. To them, it will be clear that Cruz is the only one really positioned to compete for delegates.
California is a winner-take-all-by-district contest: 159 delegates will be awarded – three to the top-vote-getter in each of the state’s 53 Congressional Districts, with the ten statewide delegates and the voters of the three California RNC members going to the statewide plurality winner.
To stop Trump, Cruz will likely need significantly less than half of California’s delegates, as Trump needs to win over 50% of the remaining 622 delegates, and the map ahead for the reality-TV celebrity isn’t as friendly as it was yesterday.
Which takes us to the reality of the California political landscape, where statewide polling might be a decent indicator of how the 13 statewide delegate votes are likely to go, but the district-by-district showdown is a much different story.
There are two major reasons why recent surveys showing the Trump has a lead in California don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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