Cruz Quits

In my last post, I went out on a limb and predicted Ted Cruz might defy the polls and win an upset victory in Indiana.  Perhaps that was just wishful thinking as I like the idea of keeping the competition going a little longer.  Donald Trump, however, won the contest by a good 20 points, crushing his two opponents.

More significantly, in light of his loss, Ted Cruz has decided to end his campaign for the Presidency. He realized that Indiana was one of the most favorable States for him left on the calendar.  If he could not win there, he was likely looking at continued losses for the rest of the primary season.

John Kasich still has not quit.  But since he still has fewer delegates than Marco Rubio, who dropped out after Super Tuesday, no one takes his candidacy seriously at this point.  It seems that Republicans have accepted that Trump will be the nominee and want the intra-party fighting to stop.  With Cruz out, there does not appear to be any realistic option that would prevent Trump from obtaining the Republican nomination.

Trump now has 1047 delegates.  He needs only 190 of the remaining 520 still available.  Unless something completely unexpected and game changing happens, he should be able to obtain those delegates before the convention.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton lost in Indiana.  Bernie Sanders pulled out a five point victory.  Voters on the Democratic side clearly are not ready to end their intra-party fighting.  That said, any race at this point that Sanders fails to win by at least 50 points means that his chances of pulling ahead of Clinton only slip farther away.

Including Super delegates, Clinton has 2202 delegates, meaning she needs less than 200 of the remaining 1163 to obtain a majority.  Given the proportional distribution of delegates, winning only 20% of the voters in each of the remaining States will still hand Clinton her majority.

Trump and Clinton will be the major party nominees.  They say we get the leaders we deserve.  I wonder what we did to deserve this.