After Trump’s sweep of five northeastern states in April, Ted Cruz has been mathematically eliminated from winning the Republican nomination in the first round of voting at the presidential convention.
Even if Cruz were to win all the remaining delegates, he still wouldn’t reach 1,237. The only path for winning the GOP nomination would be to deny Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates, and force a contested convention.
Denying Trump a victory in Indiana is crucial to preventing him from crossing the 1,237 threshold, but a new NBC poll has Trump with a 15-point lead in the state.
“In Indiana, Trump is positioned to corral all the [state’s 57] delegates, which will be a big prize toward winning the nomination outright,” says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
The NBC poll was conducted April 26-28, after Trump’s northeastern victories.
One thing that appears to have irked Indiana voters is the short-lived Cruz-Kasich alliance to deny Trump any delegates. 58% of respondents said that they disapproved of the strategy.
Cruz had previously spoken out against the possibility of a brokered convention, where a candidate who had garnered little electoral support in the primary, such as Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, could swoop in and snatch the nomination, but now he’s changed his tune.
“We are headed to a contested convention at this point. Nobody is getting 1,237,” Cruz said on a Philadelphia radio program. “Donald is going to talk all the time about other folks not getting 1,237. He’s not getting there either. Neither of us are getting the 1,237.”
However, Trump is on track to win 1,237 if he wins Indiana, and a New York Times analyst said that it’s possible for Trump to cross the finishing line even without winning Indiana.
Trump currently has a double-digit lead over Cruz in California, according to a number of polls.
Trump leads with 996 delegates to Cruz’s 565.
