Well, I made some comments before the primary elections, so it's probably worth saying a few words about the aftermath.
Starting with the Democratic side, a clean sweep for Clinton puts a lot of pressure on Sanders. We're still waiting on the last few delegates to be projected, but it looks like Clinton will have maintained, even expanded upon a 16% lead in pledged delegates. Since we're now pretty much at the half-way point, Sanders would have to start winning like never before to catch up. While the remaining states are more favourable to Sanders, and in particular there are only a couple of southern states left, it's hard to see how he wins without some kind of external factor, such as Clinton suffering a medical crises leaving her unable to continue.
Although, with the most current numbers there are, it seems that Clinton is still behind everywhere except the South in terms of pledged delegates. There are still a lot of delegates to be assigned, so that might change. If not, I might come back to this later in the week.
On the Republican side, the big news is obviously Rubio dropping out after being heavily defeated by Trump in his home state of Florida. With Kasich essentially running for Vice President1 , the two remaining choices are the fascist and the theocrat. Not that either Rubio or Kasich are really what I'd call moderate, but in comparison they definitely tick the "less evil" box.
The "good" news is that Trump did not take Ohio, which slows him down a lot. He's picked up on 44% of the delegates so far, and needs 54% of the remainder to win a majority of pledged delegates. With most remaining states using winner-takes-all either for all their delegates, or by congressional district, that's a lot more possible than on the Democratic side. Plus, it's basically down to a two horse race.
However, a majority of all delegates on the Republican side would require Trump to get 60% of the remaining pledged cohort. That's much harder, though still not impossible. Plus, if things are close stopping him would require a unified opposing front. If Trump gets a majority of the pledged delegates, there's a serious danger for the Republican party if they give the nomination to someone else; they might decide it's better to stick with him, lose the election, and then try to rebuild later. After all, there's no precedence for giving power to a far-right politician temporarily and things going bad, are there?
And having Godwinned, the post is over.
Starting with the Democratic side, a clean sweep for Clinton puts a lot of pressure on Sanders. We're still waiting on the last few delegates to be projected, but it looks like Clinton will have maintained, even expanded upon a 16% lead in pledged delegates. Since we're now pretty much at the half-way point, Sanders would have to start winning like never before to catch up. While the remaining states are more favourable to Sanders, and in particular there are only a couple of southern states left, it's hard to see how he wins without some kind of external factor, such as Clinton suffering a medical crises leaving her unable to continue.
Although, with the most current numbers there are, it seems that Clinton is still behind everywhere except the South in terms of pledged delegates. There are still a lot of delegates to be assigned, so that might change. If not, I might come back to this later in the week.
On the Republican side, the big news is obviously Rubio dropping out after being heavily defeated by Trump in his home state of Florida. With Kasich essentially running for Vice President1 , the two remaining choices are the fascist and the theocrat. Not that either Rubio or Kasich are really what I'd call moderate, but in comparison they definitely tick the "less evil" box.
The "good" news is that Trump did not take Ohio, which slows him down a lot. He's picked up on 44% of the delegates so far, and needs 54% of the remainder to win a majority of pledged delegates. With most remaining states using winner-takes-all either for all their delegates, or by congressional district, that's a lot more possible than on the Democratic side. Plus, it's basically down to a two horse race.
However, a majority of all delegates on the Republican side would require Trump to get 60% of the remaining pledged cohort. That's much harder, though still not impossible. Plus, if things are close stopping him would require a unified opposing front. If Trump gets a majority of the pledged delegates, there's a serious danger for the Republican party if they give the nomination to someone else; they might decide it's better to stick with him, lose the election, and then try to rebuild later. After all, there's no precedence for giving power to a far-right politician temporarily and things going bad, are there?
And having Godwinned, the post is over.
1 Indeed, he can no longer win a majority of delegates.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment