5-state sweep

Trump goes for 5-state sweep

But just winning won’t be enough. The front-runner needs blowouts.

By Patrick Reis

For any other candidate, winning a five-state sweep of primaries on a single day would be a dream. But Donald Trump isn’t any other candidate.

The polls put Trump on pace to win all five contests Tuesday, but if he’s to succeed in his quest for the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the GOP nomination without a contested convention, Trump needs to do more than just win. He needs to win by margins large enough to take home nearly all the states’ delegates — and keep Ted Cruz and John Kasich off the board almost entirely.

That means navigating a thicket of complicated formulas that the states use to dole out delegates. There’s only one “winner-take-all” state on Tuesday: Delaware. The other four — Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island — use some combination of statewide results, district-level results and proportional allocation to dole out delegates. And Pennsylvania, the day’s biggest prize with 71 delegates, also has the most complex rules, which will leave many delegates up for grabs all the way up to this summer’s convention.

None of those complications play to Trump’s strengths. A different candidate could answer these challenges with the long slog of advance groundwork, looking to get an edge through tactics such as targeted voter turnout, localized polling or — as Cruz has done time and again — by working to get one’s supporters selected to serve as delegates and banking on their support at a contested convention.

But Trump has largely eschewed all of that this far into his bid, banking instead on the star power of mass rallies and private planes, media appearances and his ability to tap into a broad, anti-establishment fervor. In the months ahead, Trump will find out whether the formula that vaulted him to the lead in the primary can carry him to the nomination or all the little details will combine to stop him just short.

It starts Tuesday when, after the polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern, Republicans will dole out 172 delegates in five states. Here are the rules and the state of play.

Pennsylvania — 71 delegates

State of play: Trump is leading in the polls here. The only question is by how much. The RealClearPolitics polling average puts him at 46 percent of the GOP vote, 19 percentage points clear of Cruz and 23 percentage points ahead of Kasich. A survey conducted last week by CBS News/YouGov put Trump at 49 percent, while a Franklin and Marshall survey from the week before had him at 40 percent.

The rules: But even a big popular-vote win could quickly turn into fool’s gold for Trump. Of Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates, 17 will be pledged to the winner of the statewide vote. The other 54, however, are elected on the ballot in each of the state’s 18 congressional districts. At the district level, voters vote directly for delegates, whose names are listed at the bottom of the ballot, as well as the presidential candidates themselves.

Those delegates are listed on a different part of the ballot than the candidates, they don’t declare allegiance to a particular candidate, and at the convention, they are free to vote for whomever they want from the first ballot onward. They’re also free to change their minds any time between now and the convention, putting 54 delegates up for grabs until the last minute.

That doesn’t mean the popular vote is entirely irrelevant when it comes to doling out those 54 delegates. In an impressive lift, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review earlier this month interviewed 139 of the 162 delegate candidates and many said that they’d cast their ballots in favor of whichever candidate won the most votes in their district.

Maryland — 38 delegates

State of play: Polling is relatively scarce here, but it all points to a Trump win. The RealClearPolitics average has Trump up 14 points over Kasich. In the lone major nonpartisan poll taken this month, from Monmouth University, Trump does even better, polling at 47 percent to Kasich’s 27 percent.

The rules: The state allocates delegates on a two-tier system. The top statewide vote-winner gets 14 delegates. The other 24 are doled out at the district level, with each of the state’s eight districts giving out three delegates on a winner-take-all basis. At the convention, those delegates are bound to their candidates for the first two ballots.

Connecticut — 28 delegates

State of play: Getting a majority of the statewide vote here is key, and Trump appears poised to do just that. The Real Clear Politics average puts him at 53 percent, a full 26 percentage points clear of Kasich and 38 percentage points clear of Cruz. But not every poll has him hitting that mark: a Quinnipiac survey from mid-April put him at 48 percent.

The rules: Buckle up. 13 delegates are divided proportionally based on the statewide vote, but with two caveats: If a candidate gets a majority of the vote, he lands all 13 delegates. If no candidate scores that majority and the results are divided proportionally, candidates need at least 20 percent of the statewide vote to get a piece of the overall allocation.

The other 15 delegates are based on the results in the state’s five congressional districts, where the top vote-getter in each district gets all 3 delegates.

At the convention, the delegates are bound to their candidate for one round of voting but in subsequent rounds can vote for whomever they choose.

Rhode Island — 19 delegates

State of play: If Kasich and Cruz have even the faintest of hopes Tuesday, they lie in an outlier. In a Brown University poll last week, Trump’s lead in the state was down to 38 percent, a scant 13 points ahead of John Kasich. Subsequent polls, however, have seen Trump soar. A more recent survey from the left-leaning robopolling firm PPP put Trump at 61 percent and Kasich at 23 percent. Cruz hovered at 10 percent and higher in both surveys.

The rules: Even if Trump wins in a romp, state rules give his rivals an opportunity to score delegates. Thirteen of the delegates are allocated on a proportional basis based on the statewide vote, with a candidate needing to take at least 10 percent of the vote to get any. The final six delegates are allocated based on the results in the two congressional districts, where three delegates will be allocated on a proportional basis, with candidates again needing 10 percent to qualify for a portion.

At the convention, the delegates are bound to their candidate for the first round of voting but in subsequent rounds can vote for whomever they choose.

Delaware — 16 delegates

State of play: Trump is expected to win easily here. He has polled well in every neighboring state, as well as other mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states with similar GOP voters.

The Rules: You can keep your calculator in your pocket for this one. Voters vote for candidates. Whichever candidate gets the most votes gets all 16 delegates. At the convention, the state’s delegates are bound on the first ballot. But they are free to vote for whomever they choose in subsequent rounds.