Donald Trump won his home state of New York by a massive margin Tuesday night, but any talk about the Republican race nearing an end is premature.
Trump will likely win nearly every delegate in New York and over 80 percent of the bound delegates in play in the five states holding primaries next Tuesday, but he still has a long way to go to reach the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the Republican nomination on the first ballot.
Trump is the only candidate left in the Republican race who can win the nomination on the first ballot, but it is far from certain he will ultimately succeed in doing so. May 3 and June 7 are the two most important dates on the primary calendar left and they will likely determine Trump’s fate.
On May 3, voters in Indiana go to the polls and no one has any real idea of what will happen. Some say Indiana is [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] country. Others say Trump will win the state, like he did many of the states bordering it. But since there are no public polls of The Hoosier State, there is no polling data to back up either contention.
But a Trump win in Indiana would be much more significant than his win Tuesday in New York and make it much more likely that he will hit the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot. If he doesn’t win Indiana — and the majority of its 57 delegates — the California Republican primary on June 7 becomes even more critical than it already is for Trump. Absent an Indiana victory, Trump will need to win the vast majority of California’s 172 delegates if he wants to take the nomination on the first ballot.
And win on the first ballot has to be Trump’s goal. If the nomination contest is determined by more than one ballot at the convention in July, Trump is very unlikely to be the Republican nominee. Since the billionaire Republican front-runner has done very poorly courting unbound delegates so far, he likely has to go into the convention needing less than 50 or so unbound delegates to win (and the unbound delegates he has the best chance of winning over will be those elected in Pennsylvania next week).
None of this is to minimize Trump’s victory Tuesday. Winning nearly all of the delegates in New York and garnering 60 percent of the vote is an achievement. But it is hardly the end of the race. Big wins in New York and the states in play next week are expected. If Trump can harness the momentum of those wins and channel them into big victories in Indiana and California, then he will almost certainly emerge as the GOP nominee.
But despite Trump’s declaration Tuesday night that “we don’t have much of a race anymore,” the reality is a real race remains. Don’t write Cruz’s obituary quite yet. If Trump wins Indiana on May 3, only then might it be time to ink your quill.