Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump destroyed Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] and Gov. John Kasich in West Virginia’s Republican primary Tuesday night, spiking the football in his first electoral contest since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee a week ago.
Early results in the state show Trump notching about 69 percent of the vote, far ahead of Cruz and Kasich at 13 and 12 percent, respectively. That’s a huge victory, and gives Trump about 10 percent more of the vote than he was forecasted to receive in polls conducted before his rivals dropped out. If Trump’s share of the vote holds up, it will be his biggest margin of victory yet in a primary.
Trump’s huge margin means he is likely to win all of the state’s 34 delegates, though it’s possible he will fail to do so. West Virginia primary voters vote for specific delegates who are bound to support a specific candidate, so it is possible individual delegates backing Cruz or some other candidate may pull off an upset.
Cruz and Kasich both suspended their campaigns a week ago after being crushed in Indiana’s primary, leaving Trump as the sole remaining candidate and the party’s presumptive nominee. But many GOP writers and politicians are refusing to rally behind the party’s candidate, and Tuesday Cruz even hinted he might reenter the race if he won the Nebraska primary (also held Tuesday) and a path to the nomination appeared open.
West Virginia’s results, while unsurprising, may put a damper on such ideas, as they carry Trump closer to the critical 1,273 delegate threshold that will make him the guaranteed nominee at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
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