Wisconsin Primary More Important Than It Seems
Republican Primary
The Wisconsin primary for the Republicans has 42 delegates out of the 1237 needed to win the nomination. That is only 3.4% or about 1/30th of the delegates needed. It also is about 1/60th of the total delegates. Why is this primary important?
First, the Republican primary is winner-take-all or winner-take-district. Wisconsin has eight congressional districts, each of which has three delegates that go to the winner in the district, even if he does not have a majority there. That makes up 24 delegates. 10 delegates are at large, 5 delegates are bonus delegates, and 3 are party delegates. All 18 of these are winner-take-all for the state vote leader.
Second, Trump really needs winner-take-all states, since he doesn’t take a high enough percentage in other states. This denies one of those states to him.
Third, the lead in Wisconsin delegates help Cruz catch up with Trump.
Fourth, it indicates that Cruz has supporters in the set of northern, rust-belt states.
Fifth, it is interpreted as giving Cruz and the stop-Trump movement momentum to go forward.
Sixth, it will certainly help Cruz with fund raisers.
Cruz is leading with 48.3%, Trump is second with 35.1%, and Kasich has 14.0%. Trump has picked up one congressional district for 3 delegates, leaving Cruz with 36 delegates, and 3 delegates still undecided. Even though losing, Trump is still getting his minimum of about a third of the popular vote. Trump did have a bad week being unprepared on issues both foreign and domestic.
As of now, Trump has 746 delegates, Cruz has 510, and Kasich has 145. Rubio has 172, and the previous blog article discusses how these can be broken up at the convention. This is CNN’s count.
Democratic Primary
Sanders’ win in the Democratic primary show that he has power and momentum in the upcoming rust-belt state, like Pennsylvania and New York. However, since the Democratic primaries all reward delegates proportionately, even taking the state still leaves most of the 86 Democratic delegates about equally split with Clinton.
The great triumph of the Sanders campaign is the defeat of the Citizens United ruling allowing PACS unlimited donations. Sanders has received 6 million contributions averaging $27, raising a comparable amount to that of other leading candidates. Actually, the donation button on his web site is for $27. He has also not taken PAC money, Wall Street money, or oil company money. It is still going to take a lot of money to run in all 50 states in the general election. He has saved some money by winning caucuses with small numbers of voters.
Wisconsin has 86 Democratic delegates, and 2,383 are needed for the nomination. That is 3.6% of the amount needed, or 1/28 of the amount needed, or 1.8% of the total number of delegates. There are also 10 uncommitted superdelegates, who are the Democratic senator, three Congressional representatives, and 6 DNC members. Superdelegates are about 15% of the delegates to the Democratic conventin.
Sanders is ahead of Clinton 56.3% to 43.3%. That results in 46 delegates for Sanders, and 36 for Clinton, with 4 still to be determined.
As of now, Clinton has 1780 delegates (including super delegates) and Sanders has 1099. 2,383 is the number needed to win the nomination.
