Four States Go to the Polls Today With Cruz and Sanders Coming Off Big Weekends

Posted Tuesday, March 8, 2016 12:00 am

Dennis Maley

BRADENTON – Sen. Ted Cruz scored decisive victories in the Kansas and Maine caucuses on Saturday, while Bernie Sanders won Kansas, Nebraska and Maine this weekend. Both still trail their party's front-runners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who both enjoy large leads in recent Michigan polls, the largest delegate prize of today's contests.

Trump won Louisiana and Kentucky on Saturday, but had been expected to win Maine and probably would have lost Louisiana had it not been for early voting, as Election Day saw a big break by voters toward Cruz, suggesting that voters may been moving away from Trump following last Thursday's debate.

Marco Rubio won only the Puerto Rican primary. Though he got more than 70 percent of the vote and all 23 delegates from the small island commonwealth (which does not have electoral votes in November), the weekend was considered a big disappointment and there were many calls for the Florida Senator to drop out of the race. Rubio finished a distant third in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana, and was fourth in Maine.

If Rubio does not win his home state of Florida (and its 99 winner-takes-all delegates) next Tuesday, where he currently trails by double digits, his campaign will likely collapse. Ohio Gov. John Kasich won no states this weekend and is still without a single victory. Kasich also met with calls to withdraw but has said he will stay in the race at least until his home state of Ohio holds their winner-take-all primary, also next Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton easily won Louisiana Saturday, getting more than 70 percent of the vote there, again on the back of strong support among African-American Democrats. Clinton leads Sanders in delegates won by a margin of 677-478. Trump leads Cruz 391 to 305, while Rubio has just 153. Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii go to the polls today, with Michigan being by far the largest prize in terms of delegates. Clinton has an average lead of 22 points in the polls there, while Trump has an average lead of 19.

For Cruz, questions remain on how well he'll do going forward and whether this weekend's results show a trend that will continue. The Texas Senator has done well in caucuses, which tend to be dominated by far-right conservatives, but there are only two caucuses left on the GOP calendar. Cruz has also done well in states that have large evangelical populations, most of which have now already voted.

The big question is whether voters are in fact moving away from Trump, how many will defect and whether they'll move to one candidate or splinter among the remaining field. Whether Rubio and Kasich stay in–and both say they will–is the biggest factor preventing Cruz from having a shot at winning at least a plurality of delegates before the convention.

On the Democratic side, Sanders has now won three of the last four states. In all, Clinton has won a total 12 states and Sanders has won 8. For Sanders, he does well in small, rural states with lots of white progressives and poorly in Southern states and others that have large populations of black Democrats. As such, he's expected to lose Mississippi today, just as badly as he lost states like Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

The math gets a little better for him going forward in those regards, but he has a lot of ground to make up and also has to contend with Clinton's enormous lead in committed superdelegates. While Sanders has won 42 percent of both the states that have voted so far and the delegates they've awarded, he’s only received 4.7 percent of the superdelegates. Of 717 total unpledged superdelegates, 473 have publicly announced who they are voting for. A total of 451 of them have chosen Clinton, while just 22 have chosen Sanders.

Much has also been made of Sanders' success with voters between the ages of 18-29. However, while the Vermont Senator is winning this demographic by roughly 80 percent to 20 percent, turnout among young voters has been very, very low. Meanwhile, turnout among women over 65 and African Americans has been very high, both of which favor Clinton strongly as a demographic. If these trends continue, the results are unlikely to change.