What do mixed results in Tuesday's voting mean?
Divergent results in Western states that voted Tuesday reflect how polarized the presidential race remains in both parties as the primary calendar starts to run out of pages.
Divergent results in Western states that voted Tuesday reflect how polarized the presidential race remains in both parties as the primary calendar starts to run out of pages.
In a normal cycle, the question of Republican and Democratic nominees would be settled (or pretty much so) by now.
On the GOP side, Donald Trump crushed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 22 percentage points in Arizona's primary, 47 percent to 25 percent. It was a winner-take-all contest, so the front-runner picked up 58 more delegates.
But in neighboring Utah, which held caucuses, Trump finished third, with 14 percent. Cruz had the backing of 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney and benefited from widespread Mormon loathing of the flashy reality TV star to get nearly 70 percent of the vote. That gave him all of the state's 40 delegates.
The Democrats also split. Hillary Clinton blasted Bernie Sanders in Arizona, but the senator from Vermont won caucuses in Utah and Idaho with nearly 80 percent of the vote.
So the battling continues, but voters did little to alter the basic dynamics of the race. Clinton's lead in national convention delegates, the coin of nominations, appears insurmountable. Trump is on a trajectory where he can wrap up the GOP nomination by securing the needed 1,237 delegates, but it could be close and the possibility of a contested convention in Cleveland this summer remains.
Some takeaways from Tuesday:
Anti-Trump forces found some reasons for optimism. First of all, they did not put much money in Arizona, but a super PAC dedicated to stopping Trump from getting the nomination did invest in Utah. So did the antitax group Club for Growth, which so far has spent about $7.5 million trying to KO Trump. Second, Trump got less than 50 percent of the vote in Arizona despite the potency of his promises to stop illegal immigration in the border state.
Perhaps most important, though, there are signs that some anti-Trump leaders in the party's establishment faction are starting to unite around Cruz, a doctrinaire conservative whose supporters admire his tendency to make enemies in Washington. On Wednesday morning, for instance, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed Cruz, saying that the candidate who is second in number of delegates won has the best chance going forward.
Mormon power for Cruz. Two-thirds of Utah residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and while there were no exit polls conducted Tuesday, it is evident that Trump bombed with Mormons. The church settled in the Beehive State to escape often-violent persecution farther east, and religious tolerance is embedded in the faith. Trump's calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States made many Mormons uncomfortable, and the LDS even issued a formal statement last year condemning the proposal when he made it. And Romney is a Mormon.
Utah's governor, also a Mormon, was the only GOP chief executive to tell the Obama administration his state was willing to accept Syrian refugees. Further, most young Mormons work as missionaries abroad, and so plenty of Utahns are familiar with Latin America, source of many of the immigrants Trump has decried as criminals.
Trump still has a strong hand. He increased his delegate lead over Cruz, and he needs to win 54 percent of the remaining delegates at stake to hit the majority, the NBC News political unit calculates. That sounds like a challenge, but by way of context, Trump won 59 percent of the delegates available Tuesday by taking Arizona. He won 61 percent of the possible delegates on March 15.
More than a few Republican bigwigs think Ohio Gov. John Kasich complicates the task of saving the party from the barbarian at its gates. Kasich finished behind the dropped-out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Arizona - though, to be fair, a large portion of the state's ballots were cast in early voting, before Rubio dropped out. As Kasich pushes on, it would be mathematically impossible for him to clinch the nomination before the convention or even amass more delegates than Cruz and Trump.
John Weaver, Kasich's chief strategist, argued in a memo Tuesday night that the contests coming up on the Pacific coast and in the Northeast and Midwest are favorable ground for Kasich, who can perform the key blocking role by taking delegates from Trump to try to force an open convention. Weaver noted that Cruz would need to win a near-impossible 80 percent of the remaining delegates and has no shot at getting the nomination outright either.
Democrats' proportional system for awarding delegates makes it difficult for Sanders to overcome Clinton's lead. For all his success Tuesday, Sanders netted just 18 delegates more than Clinton. He has closed the overall gap with Clinton to 303 pledged delegates. Sanders is expected to do well Saturday in contests in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state, but the numbers crunchers in the NBC political unit calculate Clinton needs to pick up only 34 percent of the remaining delegates at stake to clinch.
215-854-2718@tomfitzgerald