Trump Now Ahead of "Trump Tracker" After Five Eastern Primary Routs; Indiana Looms

Donald Trump took a giant step towards the GOP nomination by sweeping all five eastern state primaries yesterday by decisive margins, ranging from 29 to 40 points.  He is now ahead of the “Trump Tracker,” our posited path that we set up last month to the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination outright (that is, within the primary season) and avoid a potential brokered convention.  He won 105 delegates yesterday versus the “Trump Tracker” projection of 99, and is now three delegates ahead of “pace" (see below).  He now moves on to the crucial Indiana primary, which may (along with California) determine his fate.

Trump would be doing even better if not for the crazy Pennsylvania “loophole,” in which 54 of the Keystone State’s 71 delegates remain unpledged, despite Trump winning by a 57/22/19 margin over Kasich and Cruz.  For that rout, Trump earned only 17 delegates (thus far).  Many of those 54 may ultimately pledge to him, but only at the convention itself.

	THE TRUMP TRACKER
Date	State	Trump Pred.	Trump Actual	Diff.	Cum.   Diff.
5-Apr	WIS	12	6	-6	-6
19-Apr	NY	86	89	3	3
26-Apr	CT	24	28	4	4
26-Apr	DEL	16	16	0	0
26-Apr	MAR	29	35	6	6
26-Apr	PA	17	17	0	0
26-Apr	RI	13	9	-4	-4
3-May	IND	37
10-May	NEB	0
10-May	WV	34
17-May	ORE	13
24-May	WAS	4
7-Jun	CAL	129
7-Jun	MON	27
7-Jun	NJ	51
7-Jun	NM	9
7-Jun	SD	0
TOTAL		1238		3	1241

Indiana, as stated, is extremely important to Trump’s path.  It has long been seen as a state Cruz could win, but Trump leads in three recent polls there by five to eight points.  He also leads in California by double-digits, including a 27-point lead in the most recent poll.  We continue to believe Trump will win the nomination outright.

Hillary Clinton won four out of five states, losing only in tiny Rhode Island.  There is no drama left in that race, as we at BTRTN have been saying for quite some time now; she picked up a net +65 delegates over Bernie Sanders and now has a 309 pledged delegate lead, which is insurmountable (though Sanders’s avid supporters can still claim a mathematical possibility of victory).  Clinton’s pivot to the general election has already occurred, and her mentions of Sanders will be few and far between going forward.

BTRTN

It was another good night for BTRTN, as we forecasted 9 out of the 10 races correctly (foiled only in Rhode Island, which we agonized over in advance given the split polls), and with an average miss of 3.5 points for the 25 candidates percentage we forecasted (five GOP races with three candidates, and five Dem races with two candidates).  Of particular note was the “nailing” of the Dem Pennsylvania race and darn close forecasts of virtually all the others, especially the GOP in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware, and the Dems in Maryland and Connecticut.  Connecticut was a nail-biter as Sanders led most of the night, until the bigger cities and Fairfield County came in for Clinton towards the end.  For what it is worth, we were quite certain that Clinton would prevail as soon as we saw the early county-by-county results.

PA	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Trump	51	57
Cruz	25	22
Kasich	23	19
MD	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Trump	46	54
Cruz	30	23
Kasich	24	19
CT	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Trump	58	58
Kasich	26	29
Cruz	16	12
DE	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Trump	62	61
Kasich	21	20
Cruz	17	16
RI	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Trump	61	64
Kasich	25	24
Cruz	14	10
PA	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Clinton	56	56
Sanders	44	44
MD	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Clinton	62	63
Sanders	38	33
CT	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Clinton	51	52
Sanders	49	47
DE	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Clinton	54	60
Sanders	46	39
RI	BTRTN Prediction	Actual
Clinton	51	43
Sanders	49	55