From Decision Desk HQ:
45.3% Donald Trump
27.6% Marco Rubio
16.5% Ted Cruz
That’s with 60 percent reporting. Ohio and Missouri don’t have any statistically significant results in yet. Remember to ignore the media spin. I’ll have a full mathematical analysis tomorrow, but the reality is that Trump needs either OH or MO to pretty much lock in the nomination.
He doesn’t absolutely need either, but if he gets both, he will get the necessary delegates.
UPDATE: The New York Times writes about Rubio’s dropout. The missing word? You guessed it.
Did you know that “one crucial shortcoming” was his youth? I actually never ever read or heard that mentioned.
On the other hand: this entire article explains his failure to attract Republican voters without once mentioning “immigration”, “amnesty”, or “gang of eight”.
Those guys at the NYT are really on top of things.
At a certain point, you begin to realize they’re not stupid, they’re deceivers.
UPDATE 2: Fox has called Ohio for Kasich now. Not a drubbing, but not very close either. Missouri still looks pretty good for Trump, at 43-34 over Cruz, but only 3 percent of the vote is in.
If that holds up, the results are good, but not the hoped-for four-state KO. Trump would take 160 of the 226 available winner-takes-all delegates, so based on my general recollection, he’ll need something like 330 of the 606 remaining winner-takes-all delegates. (I’ll provide a more accurate number tomorrow, but I’d guess that estimate is on the high side.)
That should be doable, considering that he appears likely to take 71 percent of them today.