To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump easily swept the Arizona primary on Tuesday. Mr. Trump notched a 47-25-10 percent popular vote victory margin over Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich, respectively. With this performance, the New York real estate mogul claimed the last major Winner-Take-All primary and all 58 Arizona delegates.
The night also belonged to Sen. Ted Cruz who scored a major win in Utah, capturing almost 70 percent of the caucus vote and sweeping all 29 counties. Because he attracted majority support, Sen. Cruz won a backdoor Winner-Take-All result and the state’s 40 Republican National Convention delegates.
The Utah result is not as significant from the perspective of Cruz’s aggregate delegate count, but the Trump shut out makes it that much harder for the front-runner to obtain the 1,237 votes required for a first ballot victory. The win pushes Cruz to approximately 465 delegates, or about 290 behind Mr. Trump.
For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton easily defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders in Arizona. The result means the former Secretary of State could conceivably secure approximately 60 Democratic delegates from the pool of 85 once the final count is apportioned and more Super Delegates announce their intentions. This victory will add to her gaudy national delegate total, putting her within sight of 1,700 committed and announced votes. She needs 2,383 delegate votes to clinch the party’s presidential nomination. But it was Sen. Bernie Sanders who scored two landslide victories by winning Idaho and Utah caucuses. In Idaho, Sen. Sanders destroyed Ms. Clinton with a 78 percent win. In Utah, he did slightly better with a vote that may go as high as 80 percent when all of the caucus votes are tabulated and reported.
Even though Sanders recorded his strongest performance of the campaign with these two overwhelming wins, he only managed to close the delegate gap by approximately 25 votes, and possibly even less when all of the Super Delegates decide. This is hardly a dent in Ms. Clinton’s 2:1 national advantage and does not dissuade what will be her easy first ballot convention floor victory.
For more information, please contact David Ashinoff at ashinoffd@agc.org or (202) 547-5013.