In the second round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament a few weeks ago, Texas A&M was in a hopeless spot, trailing Northern Iowa by 12 points with just 44 seconds remaining. Everyone knew A&M was done for. But the Aggies staged a stunning rally, sending the game into overtime, where they came out on top.
Fans — particularly those in Iowa — learned then that victory can be elusive even when it looks certain. Ted Cruz, who like the Aggies is from Texas, needs a dramatic surprise to have a real chance of winning the Republican nomination for president. But at least until Indiana votes on Tuesday, it’s too early to assume Donald Trump has the nomination wrapped up.
Plenty of observers, of course, are eager to pronounce him the GOP winner so they can get on to obsessing about the general election. Trump himself, with a comfortable lead in the Indiana polls, shares that impulse.
But this campaign has upended assumptions time and again. Polls had Bernie Sanders down by double digits in Michigan shortly before the primary — but he won. One survey showed that 20 percent of Indiana Republicans were still undecided as of last week. If Cruz does a better job than Trump does of getting his supporters to turn out, he could pull off an upset and revive his chances in delegate-rich states such as California and New Jersey.
That would greatly strengthen Cruz’s bid to keep Trump from gaining a majority of votes on the first ballot at July’s convention in Cleveland. In subsequent rounds, more and more delegates would be free to vote their own preferences — meaning Trump delegates could jump to Cruz, who has done better than his rival at winning over many of them.
Trump won Arizona easily, which means all 58 of its delegates are obligated to support him on the first ballot. But the delegates themselves are chosen by a state convention, and Cruz managed to fill most of the slots with his people — who could switch their votes on a second ballot. Trump won 17 delegates in Virginia’s primary, to eight for Cruz, but Cruz snared 10 of 13 at-large delegates chosen by the Virginia state party convention.
Even delegates officially committed to Trump may be open to defection. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel reports, “Sources suggest to me that of the 950 ‘Trump’ delegates, as many as half despise the former reality-TV star. Meaning that of the 2,472 delegates slated for Cleveland, maybe one-quarter currently want him as the nominee.” Many fear that he would not only lose in November but, with his views of women and immigrants, would taint the party for years to come.
And that phrase “officially committed to Trump” is under review: Strassel notes how some delegates argue that under a 1980 rules change, they cannot be “bound” to any candidate on any round of balloting — including the first. If that or some other rule wrinkle formally emerges between now and voting at the convention, it wouldn’t take many defections or abstentions to derail the Trump express and open the door to Cruz, John Kasich or another candidate.
But that’s getting ahead of Tuesday’s voting. A big loss in Indiana might induce most party leaders and delegates to decide that Trump is inevitable — and that a contested convention, which could shatter the party, is too risky to allow. If he intends to provide a plausible alternative, Cruz probably has to win Indiana.
Do Hoosiers want the race to continue?
Do they want to improve the Republican Party’s dwindling opportunity to have someone other than Donald Trump as its nominee?
They can make it happen.