New York Primary Day <br>Emerges as Voting Drama <br>Over Delegate Thresholds

Thriller novelists couldn’t script a plot more suspenseful than today’s Republican primary in New York and what it means for frontrunner Donald Trump. Will his inevitable victory “beat” expectations? After four straight losses, he needs a huge win both to bounce back and to keep alive any chance to win enough bound delegates to secure the nomination in the primaries. Having sprayed insults and attacks in every direction, he’ll face difficulties wooing unbound delegates before or at the convention.The suspense comes from the various thresholds and triggers that determine the way delegates are divvied up, and the fact that, going in, the polls show the contest on the cusp of these numerical mechanisms.Moreover, New York is Mr. Trump’s home state, so expectations are high. Both Senator Cruz and Governor Kasich have won big on their home turf – Cruz taking 104 delegates in Texas, more than the entire 95 available in New York. However, racking up a “huge win” is complicated given the New York primary’s structure and the way delegates are awarded.New York has a typical two-tiered structure with a proportional statewide contest for 14 of the state’s 95 delegates, with a winner-takes-all trigger at 50% of the votes and a 20% threshold to qualify for any. The other 81 delegates are awarded three in each of the state’s 27 congressional districts. If any candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in a CD, he takes all three. If no one tops 50%, the delegates are allocated “proportionately,” two to the top vote-getter and one to a second-place finisher.Here’s where it gets interesting. Mr. Trump has been hovering just above 50% in the polls, Mr. Kasich just above 20% and Mr. Cruz just below 20%. In other words, The Donald is on the WTA bubble and Messrs. Kasich and Cruz on the Threshold bubble.If Mr. Trump were to win a uniform 49% across all CDs, he’d win seven statewide delegates plus two in each district for another 54. This seems like the lower bound of expectations for The Donald: 61 delegates overall. If he were to win a uniform 51%, he’d sweep all 95 delegates. The midpoint is 78 delegates, so let’s say anything above will “beat” expectations, anything below will fall short.The “undercard contest” between Messrs. Kasich and Cruz has high stakes for the Ohioan, who has predicated his continuing winless campaign (excepting his home state win in Ohio) on finally winning when and where the territory becomes “favorable,” which he has said includes New York. If Mr. Kasich doesn’t beat Senator Cruz, that argument crumbles. It collapses also, if there is a virtual tie for second. It evaporates if The Donald sweeps.At the moment what we don’t know is what we seldom know, namely what voters are thinking on primary day. Most research discloses that most voters make up their minds in the last few days beforehand, but polling for that window is seldom available. The last poll taken in New York, Emerson, spanned Friday to Sunday. It was consistent with prior polls, but it is the only poll with potential to give a sense of any critical final-days movements.Historically, Mr. Trump has underperformed his polling slightly and Mr. Cruz has over-performed somewhat. Nowhere would slight final-days movements have more impact than in New York today. The “internals” of the Emerson poll are consistent with the final-days Cruz-surge / Trump-deceleration effect, specifically, over the three days of the poll, Mr. Cruz moved up a whopping 19 percentage points to 29%, while Mr. Trump slid 16 percentage points to 45%. Mr. Kasich was steady around 22%.The sample is tiny but suggestive and, in any event, the only basis for a prediction, which is that Mr. Trump is likely to come in around the “midpoint” of 78 delegates. Senator Cruz will over-perform, corralling second place or finishing in a virtual tie with Governor Kasich, an outcome sure to bring deafening calls for the Ohioan to suspend active campaigning. But those predictions are on awfully thin data.With the race on the razor’s edge, the final outcome isn’t likely to be known until Wednesday morning, unless Mr. Trump’s statewide vote comes in well above or well below 50%, in which case most congressional districts are likely to follow such a strong statewide trend. Television news stations are likely to call the race based solely on the statewide vote, and with Mr. Trump enjoying a 30+ point statewide polling lead, they are likely to call the race very early in the night.That would be before there’ll be any sense of the ultimate statewide outcome in terms of delegates. The delegate outcome takes longer, since TV follows local results at the county level, not the CD level, so additional time is required to convert county results into CD results. Political junkies will stay up well into the morning. Everyone else will wake up to an ending sure to surprise, no matter what.

New York Primary Day <br>Emerges as Voting Drama <br>Over Delegate Thresholds

New York Primary Day <br>Emerges as Voting Drama <br>Over Delegate Thresholds

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