What winning New York means for Trump and the GOP

After weeks of missteps, a loss in Wisconsin, getting outmaneuvered in the delegate selection process out West, and a shakeup on his campaign team, Donald Trump roared back last night.

Trump added substantially to his lead in the race for the Republican nomination for president, winning the primary in New York by more than 30 percentage points. He has forward momentum in the five states that vote next week: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Trump is not crazy about the Republican Party and its nomination contest, which he calls rigged, a claim he repeated last night in an otherwise generally positive speech. But Trump’s main message was that the race is all but over. Ohio Gov. John Kasich came in a distant second place. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas came in dead last.

“We don’t have much of a race anymore, based on what I’m seeing on television,” Trump said. “Sen. Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated.”

Cruz got shut out last night, winning zero delegates. At this point, his strategy is more about denying Trump than winning outright. His best hope is to win the nomination at a contested Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer.

While Trump’s big win in his home state is no surprise, there might be more to his easy victory than home field advantage. Republicans are less conservative in New York than in most other states. In the 2008 election, 45 percent of all New York Republicans identified as moderate or liberal, and Trump has been winning big with moderate and center-left voters. He’s enjoyed a more than 20-point edge over both Cruz and Kasich with that group.

In Massachusetts, another state with a less conservative Republican Party, Trump won 49 percent of the GOP vote. Before Tuesday, that was the largest share Trump had won in any state.

Some of Cruz’s supporters want Kasich to drop out of the race to give Cruz a one-on-one chance against Trump. Kasich insists if he drops out, it would hand the nomination to Trump because Cruz can’t perform well in the northeast and in other less conservative states. Kasich clarified that he is not in the race just to stop Trump, but he claims the only way Republicans can do so is for him to stay in the race.

Trump’s win in New York keeps his hopes of winning the nomination outright alive and well. He still has to win about 62 percent of the remaining bound delegates to get to the 1,237 required to secure the nomination.

Trump has made some changes at the top levels of his campaign staff, which was not as prepared for the behind-the-scenes fight in the delegate selection process. He’s brought in a couple of people who do understand this process quite well. But it might be too little too late if he doesn’t get to 1,237 before the convention.

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