Maybe Indiana can’t save Cruz after all
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unconventional-9-cruz-s-post-indiana-1420229660401718.html
Before, the thinking was that Trump would win only a handful of unbound delegates in Pennsylvania’s weird luck-of-draw system. But he wound up winning at least 41 of them, according to the New York Times’ Jeremy Peters. As a result, Trump may no longer “need” a win in Indiana to hit the magic 1,237 mark before Cleveland.
The second development that could blunt the impact of a Cruz win in Indiana involves the state’s new delegate slate. Assume Cruz finishes first in Indiana. Assume Trump fails to clinch the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland as a result. Even then, Cruz isn’t guaranteed to retain the support of Indiana’s delegation on subsequent ballots (when everyone is free to vote his or her conscience). Why? Because unlike other states where Cruz’s master delegate team has successfully gotten its pro-Cruz sleeper delegates elected — like Arizona and Virginia over the weekend — Indiana’s system is top-down rather than bottom-up; party leaders basically pick the delegates themselves....
“Indiana’s 57 delegates appear to lean heavily in the direction of John Kasich, the governor of neighboring Ohio,” reports Matthew Tully of the Indianapolis Star. “Kasich may not win the Indiana primary, but his more middle-of-the-road manner has apparently won the hearts (or at least the minds) of a majority of Indiana’s Republican delegates.”
The third development worth noting here is that even Cruz’s sleeper delegates — the ones who are supposed to switch to Cruz on a second or third ballot in Cleveland, thereby boosting him to victory — aren’t feeling particularly loyal to the senator from Texas these days. Here’s the Times’ Jeremy Peters again:
