Donald Trump is headed to victory in New York, but the question is: can he can break the 50 percent barrier? I think not because lately he’s been underperforming his polls.
But looking ahead, things start to get really tough for Trump, who continues to face massive resistance for a front runner and who has refused to invest in an actual campaign infrastructure to fight for delegates.
Two polls show Trump ahead in California and Maryland (by 7 and 10 points, respectively), but Trump is polling at only 39 percent in California and 40 percent in Maryland.
Meanwhile, the rich delegate pile in Pennsylvania (where Trump is also at 39 percent, 9 points ahead of Ted Cruz, who typically outperforms his polls by around 5 percentage points) is going to depend on getting voters to vote not for your name in the primary but for the delegates who will actually vote in the convention, and whose names are not matched with any candidates on the ballot.
Who would bet against Cruz pulling off the massive share of actual delegates in Pennsylvania? Trump will threaten to sue, again. But the delegates will vote for Cruz.
It’s a messy system, but nobody has ever had a Pennsylvania GOP presidential primary vote that mattered. Winning requires more than appearing on TV for free. Trump has exhausted that strategy. He’s going to see diminishing returns — yes, even in New York.
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project and can be followed on Twitter @MaggieGallaghe.
