April 6, 2015

Bernie Sanders
Credit: © Bernie 2016

Ted Cruz
Credit: Peter Stevens (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Last night, Wisconsin’s primary elections brought good news for the two second-place candidates vying for their parties’ nominations. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won with 48 percent of the vote, against Donald Trump‘s 35 percent and 14 percent for John Kasich. Cruz captured 36 of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates, while Donald Trump took the remaining 6. In Wisconsin, Cruz was favored by Republicans with more education and those centered around the Milwaukee area. Trump did better in the less-populated areas of Wisconsin’s north and west. Cruz was also helped by the endorsement of Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, and the support of a number of conservative talk-radio hosts. The running delegate count now looks like this: Trump  743, Cruz 517, and Kasich 143. The next Republican vote, in New York on April 19, has 95 Republican delegates. Trump is from New York City, so he is expected to do well in this primary.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has won six of the last seven contests against Hillary Clinton: Idaho and Utah (on March 22); Alaska, Washington, and Hawaii (on March 26); and now Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton now has 1,279 pledged delegates (delegates chosen by voting), and Bernie Sanders has 1,027. The Democratic Party, however, also has superdelegates who vote independently. They include party leaders, Democratic governors, and Democratic senators and representatives. There are 718 Democratic superdelegates, of whom 469 are currently supporting Clinton and 31 are for Sanders. That makes Clinton’s total delegate lead 1,748 to 1,058—a steep hill to climb for Bernie Sanders.

Wyoming, with 9 Democratic delegates, holds its caucus on April 9. After that comes New York’s primary on April 19. (Republicans and Democrats do not always hold their votes on the same day, but they are aligned in New York.) This huge state has 247 Democratic delegates up for grabs. Although Clinton was born in Chicago, she represented New York in the Senate from 2000 to 2009. Sanders, a senator for Vermont, was born and raised in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. In some sense, both candidates can be seen as native New Yorkers.