The Indiana primary holds a special place in the hearts of presidential primary obsessives. In 1968, after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy famously delivered a speech in Indianapolis, where he was campaigning, calling for nonviolence and reconciliation. Kennedy won the state by double-digits a month later.
That's … nothing like the 2016 primary. This time there was less lofty speechifying about the future of racial justice in America and a lot more talking about Donald Trump's experience with venereal disease. But Indiana was still a crucial turning point in the race, firmly establishing each party's nominee and all but eliminating the path to victory for their rivals — so much so that one of them realized it and dropped out.
Here's who finished the night up, and who finished behind.
Winner: Donald Trump
Donald Trump Campaigns In Indiana Ahead Of State Primary
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Well, that was easy.
It's over:
RNC Chair Reince Priebus's original tweet, typo and all.
The Republican primaries and caucuses after tonight have only 445 delegates between them. If Donald Trump winds up winning every congressional district and getting all of Indiana's 57 delegates, he'll be at 1,049. To make it to 1,237 — the magic number he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot — he'll only need to win 188 delegates, or a mere 43 percent of those remaining.
Even if Ted Cruz had stayed in the race, that wouldn't have been hard at all. If Connecticut, New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, are any indication, he'll win New Jersey handily, and New Jersey's winner-take-all. So that's 51 votes right there. And then there's California, by far the biggest prize remaining. It hands out 3 delegates for the winner of each of its 53 congressional districts, plus 10 delegates for winning statewide. That leads to some weird phenomena, like the Republican faculty members of UC - Berkeley (all seven of them) effectively getting their own set of delegates over in CA-13.
But Trump is winning the state by a huge margin — 28 points in the HuffPo Pollster average — and a recent poll doing a breakdown across 10 regions found that Trump was winning every single one. Even if Trump won only 42 of the 53 districts, along with the state as a whole and New Jersey, that'd be enough to lock up the nomination right there. And there are a bunch of other states he could gain delegates in along the way.
And then Ted Cruz dropped out. Even if John Kasich sticks it out, that makes the odds of Trump losing a delegate majority all but insurmountable. It'd take a truly bizarre surge in support for a candidate no one likes to stop him. And so even Reince Priebus is accepting the campaign is over.
Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. You can whine about it, you can bemoan it, but that's the way it is. It'll become official in a month, but this was the night it became inevitable. Only Hillary Clinton can stop him now.
Video: Donald Trump compliments Ted Cruz during his victory speech