Super Doomsday: How will we know tonight if we’re on our way to a brokered convention?

Allah:

It all depends on Florida and Ohio, right? Actually, I think it’s more accurate at this point to say “it all depends on Ohio.” Florida is gone. Trump will win easily, which in one fell swoop will move him eight percent closer to the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. Even with Florida in his pocket, though, so many delegates have been spread across so many candidates at this point that he’ll still have work to do. Ohio is crucial twice over, first because it’s a big delegate windfall (with 66 at stake, it would move Trump another five percent closer to clinching) and second because it’s a bellwether of how he may perform in other northern and midwestern states to come. If he surprises Kasich tonight and takes Ohio, odds are he’s going to clean up in Illinois and Missouri too. If he doesn’t, and Cruz surprises him in the latter two states, we may be staring at a floor fight in July. Dave Wasserman, FiveThirtyEight’s elections guru, goes so far as to say that IL and MO are the ones to watch tonight, not FL and OH. If Cruz really is a serious threat to beat Trump head-to-head in a two-man race, we should see some evidence of it in those two states. If we don’t, get ready for a convention brought to you by Trump Inc.

If Trump sweeps Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, he will have at least 748 delegates and would need to win only 44 percent of all remaining delegates, a remarkably low bar, potentially ending the nomination fight.

If Trump loses Ohio but still wins Florida and sweeps Illinois and Missouri, he would need to win 50 percent of all other remaining delegates, a slightly higher bar but still very doable — and he would probably still be “on pace” for the nomination according to our delegate targets. But if Trump were to lose both Ohio and Florida, along with, let’s say, half of Illinois’s and Missouri’s districts, he could find himself needing to win 63 percent of remaining delegates to clinch the nomination, a much less plausible goal, considerably raising the odds of a contested convention in Cleveland.

As I say, he’ll win Florida so he won’t face Wasserman’s worst-case scenario. The question is whether Cruz overperforms in Illinois and Missouri, which would preclude the best-case scenario as well. The polls in those states show Trump leading him narrowly, by 6.5 percent in IL and by 7 in MO. That sounds like a recipe for a fairly even split of delegates, but appearances are deceiving in this case: Both states are “proportional” by congressional district, but each congressional district awards their delegates in a winner-take-all fashion. (The statewide winner gets some “bonus” delegates as well.) In other words, if Trump beats Cruz 35/34 in every one of Illinois’s and Missouri’s districts, he would win every delegate despite the razor-thin margin. He could pile up an enormous delegate lead tonight, requiring Cruz to dominate him in the primaries to come to prevent him from reaching 1,237. And there are structural factors working against Cruz. Missouri, for instance, is an open primary, so Democrats and indies can cross over for Trump. And in Illinois, the fact that Kasich and Rubio are still in the race will make it harder for Cruz to edge past Trump in more centrist urban districts, even if anti-Trump voters are out in force.

But wait, say Cruz fans. If Trump sweeps Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio, that’s actually agood thing since it’ll mean Kasich and Rubio are done. Finally we get our two-man race, with anti-Trumpers unifying behind Cruz. Cruz stomps him the rest of the way! No one’s more excited for that scenario, in fact, than Team Cruz itself, which laid out its plan to win a head-to-head race with Trump for Politico yesterday. Er, okay, but the math is what it is. And per Tim Alberta, the math ain’t good:

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