GOP and Democrat Primaries: Its Not About the Wins and Losses, Its About the Delegates

ITS ALL ABOUT THE DELEGATES …

Don’t let the pundits spin you with wins and losses, especially during the early primaries that are not winner take all. Below is a “Viewer’s Guide: After Super Tuesday, Cold Hard Delegate Math.”  The state primaries have some of the most convoluted mathematical calculations to determine the allocation of delegates, it makes ones head hurt. The delegate numbers will still change after the Super Tuesday ones are allocated to see whether candidates met certain thresholds. For example, Marco Rubio did not have a bad night because he only won one state last night in Minnesota, he had a bad night because he failed to meet the the delegate threshold in a couple of delegate rich states, like Texas. The Politico has 5 takes aways. Take them for what they are worth.

But with the Democrats its not just about the delegates, its about the “Super Delegates” that have unfairly stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders.

Presidential candidates will wake up Wednesday morning to the cold, hard truth of delegate math. It might give the front-runners some breathing room, but for the rest of the field, the truth may hurt.

What to watch for on the day after Super Tuesday doles out a quarter of all the delegates at stake in the GOP and Democratic nominating contests:

THE TALLY: With 12 states awarding delegates, see how the delegate totals stack up when the dust settles.

With some delegates still to be allocated, Donald Trump had won at least 192 Super Tuesday delegates and Ted Cruz at least 132. Marco Rubio had won at least 66 delegates, John Kasich 19 and Ben Carson three. There were 595 GOP delegates at stake in 11 states.

Overall, Trump led with 274 delegates, Cruz 149, Rubio 82. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

On the Democratic side, Clinton was assured of winning at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday. Sanders was sure to get at least 286. Including superdelegates, Clinton had at least 1,005 delegates. Sanders had at least 373. It takes 2,383 Democratic delegates to win.