Indiana unfolds: where does the race go from here?

Curtis Newton, Staff Writer

The 2016 Presidential Primary Election has been crazy since the start, but the May 3 Indiana Primary may have been the most wild one of the season. Donald Trump won, unsurprisingly, but Bernie Sanders swooped in an unexpected win on the Democratic side.

 

Most surprising of all, however, was Ted Cruz suspending his campaign, making the last GOP candidate to stand against presumptive nominee Donald Trump is Ohio governor John Kasich. That is, until Kasich suspended his campaign less than 24 hours afterwards.

 

But Cruz’s drop brings up the question: where does the race go from here?

 

It’s unlikely that the GOP will have a contested convention at this point, as Trump has 1,068 pledged delegates, about 86% of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Now with no candidates opposing him, Trump has a clean shot to the GOP nomination. But Cruz and Kasich dropping out means that some NeverTrump supporters are without their main candidate. It is entirely possible that these supporters could defect from the Republican party in the general election in November to avoid a Trump presidency.

 

In contrast, the Democratic race is much closer than it may appear. While it may be unlikely that Bernie Sanders catches up to Hillary Clinton, who has 2,201 of the 2,383 needed delegates on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has been full of surprises, claiming unexpected victories in New Hampshire, Michigan, and now Indiana. With 13 Democratic contests remaining, it will be interesting to see what other surprises Sanders has in store.

 

Given her enormous delegate lead, and his being the only remaining candidate, Clinton and Trump will go on to be their party’s nominees, but the path to their nominations have been, and will likely continue to be ridiculously tumultuous. The possibility stands that either party may have a contested convention, which hasn’t happened since 1976. Though no matter how the campaign trail goes from here, the road already traveled has been one to remember.