Are you ready for (yet another) Super
Tuesday?
First
there was the actual Super Tuesday on March 1 — you know, when all those
Southern states weighed in. Then there was Super Tuesday II, or Super Duper
Tuesday, on March 15: Florida, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio.
Now
there’s Super Tuesday III, which we here at Unconventional have decided to call
“Super Acela Tuesday.” Why? Because Amtrak’s high-speed train passes through
every state with a primary tomorrow: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland,
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Also, tomorrow is a Tuesday, and if more than
one state votes on a Tuesday, journalists are pretty much required to describe
it as “super.”
All
told, there are 384 Democratic delegates and 172 Republican delegates at stake
on Super Acela Tuesday — the biggest single-day haul on either side until
California, New Jersey and several other states cast the final votes of the
2016 primary season on June 7.
So
we can expect Tuesday’s results to have a big impact on both the Democratic and
Republican primary contests, right?
Well,
yes and no.
Both
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are likely to sweep Super Acela Tuesday. But
while Trump’s victory may be more lopsided, Clinton’s will be more
consequential.
Let’s
tackle Trump and his Republican rivals first. Three of Tuesday’s states have
multiple recent polls: Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Trump is
clobbering Ted Cruz and John Kasich in all three: by nearly 20 percentage points, on average, in Pennsylvania; by more than 20 percentage points, on average, in Connecticut;
and by nearly 15 percentage points, on average, in Maryland. The
other two Super Acela Tuesday states have only been polled once in recent days,
but again, Trump appears to be way ahead, with a 13-point lead in the Rhode Island poll and a staggering 37-point lead in the Delaware poll. Given the delegate-allocation rules in each of these states —
winner-take-all in Delaware, proportional in Rhode Island and hybrid
elsewhere — Trump is likely to wake up Wednesday with 100 or so new delegates
in his column. That’s more than he won in last week’s much-ballyhooed New York
primary.
So
why won’t this be a huge deal? Two reasons.
The
first is that no matter how well Trump performs Tuesday, he won’t be netting
nearly as many delegates as he normally would — and it’s all Pennsylvania’s
fault. The Keystone State holds what’s known as a loophole primary: It sends 71
delegates to the Republican National Convention, but only 17 of them are bound
to vote for the statewide primary winner; the other 54 (three from each
congressional district) can vote for whomever they want. In the other GOP
loophole states — Illinois and West Virginia — unpledged delegate candidates
are listed on the ballot alongside their preferred candidate, so at least
voters have some idea which presidential wannabe they’re helping with their
votes. That’s not the case in Pennsylvania. The delegate ballot is just a list
of names, many of them unrecognizable.
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