{"id":3812,"date":"2016-03-16T09:15:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T14:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3812"},"modified":"2016-03-16T09:15:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T14:15:18","slug":"cruzs-plausible-path-nomination-not-plausible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/03\/16\/cruzs-plausible-path-nomination-not-plausible\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz&#8217;s &#8220;plausible path to the nomination&#8221; not so plausible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/local\/politics\/ct-ted-cruz-only-two-campaigns-video-20160315-premiumvideo.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ted Cruz went on record<\/a> with the bold claim that his campaign has a plausible path to the nomination.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_4KRnZ3crTs<\/p>\n<p>As of this morning, Cruz has 407 pledged delegates. He requires 830 more delegates between today and June 8th, out of 1,012 in contention. To stop Cruz from getting to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/republican-primaries-the-path-to-1237-delegates\/\" target=\"_blank\">the magic number<\/a>, Trump need only win the delegates from three states: <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.fivethirtyeight.com\/election-2016\/primary-forecast\/new-york-republican\/\" target=\"_blank\">New York<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.fivethirtyeight.com\/election-2016\/primary-forecast\/new-jersey-republican\/\" target=\"_blank\">New Jersey<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.fivethirtyeight.com\/election-2016\/primary-forecast\/arizona-republican\/\" target=\"_blank\">Arizona<\/a>. It might be mathematically <em>possible<\/em> for Cruz to win over 80% of outstanding delegates, but it isn&#8217;t remotely <em>plausible<\/em>. Unless our favorite stubby-fingered vulgarian literally shoots someone on Fifth Avenue, Cruz has no chance at getting the nomination on the first ballot.<\/p>\n<p>On the flipside, however, it is entirely plausible that Cruz could prevent Trump from getting to 1,237.\u00a0Trump needs 585 more pledged delegates, which requires a significantly\u00a0higher success rate than he has achieved so far. In a head-to-head with Cruz, the math gets worse for Trump, as I mentioned <a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/03\/15\/soothsayer-bids-beware-ides-march\/\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In related news, prediction markets are offering GOP brokered convention contracts at only 40\u00a2 as of this morning.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Will Republicans have a brokered convention? PredictIt traders think so today.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hAd8OkIbs8\">https:\/\/t.co\/hAd8OkIbs8<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Ty2e5fDTYv\">pic.twitter.com\/Ty2e5fDTYv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Paula Christian (@PaulaChristian_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PaulaChristian_\/status\/709826194888384512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 15, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A damn bargain, if you ask me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, Ted Cruz went on record with the bold claim that his campaign has a plausible path to the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}