Tomorrow will be the only day for four years that I care about Indiana, it's haul of 57 delegates is almost the largest prize available for the rest of the primary, after California of course, and the results could settle the issue for the rest of the race.
Polling, sparse until the last week or so, has finally come in with enough numbers to make some predictions on, although pollsters hate calling Indiana for some reason, apparently people are quite mean to them or something. Trump has a pretty solid lead, the latest being up fifteen points over Cruz. Trump is capable of under-performing and his opponents are basically praying for that going into tomorrow.
Indiana's rules likely mean that if the race isn't very close, then the winner will take the large majority of the delegates, this means Cruz/Kasich can't just keep it close in the various districts, they actually have to win some of them to take anything away from Trump, this is going to be a tall order and unless something magical happens Trump should walk away with fifty or more delegates without much drama.
Except there will totally be drama either way, it just won't be related to the delegates, see a strong win from Trump will really make it hard to justify continuing opposition to the man, the voter can pretty clearly see who is winning and it doesn't exactly drive turnout for people when you tell them "help me screw this guy out of the win". But Cruz doesn't care about appearance or what is good for his party, he us nearly certain to tough it out and hope to win via shenanigans at the convention, which means this next month or two is going to get really awkward as he is going to run out of ways to avoid saying "I am going to twist the rules of the convention committee like a pretzel and ignore both the voters and the party while I do so."
And twist them he shall, he has spent almost as much energy on subverting delegates as he has on campaigning, many, maybe even most, delegates selected are Cruz supporters even if they are bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot and remember, tons of delegates become unbound after the first round of voting, now that only matters if Trump doesn't hit 1237 pledged delegates before the convention an given his performance in the last couple of weeks that suddenly seems fairly unlikely, but even so hope is not lost for the NeverTrump camp.
Delegates form the rules committee, which meats in the days leading up to the convention to decide on the rules the convention must follow, the committee is not restricted in what rules it can make up, it can decide to not seat delegates for whatever reason, chance the threshold for victory, unbind delegates, whatever it wants to do can be decided by a simple majority vote, usually taken by voice, of the rules committee.
Abuse of the rules committee would be catastrophically bad for the Republican party but Cruz just might think he can get away with it, and he might, but American politics would never be the same again, and not in the way Cruz would want either what with the elimination of the GOP as a serious force in politics forevermore.
Of course, if Cruz only decides he wants to shape the party rather than steal the election he has options there too, this is plausible as he might decide the presidency isn't in the cards this time around, but he still wants everything to be about him which brings us to the other thing the delegates vote on during the convention: The Republican Party national platform. Yes the bundle of ideas that describes the soul and goals of the party for the year are voted on by delegates at the convention and Cruz has an outsized amount of influence on those delegates.
Also, did you know that the candidate doesn't technically pick his Vice President? That is also voted on by the delegates, hello forced Trump/Cruz ticket!
Oh yeah, and the delegates are only bound to their vote for president, not for anything else I have mentioned.
The convention is going to be the best television of the year and it might literally get set on fire, I kind of hope so.
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