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Delegate battle favors Cruz over Trump

Much has been made of late over the battle for delegates being waged between businessman Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Politico updates the story and suggests that even as Cruz has been winning the behind-the-scenes contest for delegates, he is likely to do even better in future weeks:

The parallel universe where Cruz is beating Trump

Donald Trump has earned more than 9 million votes in the Republican primary and amassed a lead that puts him on the brink of ... Read More >>

The tra­ject­ory of the GOP nom­in­a­tion fight has gone something like this: Don­ald Trump dom­in­ates a round of primar­ies and ap­pears close to clinch­ing the nom­in­a­tion, only to suf­fer an em­bar­rass­ing set­back days later. His ad­visers plan to un­veil a more-pres­id­en­tial Don­ald Trump even as the can­did­ate is ramp­ing up his trade­mark in­sults. Just as the es­tab­lish­ment starts com­ing to grips with Trump, he gives them yet an­oth­er reas­on to pan­ic.

Tuesday night went about as well as possible for Donald Trump.

Two weeks ago, after a rough stretch of states for Trump, we issued a series of delegate projections that included something called a “path-to-1,237” projection, a set of targets that would allow Trump to clinch a delegate majority without having to rely on uncommitted delegates. With Trump’s terrific results in New York last week and even better ones in the five states that voted on Tuesday, Trump is running a little ahead of that path.

Acela primaries: Winners, losers

Call it what you want — the Acela primaries, the Atlantic primaries or one more Super Tuesday — but it was another big night on the electoral calendar as voters in five states went to the polls.

This time, the action wasn’t all on the presidential level. There were a number of closely watched down-ballot races as well.

Donald Trump has reached 50 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaners nationally for the first time since the beginning of the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll in late December. This milestone is significant as the 2016 primary heads into its final few weeks of contests, as there has been intense speculation that Trump’s support has a ceiling. Though his support has hovered in the high 40s since mid-March, the front-runner had yet to secure half of Republican voters.

The Republican primary calendar could hardly have worked out better for Donald Trump. There is plenty of evidence that he’s had the most to lose from a field that’s winnowed as the presidential primaries have progressed. But in the home stretch, Trump’s bid for 1,237 delegates may be rescued by geographic terrain that’s improving for him and deteriorating for his strongest rival, Ted Cruz — even as Cruz and John Kasich begin to collude.