Indiana voters will have their say in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries Tuesday, with both front-runners inching toward clinching their nominations. Here’s a breakdown of how the delegates will be distributed once the votes are counted.
Most polls will close at 6 p.m. ET, but polls in the Central time zone will stay open until 7 p.m. ET. The parties use different delegate distribution systems, but neither uses a simple winner-take-all system for every delegate.
Republicans
Total delegates: 57, which is 5 percent of the delegates required to clinch the GOP nomination.
At-large delegates: 27. Winner-take-all. Whoever gets the most votes statewide gets all 27 delegates, plus the state’s three RNC delegates (the national committeeman, the national committeewoman and state party chair). The candidate does not need to get a majority.
Congressional district delegates: 27. Indiana has 9 congressional districts. Each district gets three delegates. Whoever wins the vote in each district gets all three of that district’s delegates. They do not need to get a majority.
Polls currently show Donald Trump getting roughly 42 percent of the vote to Ted Cruz’s 32 percent, with John Kasich coming in at 14 percent. Let’s assume Trump wins the statewide vote and six of the state’s nine congressional districts. Let’s say Cruz wins the other three districts. Here’s how the delegate count would look:
Trump: 48 delegates from Indiana, 1,044 total (84 percent of the way to clinching the nomination)
Cruz: Nine delegates from Indiana, 574 total
Kasich: Zero delegates from Indiana, 153 total
Democrats
Total delegates: 92, which is 4 percent of the delegates required to clinch the Democratic nomination.
Superdelegates: Nine. Seven are already committed to Hillary Clinton, and none to Bernie Sanders.
Other delegates: 83. Proportional distribution. Candidates must get 15 percent to earn any delegates statewide or in a congressional district. Fifty-six will be distributed according to the results in each of the nine congressional districts. The remaining 27 will be distributed based on the statewide vote.
On average, polls give Clinton about a 7 percentage point lead in Indiana. Let’s say she gets about 53 percent of the non-superdelegates in Indiana and Sanders gets 47 percent. Here’s how the delegate count would look:
Clinton: 44 delegates from Indiana, 2,209 total (93 percent to clinching the nomination)
Sanders: 39 delegates from Indiana, 1,396 total (59 percent to clinching the nomination)
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
