1. The Democratic nomination will be secured. If Hillary Clinton wins, her path gets easier, but only marginally. And even if she loses, she will remain in the driver’s seat heading into the more delegate rich states of New York (247 delegates), Pennsylvania (189 delegates) and California (475 delegates). Clinton also maintains her huge advantage over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the so-called super delegates, party types who have lined up behind Clinton.
2. Donald Trump will win the Wisconsin primary. OK, this is going out on a limb. But has had such a bad week and trails in so many polls that it seems a fairly safe bet that he will get smoked tonight. Trump will hold onto his front-runner status, but the odds will increase that he won’t have enough delegates going into the Republican convention in Cleveland to secure the nomination on the first ballot.
3. John Kasich will drop out. Both Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz in recent days have called on the Ohio governor to drop out of the presidential race, and Cruz went after Kasich with a negative ad in Wisconsin. But with the chances for a contested convention increasing, Kasich has little incentive to end his campaign. Even a third place finish in Wisconsin, which seems likely, won’t prompt Kasich to call it quits.
4. Ted Cruz will move to the driver’s seat in the Republican race. Cruz appears to have the best shot at Wisconsin’s 42 delegates, but even if he takes them all he will remain 720 delegates short of the nomination and more than 200 behind Trump. The website FiveThirtyEight rates each candidate’s percentage of delegates won against its projection of what is needed. Trump was at 94 percent going into Tuesday, while Cruz was at 52 percent. (John Kasich was at 22 percent). The calculus will shift slightly if Cruz wins tonight (FiveThirtyEight puts the chances at nearly 90 percent), but he’ll still need to string together a series of wins before knocking Trump off the top spot.
5. Donald Trump will make an apology to women. He has maintained an ongoing feud with Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly and stood by his campaign manager after he was charged with battery for allegedly grabbing a female reporter following a news conference. But an exchange with a woman in Wauwatosa, Wis., this week suggests Trump feels he has little to apologize for. According to Politico, when Trump was asked how he plans to win the support of women, he said, “I don’t get a fair press with the women. I have to say, the press treats me horribly with almost every aspect of life.”
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