Tuesday’s presidential primary elections in Wisconsin weren’t particularly close. Though there are still some votes left to be counted, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic race easily with about 56 percent of the vote. And Ted Cruz was triumphant in the Republican contest, pulling about half of the statewide vote and leading Donald Trump by double digits.
Election 2016 Wisconsin results: Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz win
Scott Olson/Getty Images
But the winners aren’t all that matter in these races. For Democrats, every race is proportional, so the margin by which Sanders beats Clinton will determine how much ground she gains on her in the delegate count. (At the beginning of the night, he was about 230 pledged delegates behind Clinton, and 86 delegates are up for grabs in Wisconsin.) And with 86 percent of the vote counted, Sanders led Clinton by 13 points — which is only good enough to give him a net gain of 11 or so delegates, should that margin hold.
Meanwhile, the Republican race allots delegates to the winner statewide and to the winner of each of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts. Currently, it appears likely that Trump will win two districts and come away with six delegates from the state, compared to Cruz’s 36.
As the bigger picture, though, both Clinton and Trump remain frontrunners for the time being. Sanders has, impressively, won six of the past seven states to vote, but the math necessary for him to pass Clinton in pledged delegates given his deficit remains quite difficult. And Cruz remains well behind Trump in the delegate count — though Wisconsin’s Republican results do make the prospects of a contested convention on the GOP side more likely.
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