Cruz win keeps GOP race on track toward contested convention

Photo: Paul Sancya, STF Sen. Ted Cruz, right, is congratulated by Wisconsin Gov. Scott...

Ted Cruz firmly won the Wisconsin primary, and he's in the race until its end, but he doesn't stand a realistic shot of winning the Republican nomination through the primary vote.

Now the question becomes: How much can he narrow the delegate gap between himself and Donald Trump, and how much does it matter? Such questions are subject only to speculation, since no precedent for this scenario exists in recent memory, and because the party's rules for the process are months from being formed.

But experts agreed: The future of this race lies with the delegate tallies.

Even with a sweeping victory — Cruz won 33 Badger State delegates and Donald Trump won 6 — the Texas senator is not poised to win a majority of delegates before the party convenes to pick a nominee.

Instead, his campaign will be investing fully in a plan to win the race at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July, where most indicators suggest the body of delegates will hold a series of re-votes, possibly electing an alternate winner to the primary frontrunner.

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"This fight will go to convention," said Jordan Berry, an Austin-based political consultant who supported Cruz in his 2012 Senate bid. "And Ted will win at that convention."

Experts largely agreed that Cruz stands a serious shot at the nomination if Trump can't amass an outright majority of delegates before the first vote at convention. His campaign has proven more formidable than Trump's in the emerging delegate game, and Cruz's supporters are often more inclined towards the political activism that could get them to the national convention as delegates.

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But Trump has built a formidable lead that won't be easy to chip away. A Houston Chronicle analysis found that Cruz, in his most optimistic scenario, would arrive at the convention trailing 150 delegates behind Trump.

Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, reviewed the analysis and thought the Chronicle gave Cruz too much credit in Northeastern states, many of which vote later this month.

By Skelley's estimate, Cruz can realistically narrow the gap to about 260 delegates.

How much would that matter at a convention?

"It's a little bit in the eye of the beholder," said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based GOP strategist.

Bringing more delegates into the convention would make Cruz "appear more legitimate" as an alternative option, he said. But there's no firm number of delegates Cruz needs to claim to officially sport the title of acceptable alternative.

It largely depends on Trump's numbers. If the billionaire frontrunner, is lagging just a few delegates behind the 1,237 he needs to cinch the nomination, then Cruz would be hard pressed legitimize his candidacy, several hundred delegates behind.

But if Trump finishes several hundred delegates behind the threshold, then Cruz could comfortably trail Trump by up to about 200 delegates without concern for appearing invalid.

"Cruz should be able to get within striking distance of Trump, primarily for the court of public opinion," said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. "You can imagine a scenario where Cruz is within a legitimate range, where he has just as much right to the nomination as Trump."

That will depend on the remaining primary votes, especially in large states with big delegate caches like New York and California. The Chronicle's optimistic analysis gave Cruz a tie and a slight lead in those states, respectively, even though polls suggest Trump will win.

Other northeastern states will vote on April 26, and their Republican demographics are not typical of Cruz's evangelical support base. Cruz could have the upper hand in some Midwestern and Northwestern states that vote in May and June.

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Trump has maintained that the nomination should go to which ever candidate claims the most delegates before convention, whether or not they cross the 1,237 delegate threshold to win. He has even made veiled threats to sue to the Republican Party if he enters the convention with the most delegates and leaves without the nomination—in which case he's asserted his supporters would riot.

RELATED: Donald Trump predicts 'riots' if GOP convention picks alternate nominee

The convention rules won't be written until mid-July, the week before the delegates gather, so it remains unclear how the event will unfold procedurally. Experts assume that the delegates will take a series of votes, with most bound on the first and second to vote according to their state primary, then freed on successive ballots to vote with their personal preference. There remains the possibility that a yet-unannounced candidate ends up with the party vote.

"If Trump doesn't win on the first ballot, the assumption is that he would begin to lose support," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "If Cruz doesn't win on the second or third ballot, then the thing is wide open."