And so, on Sunday, the public revelation that the two candidates would split upcoming states. Cruz will be cleared to win Indiana — with Kasich canceling upcoming events in the state — and Cruz will allow Kasich to win in Oregon and New Mexico. Each needs Trump to fall short of the 1,237 delegates it would take for him to win the nomination, with Cruz poised to potentially win on the second ballot and Kasich, in a more nebulous set of circumstances, to win somewhere else down the line. Allowing for Cruz to gobble up as many of Indiana's 57 delegates as he can and for Kasich to scoop up Oregon and New Mexico's 52 would put a dent in the 391 delegates Trump still needs to hit 1,237.

But the plan isn't as foolproof as it might seem.

The two made it public in part so that the various super PACs supporting each candidate would get the message. As our Matea Gold notes, Kasich's announcement was explicit in suggesting to his super PAC supporters that they should allow Cruz to win Indiana, writing in his statement that the campaign "would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns." But the announcement was also meant to present a united Not Trump front, of the kind that Trump opponents have been seeking for a while (though usually by virtue of hoping either Cruz or Kasich dropped out).

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The problem, though, is that the math is much trickier than simply handing one state to Cruz and another to Kasich.

Let's start with Indiana. It was one of the four states that we identified in March as being key to the Republican contest by virtue of the number of delegates it offers. Two of those four, New York and Pennsylvania, will have voted by Wednesday morning, with Trump almost certainly winning over 100 of the pledged delegates the two have to offer. (Most of Pennsylvania's delegates are unpledged, meaning they could vote for Casper the Friendly Ghost, if inclined to do so.) The fourth state still outstanding is California, which we'll get to.

A Fox News poll released Friday showed Trump with an eight-point lead over Cruz in Indiana. But FiveThirtyEight's forecast, including factors besides polls, has Cruz as a slight favorite. Trump has won most of the states around Indiana (save Ohio) by small margins, and Cruz should similarly be close in the state. Getting Kasich out of the picture means that the state's delegates — given out to whoever wins the state or its nine congressional districts — are much more likely to go to Cruz. Indiana has 8 percent of the delegates left to acquire and 15 percent of the delegates Trump needs to clinch. Handing them to Cruz would be a big win for those who want a non-Trump nominee.

The delegates in Oregon and New Mexico, though? Ehh. There hasn't been good polling in either state recently, but each state allocates its delegates proportionally. Meaning that if Trump would get, say, 33 percent against Kasich's 33 and Cruz's 33, consolidating behind Kasich so that he gets 66 percent of the delegates doesn't really subtract from Trump's total at all.

Where the two really need to stop Trump is in winner-take-all states such as New Jersey (where Trump currently has the support of a majority of the state's Republicans). That's 51 delegates — 13 percent of what Trump still needs — that Cruz and Kasich want to disrupt. And the big prize, California, where the winner of the state gets 13 delegates and the winner of each of its 53 congressional districts gets three. The idea, apparently, is that Kasich and Cruz might target specific congressional districts? That's optimistic.

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After all, Cruz tried to target specific districts in New York and still got goose-egged. Those Fox polls released Friday showed Trump with a wide lead in the state, making the task for Kasich and Cruz trickier. Kasich had only about $1.1 million on hand at the end of March, meaning that his ability to campaign anywhere, much less in specific congressional districts, is limited. (It's part of the reason that his pulling out of Indiana helps his campaign.)

This also raises the question of how much of an effect the will of the candidates might actually have on the outcomes. There's a lot of talk about strategic voting, particularly from surrogates, but there's not much evidence that voters really care. Here are the apparent talking points for Cruz's campaign, via the Wall Street Journal's Reid Epstein:

That's political finger-crossing. Primary voters are more engaged than your average voter, but will thousands of Cruz supporters in Oregon mark their ballots for Kasich simply to help fulfill the campaigns' grand strategies? If I were a betting man, which I am, I'd probably take the under.

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What's at the heart of this plan is the simple fact that Trump's got a narrow path to those 1,237 delegates. There are a number of scenarios where he hits the mark and perhaps more where he doesn't. Cruz and Kasich have little choice but to try to keep him from getting there and have few options for doing so beyond trying to parcel out states like poker chips.

But as the Republican Party has learned repeatedly since the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1, voters are impressively immune to the whims of party poobahs. Cruz and Kasich need Trump to fail in his push for delegates. This could theoretically help. It could also be another few strands of spaghetti, clinging tenuously to the wall for a brief instant, but then, like so many strands before them, dropping to the ground, impotent. At least, Cruz and Kasich can say they tried.