On Primary Day in New York, Trump Eyes a Delegate Sweep, While Clinton Aims to Extinguish ‘the Bern’

Donald Trump will finish his Empire State campaign rallying supporters with Bills coach Rex Ryan in Buffalo, while Hillary Clinton schmoozes with Stephen Colbert in Manhattan, and Bernie Sanders completes his frenzied tour of all five boroughs. Then, as New Yorkers head to the polls on Tuesday, Trump will dream of a delegate sweep, while Clinton makes the the final arrangements for the Sanders campaign’s funeral, and Bernie-backers pray for another Michigan miracle.

The most recent polls show each party’s front-runner in a commanding position. A CBS News/YouGov poll puts Trump over Ohio governor John Kasich by 33 points, while an Emerson University poll puts him up by 34; in both surveys, the Donald commands over 50 percent. FiveThirtyEight puts the odds of a Trump victory tomorrow at greater than 99 percent. But that doesn’t mean the mogul won’t be wringing his tiny hands while waiting to hear the returns: The New York GOP’s complex delegate allocation rules may allow the Donald’s rivals to diminish the significance of his win.

Here’s the trouble for Trump: Each of New York's 27 congressional districts has three delegates to award. If the Donald clears 50 percent in a district, he lays claim to all three — but if he comes in anywhere below that threshold, even at 49 percent, he collects two delegates, and the runner-up takes one. According to a Politico poll released last week, Trump runs up big margins in Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, but he's stuck around 40 percent in many districts upstate. And then there are districts like Charlie Rangel’s up in Harlem, where the race will be decided by, approximately, two Republican families. The Politico poll suggests that Cruz and Kasich could scoop up as many as 24 of the state’s 95 delegates. With Trump’s path to a pre-convention majority already claustrophobically narrow, the front-runner has to hope that late-deciders upstate give him a few more district-level landslides.

On the Democratic side, polls from over the weekend show the race tightening, but it will likely be too little, too late for the political revolution. A CBS News/YouGov poll from over the weekend puts Sanders within ten, matching his best showing from a top-tier firm in the state. An Emerson University poll released Monday shows him trailing by 15 — still up 3 points from last week and 33 points from last month, when Emerson gave Clinton a 48-point lead over the Vermont senator. Nonetheless, a RealClearPolitics average of all polls puts Clinton up by nearly 13, and FiveThirtyEight puts the odds of a Clinton victory in the Empire State at 99 percent.

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