The Upshot: The 2016 Race:

Trump beat expectations everywhere, suggesting broad shift

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Darron Cummings / AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump introduces former Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight during a campaign stop Wednesday, April 27, 2016, in Indianapolis.

Thu, Apr 28, 2016 (2 a.m.)

After just about every primary night this year, I’ve written something like “Donald Trump stayed on a narrow but clear path to the Republican nomination.”

After Tuesday night, Trump has never had a wider path to a majority of pledged delegates.

He swept the Northeastern corridor by a huge margin, smashing any and all expectations based on primaries to date. He won a majority of the vote nearly everywhere, and even carried many of the places where he was expected to be weak — like Montgomery County, Maryland, or Greenwich, Connecticut, or Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

His huge victory makes a majority of delegates seem well within reach. That’s in part because he amassed more delegates than expected, but also because his strength made wins in Indiana and California seem more likely than before.

He was expected to fare well, but he beat the pre-election polls everywhere. He was at 48 percent in the final Pennsylvania polls; he won 57 percent. He was at 49 percent in the Maryland polls he won 54 percent.

Similarly, The Upshot’s demographic-based models systematically underestimated Trump’s performance.

His best state, as expected, was Rhode Island. But he won 64 percent of the vote, not the 57 percent that the model suggested. Trump was favored to win big, at 50 and 51 percent, in Delaware and Connecticut; he won 61 and 58 percent.

Maryland and Pennsylvania seemed more challenging for Trump. The model had him at 41 and 45 percent. He easily outperformed those tallies, winning 54 and 57 percent of the vote.

Trump’s overperformance was broad — spanning nearly every kind of county across all of the states in play.

That raises the possibility of a significant shift in Trump’s favor over the last month. There’s no way to be sure, but national polls show something similar, with Trump creeping up into the mid-40s. The state polls in Indiana and California have also looked very good in recent weeks.

Perhaps he will return to more familiar levels of support once he leaves the Northeast. But even then, he’ll still have a solid chance to win a majority of delegates — and an easier chance because of the delegates he earned in the Northeast.

If there’s any good news for Trump’s opponents, it’s that his landslide didn’t yield too many more pledged delegates than expected — most of the states awarded their delegates to the winner, and Trump was expected to win.

But every delegate counts for Trump at this stage, and where he could squeeze out additional ones, he did. He won all of the delegates at stake in Maryland and Connecticut by clearing 50 percent of the vote and winning all of the congressional districts.

He even earned an unexpected additional delegate in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, where Cruz failed to get the 10 percent needed for a delegate. Altogether, Trump will probably win 110 of the 118 pledged delegates at stake — a hair better than what seemed like his best possible outcome.

Trump outperformed by even more in the Pennsylvania “loophole” primary — the sort of contest that had been tripping him up. Voters directly elected 54 unbound delegates to the Republican convention, but the ballot included no guidance on whom the delegates might support.

Nonetheless, Trump appears to have won 40 of the 54 delegate slots. That would put him about 250 delegates short of the 1,237 necessary to win the nomination. He can cover about half of that amount with expected wins in West Virginia and New Jersey and with delegates from proportional states.

That leaves two key states: Indiana and California.

Trump would easily win if he carried both states. He might not even need Indiana if he maintains the loyalty of the unbound delegates who said they would vote for the winner of their district in Pennsylvania, or simply if he wins big in California.

And after Tuesday night, a big win in California looks quite possible.

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