Donald Trump is set to win West Virginia but GOP elites will likely give the delegates to Ted Cruz anyway.
It’s the latest state where Cruz will lose but garner more delegates than Donald Trump.
Cruz supporters call this a “good ground game.”
The Politico reported:
Donald Trump has a new enemy in the fight for national convention delegates: the alphabet.
Trump is well-positioned for a resounding victory in West Virginia’s May 10 primary, but his win will be accompanied by a delegate selection process stacked in favor of people with last names at the beginning of the alphabet — rather than his most committed supporters.
It’s a quirk of West Virginia’s mind-bogglingly complex delegate election process that has the Trump campaign on red alert and seems likely to leave the mogul with weaker support at the national convention than he’s expected to earn in the state’s primary. It’s yet another convoluted primary system likely to add fuel to Trump’s complaints that the rules of the Republican nomination process are rigged.
“Not even Einstein could easily understand the selection process today,” said Mike Stuart, a former West Virginia Republican Party head and chairman of Trump’s campaign in the state.
“The delegate selection system is intentionally complicated, making it extremely hard for voters to control the commitment of delegates to any particular candidate,” Stuart said. “I think the selection process for delegates in West Virginia not only is bad. It may be the worst in the country.”
It’s also bad for Trump because even if he wins the popular vote in a landslide, how that support translates into delegates depends on his supporters’ ability to navigate a complicated, arcane and confusing voting system — the results of which are an open question.
