Indiana shockwave

Yesterday, May 3rd, both the Republicans and Democrats held primaries in Indiana. Boy were they shockers!

In the beginning, when Trump announced his candidacy, everyone laughed, sure that it was a joke and that the billionaire would quickly fade from the race. When he made extremely rude remarks about a previous nominee, fellow candidates and Hispanics, it further strengthened these views. Trump then kept surprising everyone by winning state after state across America. By the time it came to Indiana though, everyone knew that Trump was was going to win. However, no one realized just how big his win would be.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls predicted that the primary vote would be as follows: Trump, 42.8%, Cruz, 32%, Kasich, 14.8%. In fact, the actual results were: Trump, 54.6%, Cruz, 37.6%, Kasich, 7.8%.

Cruz got 5.6% more of the vote than polls predicted but this paled in comparison with Trump's far more significant 11.8% gain. Kasich was never going to be significant in Indiana, especially since he made a deal with Cruz, promising not to bother him there, so his 7% loss didn't really matter.

Not only did Trump make huge gains in percentage of the vote, but he had even larger wins when it came to delegates, winning all of the state's 57 Republican delegates.By now many people were already quite surprised but the wave of shocks continued surprising everyone throughout the day.

No one imagined, in the beginning, that the Republicans, with their 17 serious candidates would have chosen their nominee before the Democrats. However, last night Cruz suspended his campaign and now Kasich has dropped out too, leaving Trump as the Republican nominee.

On the Democrat side, there was a smaller but still significant shock, Sanders' victory. Real Clear Politics predicted a 6.8% Clinton win. In fact, what happened was the exact opposite, Sanders won by 6.8%, picking up 44 of Indiana's 83 delegates.