At a glance

Who’s ahead and who’s still in the race

BY AFFAN CHOWDHRY AND EVAN ANNETT IN TORONTO

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Republicans: Trump vs. Cruz vs. Kasich

• 1,237: delegates needed to win the nomination
• 367: delegates up for grabs on March 15
• The Globe in Florida: Read Adrian Morrow’s Tuesday-night dispatch on the Republican races

Democrats: Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders

• 2,383: delegates needed to win the nomination
• 691: delegates up for grabs on March 15
• The Globe in Ohio: Read Adam Radwanski’s Tuesday-night dispatch on the Democratic races

Check the Associated Press delegate tracker to see state-by-state breakdowns of where the candidates won their seats.

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WHAT'S NEXT

BY ADAM RADWANSKI IN CLEVELAND AND ADRIAN MORROW IN PALM BEACH, FLA.

Donald Trump won four of five primaries, but a loss to John Kasich in the winner-take-all contest in Ohio leaves the door open for Republicans to stop him from getting their presidential nomination. In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton all but sewed things up. But following one of the most consequential days of this year's presidential campaign, there are still plenty of questions about where things go from here on both sides.

1. Where do the Rubio backers go?

Even at the end of a miserable freefall in the final weeks of his campaign, which culminated in a humiliating drubbing on his Florida stomping grounds, Marco Rubio still had a chunk of Republicans in each state – ranging from roughly 5 per cent upwards. That's enough to be a potential difference-maker for one of the three remaining Republican candidates now that Mr. Rubio has suspended his campaign, particularly in closely contested states which award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. So the battle is on for his supporters – who, while not monolithic, probably fit most neatly into the neo-conservative mould, despite Mr. Rubio's Tea Party credentials.

Ted Cruz made the most overt pitch to those voters on Tuesday evening, somewhat shamelessly singing Mr. Rubio's praises. And many relatively mainstream Republicans who were in Mr. Rubio's camp may indeed now see Mr. Cruz as their only viable option to stop Mr. Trump.

The odd one, though, may now see Mr. Trump as inevitable and decide it's time to rally behind him (though the frontrunner's gratuitous bullying of Mr. Rubio in recent weeks may not help with that). Meanwhile, relative moderates and members of the much-maligned party establishment who find both Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz odious could decide John Kasich is now their guy.

2. Does Kasich have legs outside Ohio?

As he failed to win 26 straight primaries and caucuses leading up to Tuesday, the second-term Ohio governor and his backers insisted that a big win on his own turf would "reset the race." That win has now happened, and Mr. Rubio's exit has cleared some room for him in the establishment lane (which has been a mixed blessing at best so far this campaign).

Mr. Kasich's hope is to rack up a few more wins (Pennsylvania, which neighbours Ohio, is a big target), help deny Mr. Trump a majority of delegates, and then enter this summer's Republican National Convention as a potential consensus choice. This somewhat optimistic plan involves him benefiting from the convention being in Cleveland, where even as a third-place candidate, he might get a home-field advantage.

But it's an open question how seriously voters in other states will take the lowest profile of the three remaining Republican candidates. Mr. Kasich's folksy version of compassionate conservatism worked fine in Ohio, where he was has built up goodwill while spending most of his adult life as an elected politician. (It also helped on Tuesday that he had most of Ohio's Republican apparatus behind him.) It seems very at odds, though, with the populist anger that has overwhelmed the GOP's race so far.

3. How would a deadlocked convention even work?

Mr. Kasich and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Cruz are banking on Mr. Trump failing to get an outright majority of delegates and forcing a brokered convention, in which one of them could rally the anti-Trump delegates and deny him a victory.

The problem with this strategy is that, if Mr. Trump enters the convention with a delegate lead, any attempt to wrest the nomination from him would no doubt be seen as undemocratic by his many supporters. While brokered conventions are perfectly normal in Canada (hello, Stéphane Dion and Kathleen Wynne!) they died out in the United States after the fractious Democratic National Convention of 1968. Since the 1970s, the choice of primary voters has prevailed.

But Mr. Trump is so objectionable to many of his fellow Republicans (Rubio and Cruz supporters openly describe him as a "fascist" or a "Nazi" nearly as often as Democrats do), party brass would find a great deal of support for any process that denies him the nomination. And there is a real risk that allowing Mr. Trump to become the party's standard-bearer causes a split.

4. Can Trump seem presidential?

In his speeches, Mr. Trump is fond of saying he's only being so nasty because he's fighting off multiple challenges to his nomination. In a different context, he tells his audiences, he could be much kinder and more conciliatory.

In recent weeks, he's started trying to show that. On Tuesday night, he congratulated Mr. Rubio on a well-fought campaign – the sort of thing a normal politician would do – and, before his speech, trotted out a pastor to praise Mr. Trump's ability to bring people together. It's also helped that he received the endorsements of Ben Carson and Chris Christie, suggesting he may be able to bring people into his camp.

It's worth remembering: Mr. Trump is not an idiot. He knows that a brokered convention is a distinct possibility and that some segment of the GOP will do anything it can to deny him the nomination. He has clearly calculated that some sort of charm offensive is worthwhile. The difficulty is doing this without giving up the bombast on which he built his presidential race in the first place.

5. How long will Bernie drag out the Democrats' race?

Heading into Tuesday's votes, Bernie Sanders had an improbable but not completely impossible path to the Democratic nomination, which would involve building momentum that day and then running the table in seven or eight upcoming primaries supposed to be favourable to him. Losing to Ms. Clinton by a considerable margin in Ohio and even wider-than-expected margins in Florida and North Carolina, while failing to win even Illinois after investing millions of advertising dollars trying to link her to unpopular Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, has turned it into a pipe dream.

This is the point at which a candidate would normally drop out and call for unity behind his more successful competitor, or start to come under increasingly devastating pressure from his party to do so. But Mr. Sanders is no normal Democratic candidate.

As the Democratic socialist conceded on Monday, he only ran for the Democratic nomination for media attention and because running as an independent would be cost-prohibitive. He feels little allegiance and owes nothing to his recently adopted party. So he may keep trying to hand Ms. Clinton small setbacks for as long as he can, if only in hope of advancing his causes of choice and forcing her further to the left.

There is some irony here, since it was Ms. Clinton who drew criticism back in 2008 for staying in that year's nomination campaign past the point at which Barack Obama had clearly beaten him – impeding recalibration heading into the general election. This time, she may be the one still dealing with the futile friendly fire.

6. Will Clinton ever find the right lines against Trump?

Even if Mr. Sanders refuses to go quietly, Ms. Clinton still has more leeway to focus on her likely opponent next fall now that the nomination is essentially hers. The chaos on the Republican side makes it impossible to know for certain who that will be, but the many shots at Mr. Trump in her victory speech on Tuesday night suggest who her money is on.

Ms. Clinton is not a natural at mixing it up on the hustings, though, and her lines against Mr. Trump – about how embracing torture "doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong," or how "to be great, we can't be small" – seemed unlikely to be devastating.

Every candidate on the Republican side who has confronted Mr. Trump head-on has come out worse for it. Ms. Clinton might, by nature of whom her message is geared toward (i.e., not Republicans), have it somewhat easier. But it's a treacherous enough task that she can be expected to spend lots of time and resources between now and the parties' midsummer conventions trying to perfect it.

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Verbatim

FROM REUTERS AND ASSOCIATED PRESS

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What's next

BY AFFAN CHOWDHRY IN TORONTO

The volume of contests in the first half of March has been staggering. Twenty-six states have held some kind of contest in which voters have made their preference known about who should be the presidential nominee for either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.

And still no candidate has reached the magic number to clinch the nomination.

On the Democratic side, that is because a state's delegates are awarded exclusively based on a proportional system.

On the Republican side, delegates are awarded based on a similar system. But March 15 also heralds the beginning of winner-take-all state contests. Ohio and Florida were the first. The next is Arizona – one week later.

But the tempo of the contests is slowing down. After the Utah primary on March 22, the next big run on the Republican side takes place closer to the end of April, with northeastern states and delegate-rich states such as New York and Pennsylvania – the latter being winner-take-all.

The bottom line is: As of March 15, a total of 1,369 delegates will have been awarded to the various Republican candidates. That is 55 per cent of the total number up for grabs. In other words, it is a shrinking pie and it gets harder for someone such as Senator Ted Cruz to increase the number of delegates in his column and challenge the front-runner.

On the Democratic side, the tempo of contests is faster. But without a winner-take-all system – and given Hillary Clinton's overwhelming support among the party's estimated 712 superdelegates – it would take an extraordinary turn of events to propel the Sanders campaign to within striking distance of Ms. Clinton's delegate total.

Establishment response

Watch how the Republican establishment responds to Donald Trump's March 15 wins.

They have targeted him with attacks ads and fighting words after his March 1 Super Tuesday victories.

The Republican congressional leadership lined up to denounce his confusing response to the endorsement by white supremacist David Duke. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Mr. Trump "a phony, a fraud," in a speech that pulled few punches – arguably the most comprehensive critique of the Trump candidacy by a Republican establishment figure so far.

But Mr. Trump continues to defy expectations and – if he is to be believed – the establishment is finally entering the acceptance phase.

"They're already calling," he told NBC's Today program on the day of the March 15 contests. "The biggest people in the party are calling," he said.

So far, the highest-profile endorsements of Mr. Trump have come from anti-establishment types: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, onetime vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former Arizona governor Jan Brewer.

Contested convention

In a Republican field with more than two candidates, there is a scenario where a single candidate is unable to win the magic number of delegates needed to be the nominee.

That means that by the time state contests finish in June, there is no presumptive nominee heading into the July party convention in Cleveland. A contested convention hasn't happened to Republicans in more than half a century. The convention would have to hold a vote.

"But if there is no winner on the first ballot, the convention will proceed to a second or a third or however many it takes until there is a winner. There will be lots of wheeling and dealing in between, but eventually someone will prevail," writes Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution think tank.

There is also a second scenario: Delegates vote to get rid of Rule 16 requiring them to be bound to the candidate who won their state primary or caucus, Dr. Kamarck explains.

"Given that the Republican Party has not subjected Donald Trump to their usual intense 'opposition research,' we can imagine a scenario where information about Trump's taxes or love life or business practices (or all of the above) emerges in the weeks before their Cleveland convention," she says.

"In that case, some Trump delegates may decide that they really can't put him at the head of the ticket and that the people back home will agree with them," she adds.

On this last point, the author emphasizes that delegates will eventually have to go back to their home state and "face the music" – a consideration that will weigh heavy on their minds.

The Clinton Achilles heel

There is a scenario where Hillary Clinton's presidential bid can run into serious trouble.

Most of the discussion among political analysts revolves around Bernie Sanders stringing together a bunch of surprising state wins by zeroing in on Ms. Clinton's trustworthiness and her liberal credentials. The goal would be to persuade the superdelegates solidly in her corner to switch to the Sanders camp.

But there is another area where Ms. Clinton is vulnerable.

The BBC's Tara McKelvey explores how Ms. Clinton's use of a private e-mail server – which may have exposed classified information to hackers during her time as U.S. secretary of state – could significantly disrupt her presidential bid.

Revealing classified information ensnared former Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus, who plead guilty in 2015 to sharing documents with his former mistress. The punishment: probation and a fine. Ms. Clinton's use of a private e-mail server is currently the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe.

"The danger for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign, even if she avoids criminal charges, is that it could play into the perception by some that the former secretary of state can't be trusted," Ms. McKelvey writes.

Combine a surging Mr. Sanders with damaging revelations related to Ms. Clinton's use of a private e-mail server, and there is the making of a Clinton campaign meltdown that may force superdelegates to reconsider their support.

With reports from Reuters and Associated Press

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