Can Donald Trump Get Ted Cruz's Delegates?

On Tuesday, after losing in what was pretty much his last hope, Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican race for the party's nomination. At this point, Donald Trump will most certainly be the Republican on the general election ballot come November. However, does this mean Trump gets Cruz's delegates? By no means does Trump get them automatically.

Case in point: look at any up-to-date delegate counter. As you can plainly see, Marco Rubio still has more delegates than John Kasich, even though Rubio dropped out in March. The Florida senator still has his 173 delegates, beating out the Ohio governor's 153 or a reason: Rubio's are Rubio's until the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July. Only then does Trump get an official stab at Cruz's or any of the other candidate's delegates.

The way it works is that Republicans have bound or pledged delegates (no superdelegates for this party). Most of the delegates are bound (more than 95 percent), and they have to vote for the delegate they are bound to in the first ballot at the convention. However, if no candidate comes out the winner and there's another round of voting, the delegates can then vote for which candidate they choose. That's why the hopes of a contested or brokered convention were especially high for Republicans. There was certainly a shot that if no candidate came to Cleveland with 1,237 delegates to his name, then all hell could break loose.

However, the potential for such a scenario is looking increasingly less likely. There are 445 delegates up for grabs still, and it's just Trump and Kasich left. At the moment, Trump needs to win just over half of those remaining delegates to walk into the Republican National Convention with the magic number of 1,237.

Considering Kasich's less-than-victorious record, that shouldn't be too hard for Trump.