http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/ted-cruz-donald-trump-arizona-early-voting-220978 Is Cruz already too late to stop Trump?
Arizona's primary is Tuesday, but more than half the ballots have already been cast — including for candidates who've left the race.
By Shane Goldmacher
03/20/16 07:27 AM EDT
By the time Ted Cruz arrived Friday at the tiny border town of Douglas for his first Arizona event of 2016, he was already too late for the hundreds of thousands of Republicans who had already voted.
Election day is still two days away in Arizona but well more than half of Republicans expected to vote in the state’s Tuesday primary have already cast their ballots — complicating Cruz's attempts overtake Donald Trump as both make a late push for the state’s lucrative, winner-take-all prize of 58 delegates.
“A candidate cannot win Arizona if they don’t do well in early balloting,” said Nathan Sproul, an Arizona Republican strategist who had served as co-chair for Marco Rubio’s campaign in the state.
Arizona has among the most robust early-voting programs in the country. In Maricopa, the state’s largest county, early voters in 2016 comprise already nearly 90 percent of the county’s total GOP turnout four years ago.
This raft of early voting represents a particular challenge for Cruz, whose team acknowledges he is likely climbing out of a hole, even though the campaign first put an Arizona team in place last September. John Kasich has all but written off the state, neither visiting nor investing resources, but the Cruz campaign is not getting a true head-to-head battle with Trump: Many votes were cast before the race consolidated, including for Cruz rivals who are no longer in the race.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/ted-cruz-donald-trump-arizona-early-voting-220978#ixzz43SLOkRzy
