How Many Delegates Are Up For Grabs In Utah

The 2016 presidential primary season has been providing thrills, controversies, and uncertainties much later in the process than you might've naturally assumed ― especially on the Republican side, where frontrunner Donald Trump's campaign is now under a rarely-seen assault by party officials, with open talk of a contested convention. And on the Democratic side, even Bernie Sanders is saying he's in it for the long haul. In other words, "delegate" is still very much the word of the day. So how many delegates does Utah have?

It actually depends on the political party. The Democratic races tend to have more, because there's a larger total share that the candidates are fighting over. But in the case of Utah, that's not actually true ― the Republicans have 40 delegates at stake, compared to 37 for the Democrats. The outcome will almost surely have more impact on the GOP side. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's lead is fairly stable at this point, while Trump still needs to keep a strong pace to make it to a 1,237 majority.

Both parties will be awarding the delegates through caucuses, as opposed to traditional primaries. Additionally, in both cases, the delegates will be allocated proportionally ― none of that weighty winner-take-all business.

The Utah caucuses are scheduled for Tuesday, March 22nd, so it won't be much longer before you get to see who'll walk away with the bulk of the delegates. Normally, you can get some kind of sense based on the pre-contest polling out of a given state, but with Utah, things aren't nearly as clear. That's because there's been very little polling done there. The most recent offering on the GOP side is from all the way back in mid-February, when the field still included Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson (Rubio led the poll at 24 percent, while Bush and Carson both had nine). That's not terribly illuminating, although Ted Cruz did also lead Trump at that time, with 22 percent to Trump's 18 percent.

For the Democrats, the available polling is similarly thin, but the last two (conducted in January and February) showed Clinton out ahead by ten points and seven points, respectively. But the amount of time that's elapsed since the polls were taken leaves the possibility wide open that thing have changed in a big way. In other words, this is one where you'll really have to wait and see.