Ted Cruz Has A Plan That Says #NeverTrump

The "Acela Tuesday" primaries came and went, as voters cast their ballots in five of the Northeastern states making up the Acela Express rail line: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. This is the final big Tuesday primary, which hosted a number of states, and their many delegates. GOP candidates had an available 172 delegates total at stake, many of which were winner-take-all or winner-take-most, while the Democrats had 462 delegates to win, but on a proportional allocation basis. With such a large pool of Republican delegates on Tuesday — most of which went to Donald Trump — will Ted Cruz drop out after the Acela Primaries?

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has tightly secured his lead across primary states to date. Trump currently holds the majority of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure a nomination ahead of the July convention and is followed by Cruz in second place.

But the Texas senator will probably not be dropping out — especially because Ted Cruz has recently joined forces with his fellow opponent, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination. Even leading into the Tuesday primary, Trump was the expected winner of all five states, and Cruz set to come in second in just one state — Pennsylvania. Based on the allocation of GOP delegates, Cruz wasn't expected to take many at all.

Just because Cruz didn't win big on Tuesday in terms of states or delegates doesn't mean he will be dropping out, because three losing candidates are better than one Trump in the general election. The new Cruz/Kasich alliance hopes to keep as many delegates as possible from Trump, moving forward in the primaries, and according to CNN, Trump's potential to win the nomination dropped from 75 to 68 percent immediately after news of this alliance broke.

Moving forward and into the next primaries after Acela Tuesday, the Kasich and Cruz plan will play an important role in Indiana's primary on May 3. Since their announcement, support for Cruz has gone up from 49 to 63 percent in the state, where Kasich is backing away from, according to CNN. Both candidates have split up the rest of primary states in an effort to win big in those states and prevent any more big Trump wins. In Oregon, Kasich's voter support went from 6 to 49 percent, even though he is still polling in last among the Republican contenders.

While Cruz didn't win Acela Tuesday, he will definitely not drop out so as to prevent a Trump victory. But I don't know what's worse.