The Ohio governor will give the Texan senator a free run in Indiana in exchange for the same favor in Oregon and New Mexico 
 
 Ted Cruz and John Kasich have announced that their campaigns will cede certain states in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination. 
 
 In a pair of coordinated statements released on Sunday night, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said that the Texas senator would concentrate his resources in Indiana while the Ohio governor would focus on Oregon and New Mexico instead. 
 
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 Both have already stated that they expect there to be a contested convention in Cleveland in July and are already preparing for a second ballot. 
 
 However, for that scenario to come to pass, they first need to stop Trump. This apparent agreement seems to be an admission that only way to do so is for his opponents to finally cooperate against him. Under current rules, delegates are only bound by the results of their state’s primary or caucus for the first ballot. On any subsequent ballot, delegates are free to vote their conscience and, since delegate selection is often an entirely separate process from a primary, there is likely to be a significant shift in votes on a second ballot. 
 
 Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, went first. He wrote: “Our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead.” 
 
 US election delegate tracker: who's winning the presidential nomination? Read more 
 
 Cruz has already shifted resources to focus entirely on Indiana, whose 30 winner-take-all statewide delegates represent the biggest individual haul remaining. The state, which holds its primary on 3 May, also allocates three delegates to the winner of each of its nine congressional districts. Polls in the Hoosier State had Trump with a narrow lead ahead of Cruz with Kasich lagging behind. One campaign source indicated that internal polls showed Kasich was dividing the anti-Trump vote in Indiana and serving as a major hindrance to Cruz’s prospects. Further, a Trump win in Indiana would make it far more likely that the real estate mogul would win the 1237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot. 
 
 The Cruz statement was followed minutes later by a statement from Kasich strategist John Weaver. The veteran operative wrote: “Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign’s resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.” 
 
 Weaver added that “in turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the north-east politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well. We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.” 
 
 Although the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, the candidate reacted in a late night tweet: 
 
 Trump later issued a follow-up statement in which he accused Cruz and Kasich of “collusion” and said: “It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.” 
 
 It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months Donald Trump 
 
 The pact already has seen some signs of fragility. When asked about it over a breakfast of berries in a Pennsylvania diner on Monday, Kasich said of Indiana Republicans: “They ought to vote for me.” 
 
 The Ohio governor insisted that the plan was all about resource allocation. 
 
 Cruz, at a press conference, dismissed questions of “collusion” and instead simply described the deal as “an allocation of resources that makes a lot of sense”. 
 
 The agreement comes just days after Cruz suggested in Florida that Kasich was only staying in the presidential race because “it may be John is auditioning to be Donald’s vice president”. The Texas senator also said earlier on Sunday that the Ohio governor did not have “a plausible path” to the nomination. 
 
 
 
 Tim Miller, a spokesman for Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump superPAC, said he found the apparent alliance “encouraging”, when asked for comment via e-mail. He added: “See you in Cleveland.” 
 
 Oregon, which holds its primary on 17 May, and New Mexico, which votes on 7 June, each have relatively proportional primaries. Oregon allocates its 28 delegates in purely proportional manner while New Mexico has a threshold that requires a candidate to get 15% of the vote. The result is that these states are far less important on the first ballot than winner-take-all Indiana and seemingly give Kasich the short end of the stick in this deal. However, with almost all delegates unbound after that point, the hope in the Ohio governor’s campaign is that they can flip a number of delegates on a potential second ballot. 
 
 Despite the deal in these states, both campaigns made it clear that they would compete against each other in all of the remaining primary contests. 
 
 Cruz’s campaign chief said: “In other states holding their elections for the remainder of the primary season, our campaign will continue to compete vigorously to win.” 
 
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 Past attempts for Republican candidates to make anti-Trump deals had petered out. Kasich squelched an overture from Marco Rubio to engage in strategic voting in their home-state primaries on 15 March. While a Rubio spokesman urged supporters of the Florida senator to vote for Kasich in the Ohio, the Kasich campaign declined to return the favor in Florida. 
 
 As long ago as last September, when Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race, he did so in attempt to consolidate the field to stop Trump. 
 
 The deal between the two campaigns came 36 hours before the opening of polls in the so-called Acela Primary, comprising five states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Trump is expected to dominate in these states and both Cruz and Kasich are likely to be shut out in the bound-delegate chase in at least three of the states holding contests on Tuesday. However, because 54 of the 71 delegates elected in Pennsylvania will be unbound and free to vote for any candidate, Trump’s rivals could still gain there. ||||| Advisers to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz say there's no way they'll allow John Kasich to even compete at a contested national convention — let alone prevail. 
 
 Trump and Cruz are betting that their dual dominance in the delegate hunt will permanently box out the Ohio governor, who has no mathematical path to the nomination and is openly pursuing a floor fight at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. And their aides say Kasich won't even make it to the floor. 
 
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 “There is virtually zero chance he can even be nominated,” Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican national committeeman who’s advising Cruz on his convention strategy, told POLITICO. “It’s a two-man race.” 
 
 Their confidence is rooted in the fact that Trump and Cruz are nearly certain to control the lion’s share of the 2,472 delegates participating in the July convention. Together, they’ve earned more than 1,000 delegate slots to Kasich’s 136. And those delegates will ultimately approve the rules that govern a contested convention. 
 
 In addition, a rule adopted at the 2012 convention — pushed by supporters of Mitt Romney to box out Ron Paul — requires that any candidate eligible for the nomination win the majority of delegates in eight states or territories. In 31 contests so far, Kasich’s only win came Tuesday night in Ohio — his home state — and it’s unlikely he’ll command majority support in seven of the remaining 20 contests. 
 
 Delegates Remaining: 30 Delegates 1,543 559 165 161 23 7 4 1 1 1 0 0 0 1,237 Delegates Needed for Nomination 
 
 There’s a small chance Cruz could fail to meet the target as well. He’s only won majority support in four contests so far. Trump, with a dominant win in the Northern Mariana Islands early Tuesday, became the first candidate to cross the threshold. 
 
 To be sure, the convention rules will get a thorough review and revision when delegates convene in Cleveland, raising the possibility that the threshold to participate could be lowered, making room for Kasich. But with Trump and Cruz delegates at the helm, it’s unlikely they’ll adjust it to help a rival. 
 
 “The Cruz folks would never allow the rules to be changed and of course we wouldn't either,” said Barry Bennett, who’s coordinating Trump’s convention strategy. “The laws of math are not amendable.” 
 
 Trump’s resounding wins in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday may preclude a contested convention altogether. If he secures the support of a majority of delegates over the next three months, he would enter Cleveland as the presumptive nominee and head off any challenge to his supremacy. But Kasich has predicated his candidacy on the notion that no one will have a majority entering the convention. What’s been unclear until now is that even if he’s right, Kasich may have little reason to hope he’ll get the party’s nod. 
 
 A Kasich spokesman said the naysaying only fuels the governor further. "With so many states still to go, and the map becoming increasingly Kasich-friendly, there's little doubt we will be going all the way to Cleveland,” said the spokesman, Rob Nichols. “ The same people trying to write us off at the convention were also trying to write us off for the first debate, for New Hampshire, after South Carolina and countless other times. How'd that work out? We're very comfortable with our place, our strategy and our future." 
 
 In that vein, Kasich's campaign foreshadowed its plans for a convention brawl late Tuesday, naming Stu Spencer and Charlie Black — two veterans of the last contested convention, the 1976 fight between President Gerald Ford and an insurgent Ronald Reagan — to his national strategy team. 
 
 Tom Rath, a Kasich adviser from New Hampshire and veteran of the Republican convention process, said Trump and Cruz’s advisers may be overlooking the role of politics at the convention. If a contested convention arrives, and Kasich is dramatically outpolling Trump and Cruz against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, convention delegates may make judgments based on political calculus. 
 
 “It’s a political convention and sooner or later, the realities of the moment politically, which we cannot foresee now, will overwhelm all the process in the world,” Rath said. “You cannot make a judgment about what could happen until you know the political context within which that action is happening.” 
 
 Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican Congressman and Kasich supporter, added that convention delegates must consider who can win in November as part of their process. “The rule of the party is to make sure to advance the best candidate for the general election. I think all the delegates are going to have to sit down and think this through very carefully. 
 
 Rath said that if Trump and Cruz are unable to break a deadlock to hand one of them the nomination, convention delegates can suspend their rules — including the eight-state threshold — to give other candidates the chance to put their names forward. Paul Ryan, who as House speaker presides over the convention, would preside over that process — and his determinations on suspending convention rules could carry the day. Rath added that a deadlocked situation could also elevate Kasich as critical tie breaker — perhaps the key to assembling a winning coalition. 
 
 Morton Blackwell, a Republican national committeeman from Virginia who has attended every national convention since 1964, said he foresaw the obstacle that the rules would cause and pressed to revise them at a meeting in January, before any primary contests had been held. He was ultimately shot down. He says he’s concerned that any attempt to lower the threshold now — at the expense of Trump and Cruz — would be viewed as an attempt by insiders to rig the convention against the two anti-establishment candidates. 
 
 “Reintroducing it now would be a cause of war,” he said. “I don’t want the scandal of a change in the rules … I think we’re much more likely to lose if there’s an attempt to change the rules no matter who it helps or hurts.”
– The departure of Marco Rubio makes the GOP nomination race a two-man contest, according to the Donald Trump and Ted Cruz campaigns, although the John Kasich campaign begs to differ. With a contested convention now appearing to be a real possibility, the Trump and Cruz campaigns are moving to shut out the Ohio governor, who won his home state on Tuesday and who has pinned his hopes on the convention, Politico reports. Campaign aides say the combined Trump and Cruz delegates will be able to set the rules at a contested convention—and Kasich is unlikely to meet the threshold of having won eight states or territories, a rule that was introduced at the 2012 convention. But Kasich may have an ace in the hole: Bloomberg reports that his campaign has hired veteran GOP operatives Stu Spencer and Charlie Black, who helped Gerald Ford defeat Ronald Reagan in 1976 at the last contested GOP convention. Trump, meanwhile—who won three out of five states on Tuesday and appears poised for victory in a close race in Missouri as well—might be able to amass an outright majority of delegates and avoid a contested convention if the race remains split three ways, according to the New York Times. He has split the delegates with Cruz in some close races, but in many of the "blue states" still to vote, Trump has a solid lead, with the opposition split evenly between Cruz and Kasich. (Most of Marco Rubio's delegates can't change sides.)