The story is getting familiar: Donald Trump won the biggest contests of the night, as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas captured the most conservative state up for grabs. Hillary Clinton kept a clear upper hand in the Democratic race, but Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont proved he would not be driven away anytime soon.
Tuesday's elections could have brought new clarity to the presidential primaries. Instead, they only seemed to confirm that both parties would probably settle their nominations by battling for delegates well into the spring.
For Republicans, Trump Is in Control
Nothing silences criticism like victory, and Trump racked up several on Tuesday. His successes in Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi dealt a painful psychological blow to Republicans who had convinced themselves that his campaign was losing steam.
But Trump won, and he won big, with no obvious cracks in his support from disaffected, lower-income whites.
Still, Trump has a lot to prove in the race: He is only now being subjected to withering, well-funded attack ads, and Cruz notched another small-state win in Idaho, again proving the tenacity of his support with hard-core conservatives.
The Democratic Race Is Stalled
If Clinton had crushed Sanders in Michigan, their contest might have been over in all but name. But his narrow win there ensures the fight will go on.
Yet in the bigger picture, the basic battle lines of the Democratic race have barely moved in weeks. In Michigan, Sanders dominated with young voters, independents and more affluent white liberals — his core constituencies all along.
Clinton handily won partisan Democrats, low-income whites and black voters in Michigan, and routed Sanders in Mississippi with overpowering black support.
The outcome in Michigan showed how difficult it could be for Clinton to knock Sanders cleanly out of the race, but Sanders has still not attracted the kind of coalition that would make him a genuine threat to win the nomination.
Rubio Has Been Sidelined
It was a miserable, even disastrous night for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. He finished fourth in Michigan and Mississippi, languishing in single digits and collecting no delegates from those states. He must fight for survival in his home state next week, where even an upset win might not rescue his campaign.
Rubio's core problem is that he has claimed no distinctive space in the race. Exit polls showed that Cruz and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio have seized big pieces of the party's right and left wings. Rubio has claimed no particular constituency at all.
Cruz and Kasich Are in Parallel Universes
Kasich wins college towns. Cruz wins ultraconservative outer suburbs. Kasich wins liberal Republicans. Cruz overperforms with evangelicals.
For most of the 2016 campaign, the Republicans vying to overtake Trump have squabbled bitterly. But Kasich and Cruz have so far avoided direct conflict, and Tuesday's results show why: They are just not competing for the same voters. In theory, they could keep hassling Trump from opposite sides of the Republican Party for weeks or months to come.
The Midwest Matters
The results in Michigan gave Sanders a big lifeline — and they may be somewhat encouraging to Trump's principal challengers, too. Despite Trump's double-digit win, he collected less than two-fifths of the vote, with about half of voters opting for either Cruz or Kasich.
For the underdogs in both parties, those results point the way toward a hard fight for delegates in the Midwest, where Trump's appeal is limited among Republicans and Sanders' hard-left message plainly appeals to liberal whites.
The political calendar is teed up for just such a battle in the Rust Belt. For all the focus on Florida's primary on March 15, three Midwestern states vote on the same day: Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Wisconsin follows soon after, on April 5.
Open Primaries Matter
If Tuesday's Democratic primaries had been restricted to Democrats, Clinton would have won landslides in Michigan and Mississippi. Had only Republicans voted, Trump would have won narrower victories over Cruz, and Kasich would have been relegated to a distant third place.
While Clinton won Democrats by 16 points, Sanders won independents, who made up less than a third of the electorate, by 42 points, according to exit polls.
There is nothing illicit about winning primaries with support from independents. But the collection of states that allow crossover voting have become a frustrating obstacle to Clinton as she works to lock down the Democratic nomination, and a potentially crippling problem for Cruz as he tries to build a winning coalition against Trump.