Essential Politics: If you can make it there ...

Dorothy was right: There’s no place like home.

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton romped to smashing victories this week in New York’s presidential primary, thanks to the voters who know them best: Trump as the larger-than-life Manhattan developer and tabloid personality; Clinton as the state’s dutiful former U.S. senator.

Hello and good afternoon, I’m Mark Z. Barabak, guest hosting this week for Washington bureau chief David Lauter. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

DELEGATE-PALOOZA

The big wins by Trump and Clinton pushed them farther down the path toward their respective party nominations, though, as this story with Michael Finnegan points out, the route for Trump is a steep one, strewn with many obstacles.

He is a good bet to carry the five states that vote next Tuesday and build his lead in the delegate count. But Trump and his chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, face a big test in Indiana on May 3 and, most critically, in California’s June 7 primary, which wraps up the GOP nominating fight with the biggest cache of delegates any state has to offer.

The Republican race is all about delegates at this point, and the overarching question is whether Trump can win the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination on the convention’s first ballot, or if the fight spills onto the floor this summer in Cleveland.

With the stakes so high, small things — like a misprinted ballot, or poor record-keeping — matter a good deal, as Melanie Mason noted in this story. Mason also was on hand as leaders of the GOP met in sunny Florida to discuss the rules that will guide the party’s national convention. They avoided changes, lest it play into Trump’s assertions the system is being rigged to undermine his candidacy.

Lisa Mascaro traveled to Georgia and sat in as the state GOP seated its delegates to the national convention. It was a good showing by forces loyal to Cruz, even though Trump carried the state, illustrating the front-runner’s organizational weakness.

Noah Bierman visited Pennsylvania ahead of Tuesday’s primary and found considerable frustration among voters unhappy that they’ll be voting with no clue whom the state’s delegates will end up backing.

And you can always track the delegate race in real time here.

NASTY OR NICE?

On the Democratic side, Clinton sits in a much stronger position that Trump. She, too, is a strong favorite for a five-state sweep next Tuesday.

But her contest with Bernie Sanders has a taken a decidedly harsh turn and the question, as Cathleen Decker notes, is when and whether the candidates temper their mutual animosity for the sake of party unity.

Stepping back a bit, Decker also examined one of the most persistent patterns in the Democratic race: the divide between older voters who favor Clinton and the millennials flocking to support Sanders.

Before leaving New York, Chris Megerian and Evan Halper visited Wall Street to see how Sanders’ attacks on the financial industry have played among the bulls and bears. Spoiler alert: not well.

THE TRUMP EFFECT, CONTINUED

Win or lose, there is no doubting the impact Trump has had on the campaign and, more broadly, on the national conversation.

Kate Linthicum found that Trump’s scorching rhetoric along with the fierce debate over immigration policy has prompted a surge in immigration applications and a heightened interest in voting.

SPEAKING OF THAT IMPORTANT CALIFORNIA PRIMARY ...

A Los Angeles Times examination found that hundreds of thousands of people who planned to vote on June 7 may not be able to because they mistakenly signed up with the American Independent Party, thinking they were merely declaring their independence from either of the two major political parties. Are you one of them? Find out here.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, has an interesting perspective on the Democrats’ long-in-the-tooth leadership, including San Francisco’s 71-year-old Nancy Pelosi.

Nobody knows Nevada like pundit and TV analyst Jon Ralston. In Politico Magazine, he writes about Harry Reid‘s final crusade, helping the state’s Democrats recover from their wreck of a 2014 campaign.

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide at our politics page and on Twitter at latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.