Exactly. Even Hillary got a better percentage of the vote. Even if we add the two unacceptable candidates together, Trump and Cruz still do not account for a majority, last I checked.
Trump and Cruz together might in the SEC primary. But I don’t think their constituencies overlap. Cruz is the true blue religious conservative and Trump is the not so religious populist.
I understand that in theory. But the way they were hugging each other for so long until shortly before Iowa suggests that there is overlap, or that they believe there is.
There is some, to be sure, mainly among the angry part of the GOP base. Trump and Cruz are the most fierce fighters. But those who like Cruz because of his ideology won’t be going to Trump if Cruz has to drop out at some point. Same with faith voters.
I think that’s why the math still favors an establishment choice. Both Trump and Cruz, if either had to drop out, would bleed some voters into the establishment lane rather than all of them just going from one to the other. Trump is winning moderates. Moderates aren’t going to Ted Cruz if Trump drops out, they are going to Bush and Kasich and a few to Rubio.
For that to work, the establishment lane has to consolidate quickly. And there’s no sign of that yet.
As useful as guessing is, polling people’s second choice is pretty common.
The top second pick of Cruz voters is Trump, and vice-versa.
There ya go.
The problem with that logic is that the elected delegates are pledged, which literally represents a contractual obligation to vote a specific way on at least the first two, maybe three ballots at the convention. The superdelegates are committed, which is the equivalent of a verbal promise: they could opt to vote their conscience, if it looked like the best thing to do at the time.
I think your first paragraph is a good way to parse the voters, but I think your second paragraph conclusion is flat wrong based on your own parsing. IMO …
The question here, IMO, is whether the Trump voters are more angry than they are populist about economics or immigration or whatever. And whether the Cruz voters are more angry than they are fired by politicized evangelicalism.
For either group, once their chosen champion falls, they’ll be faced with choosing a replacement champion where one choice represents a continuation of the anger and energy and excitement and inchoate rage against the machine, whereas the other choice represents the weak surrender-to-the-status-quo establishment sauce of Bush, Kasich, or Rubio.
My opinion is their anti-establishment anger is the more powerful force and they’ll stick with the radical team rather than surrender (in their eyes) to the forces of the Establishment. And as SlackerInc says below, the more the Establishment lane is still bickering amongst itself at the kiddie table, the less attractive those ineffectual whiners will seem to an angered-up revolutionary base.
Note also that this is an process. If, e.g., Cruz drops out after Super Tuesday, that doesn’t undo all the folks who already voted for him in IA through the Super Tuesday states. Those folks’ have already demonstrated allegiance to the rebel cause & the surviving rebel, e.g. Trump, will trim his message to better capture those voters in the general.
The main risk for the survivor is that the other flavor of rebel fails to vote in November. But if your standard had-been-a-Cruz supporter is looking at Trump, Hilary, or abstain in November, it’s pretty obvious to me most of them are going to vote, and vote R. Because it’s R.
We shall see.
No, they don’t. They each got 11% and trump got 34%. He beat all 3 combined.
I have a structural question about the primary-to-convention system. And I think this scenario may well become relevant before we get to the convention.
What happens to delegates from early primary / caucus states who’re pledged to candidates who drop out later but before the convention?
e.g. lets say we get past Super Tuesday and the delegate distribution is more or less as it is now, say high 20% for Trump, mid 20% for Cruz, low 20% for Rubio, and a bunch of stragglers.
So now one of the top 3 blows up. They have a heart attack, nervous breakdown, that child porn thing comes out into the open. Maybe somebody goes rogue & tries to run independent. Whatever. And this is well before the convention.
What happens to the blown-up candidate’s already-pledged delegates?
I imagine different states (and parties) have different rules for what happens to those delegates.
If (some of) those delegates are suddenly free agents, we’ll see an amazing new fight under the blanket to attract those few hundred politicos. This will be a completely different campaign aimed at insiders in states that already had their primaries. In addition of course to the ongoing campaign for the voters that haven’t primaried yet and whose polling favorite has now left the race.
If (some of) the delegates pledged to the drop-out are automatically re-pledged to the second place candidate in their jurisdiction, or reallocated in some similar procedural way, that will really be a level-up for the second placer.
If we assume Trump / Cruz continue to trade the top two spots going forward, then this is the way we get an unbrokered convention: Together they total an unassailable plurality bordering on majority. Then one blows up and, by rule, hands the bulk of his delegates to the other.
A similar thing might happen within the establishment lane as candidates drop out late in the primary cycle, but when all those players only have 10-ish percent, well twice 10% is only 20%. IOW, it’ll sharpen the establishment field, but won’t catapult any remaining establishment candidate far enough to pass the insurgents.
This will be one the punditocracy & academics will be chewing on for many years after the fact.
I would bet the answer is there is 50 different answers. Yet another example of why your political system is inscrutable to those of us from elsewhere.
Thank you for your patience with this digression. We now return you to our relevant commentary thread…
It varies by state parties’ rules, but in general they remain pledged at least through the second convention ballot, after which they becone free agents. Unless the candidate they are pledged to explicitly releases them early.
Can candidates horsetrade delegates? I asked this a few weeks back but never felt like I got a definitive answer.
Sanders won the NH Democratic primary, and he got the majority of the delegates from the NH Democratic primary, full stop. Clinton might have gotten more superdelegates from NH, but the superdelegates have nothing to do with the primary.
Yeah, general rule of thumb is once you are pledged to someone who was properly in the primary, you still have to vote for them in the first round. Most States I believe allow for the candidate themselves to “release” their pledged delegates even before the first round, but if they don’t, then more complex rules kick in for subsequent rounds. If you look at the 2008 Republican National Convention you’ll notice that Mike Huckabee had no delegates vote for him, despite having like 200 pledged delegates during the primaries, Romney only had a few delegates versus his total vote for him, and Ron Paul had like 6 vote for him.
This is because Huckabee and Romney, once they were eliminated by McCain, released the majority of their delegates and those delegates voted for McCain. In the actual primary campaign McCain won about 56% of the delegates at play, Huckabee 20%, Romney 10%; and the rest were not formally pledged by the time the campaigning ended. But on the first ballot McCain won like 98% of the votes due to most of the other candidates releasing their delegates. Some States also allow delegates to be released before the first ballot if the candidate formally withdraws from the primary. Some States also, I believe, don’t even offer true “pledged” delegates and their delegates will sometimes break away on their own once a candidate has exited the race.
Not all States automatically release delegates after the first round of voting, some, like California, require their pledged delegates to continue supporting their candidate until their support falls below 10% in a round of voting, after which they are released.
Very interesting.
It sounds like the main mechanism is the delegates (eventually) are free to vote as they will. Rather than some mechanism to re-pledge them to other surviving candidates and thereby still accomplish the will of the primary voters in their state.
Which also means the later we have a heavily multi-way race the more free agent delegates there will be after the ceremonial first ballot.
57
Of course, with McCain already holding a majority all on his own, the others releasing their delegates and most of those released delegates going to McCain was little more than a formality. With the outcome actually in contention, like it’s likely to be this cycle, it will be a lot more interesting.