To my read he stops at “being on track” after Super Tuesday … not what happens from there and the fact that you have many more establishment friendly states from there and many that are WTA. Assuming that a not-Trump/Cruz would win a majority in a Trump/other or a Trump/Cruz/other three-way, AND that the culling to that level occurs immediately after Super Tuesday, then Trump’s being “on track” for 50+1 does not mean he ends anywhere close to there. There are still roughly 40% of the delegates to be selected and under that scenario he gets fairly few of that 40% with his 35% of the vote, so long as the remaining more traditional lane candidate gets more.
Right, that happens on Super Tuesday, when Trump pretty much wraps it up. Only two weeks to go.
They don’t *fear *him, certainly, and they probably do think they can control him. That’s far from liking him, but that isn’t necessary anyway.
The thing I see about Wang’s analysis is that dropouts need to happen several days before the next election. If Super Tuesday is Mar 1st, a candidate who drops out at 7pm on the 29th will still receive lots of votes from voters who didn’t watch the news that night.
Not everybody is a manic political junky. In fact most aren’t.
Further, more and more primaries have early voting. Plus of course absentee. Here in FL the primary in March 15th. Early voting begins on Mar 5.
I see the post-March 15 environment a bit different than you. While Cruz will do poorly in the Northeast and Midwest, I think Trump will do just fine in the Rust Belt, which was Reagan Democrat Central back in the day, and that’s the sort of demographic that’s in Trump’s wheelhouse. I think he’ll do just fine in the Midwestern states, plus NY and PA.
Michigan is March 8. If I’m right, Trump will have a good day there. (Minnesota’s a Midwestern state that’s one of Super Tuesday’s non-SEC states, and Trump may do well there too, but I see Minnesota as being less Rust Belt than it used to be, though admittedly I don’t know the state very well. I haven’t even been to the twine ball.)
Ohio’s primary is also March 15th; our early voting starts Wednesday.
I can picture a lot of Republicans casting votes for someone who is no longer in the race in a month.
Not so likely on the Democratic side, as I don’t think Sanders or Clinton will have withdrawn by then. Won’t affect me though, even if one does–I usually do the early vote, but I’m still undecided, and I’ll probably wait for the actual date this year.
Honestly, it would help me if one did drop out. I’m really, really undecided. Maybe I’ll flip a coin. 
Flip a coin. See i the answer it gives disappoints you. Then you’ll know if you actually have a preference. (I use this technique all the time when it’s a hard decision.)
Because the primaries are semi-private affairs of the parties I suppose it’s possible the various states and parties have various procedures to re-allocate those votes given to now-departed candidates.
Although I think it’d take some combo of bizarre rules and bizarre voting patterns to give any different result versus simply discarding the wasted votes. OTOH, if there was ever was a bizarre circumstance in US primary politics, this R season is it.
On second thought …
One area where rules *would *matter is whether or not the wasted votes counted as votes in the total to determine whether somebody met a 10% or 15% threshold to get delegates. Including the votes for now-departed candidates in that denominator would make it harder for anybody else to get a big enough numerator to clear the threshold. Thereby winnowing the field more.
Conversely, excluding them from the denominator would make it easier for everybody else to clear the threshold. Thereby winnowing the field less.
Hmmm. One espies an opening for [del]shenanigans[/del] entertainment here.
I use this trick a lot too. It’s very revealing.
Like any quantum observation, it collapses the superposed states into a single definitive one. And does so in what seems to be zero time.
In Ohio, such votes are void. It’s too late now for anyone who withdraws to get their name off the ballot. The candidate has to file a notice of withdrawal, and when you vote, you get a paper with a list of names that won’t be counted.
It’s possible for a campaign to not bother to file such a notice, and then the votes would be counted. But threshold shenanigans can’t happen here; it’s winner take all.
In a condensed summary, the Republican Primaries using 2-letter postal abbreviations [territories in parens] are:
Mon 01 Feb: IA(c-Caucus)
Tue 09 Feb: NH
Sat 20 Feb: SC, WA(c)
Tue 23 Feb: NV(c)
Tue 01 Mar: Super Tuesday; AL, AK(c), AR, CO(c), GA, MA, MN(c), ND(c), OK, TN, TX, VT, VA, WY(c)
Sat 05 Mar: KS(c), KY(c), LA, ME(c)
Sun 06 Mar: [PR]
Tue 08 Mar: HI(c), ID, MI, MS
Sat 12 Mar: [GU], DC(c)
Tue 15 Mar: FL, IL, MO, NC, [MP(c)], OH
Sat 19 Mar: [VI(c)]
Tue 22 Mar: [AS], AZ, UT
Tue 05 Apr: WI
Tue 19 Apr: NY
Tue 26 Apr: CT, DE, MD, PA, RI
Tue 03 May: IN
Tue 10 May: NE, WV
Tue 17 May: OR
Tue 07 Jun: CA, MT, NJ, NM, SD
Notes:
- American Samoa on Tue 22 Mar is a convention
- The Washington State GOP holds a caucus on February 20 where a portion of delegates are allocated. Washington state also holds a statewide primary on May 24 which will allocate the remaining Republican delegates.
Sources:
- http://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2016-presidential-primary-schedule-calendar/
-
List of U.S. state and territory abbreviations - Wikipedia
I’m pretty sure this is accurate but if anyone spots an error please let us know.
Great technique. I’ll start using this too. Thanks.
If it is true that Trump would win in a Trump/Cruz/traditional or Trump/traditional contest then he really does reflect the party. The premise however rests on the belief that he does not. That his support is a strong third and that his in party opposition is over 50%. That he wins despite being disliked by more than half as a result of division within his opposition. If he’d win then then culling now or later does not matter: he wins the nomination.
Trump has bought the domain name http://www.jebbush.com. It now redirects to Trump’s page.
There’s a paucity of recent national data - it seems that the only national poll taken since NH is by Morning Consult, an online poll, which like most online polls finds a lot more support for Trump than everyone else does. The Quinnipiac poll taken Feb. 2-4 finds Trump’s support at 31%, reasonably close to the national polling average, but only finds 30% of likely GOP voters saying they’d never support Trump for the nomination. (Q.2 at the link.)
Given that none of the three Establishment candidates is really a very strong candidate, and given that the % of Republicans who’d vote for anyone against Trump isn’t any bigger than it is, I just don’t see any of the three Establishment candidates sweeping up the others’ support once the others have dropped out, and turning into a juggernaut that can outpoll Trump in enough places to stop him. Voters are people, not markers in a game theory problem.
Not sure if this shows cleverness on Trump’s part or appalling mis-management on Jeb!'s part…perhaps a bit of both.
Well if he’s really clever he should change that from a redirect to a page dedicated to most embarrassing Jeb quotes and votes he can find.
It’s certainly mismanagement on Jeb’s part. Leave an obvious webpage like that unclaimed, and you can bet that someone is going to snatch it up. Honestly, I’m amazed that it’s taken this long.
This should be printed, boldfaced and in italics, at the top of all horse-race coverage of this campaign.
This post http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19104145&postcount=1943 and subsequent in the Trump primary thread makes the point that Trump seems to have a special vendetta going against Jeb. Or maybe the whole Bush clan.
Interesting development. It’s strange-smelling smoke. I wonder what’s burning?
Trump’s tweet claimed that it was Jeb’s website, but archive.org only shows it ever redirecting to Trump’s site.