I disagree. My guess is that Trump’s most salient characteristic as president would be incompetence, whereas Cruz would be actively and calculatingly malicious. The biggest risk with Trump might be his personal insecurities, but Cruz is just a relentless uncompromising extremist. Trump is a greedy self-serving SOB who wouldn’t know how to govern, Cruz is the personification of evil.
I sure hope you’re right, but only a brokered convention will be able to accomplish that, which is far from guaranteed.
Spot-on, except Kasich finished basically tied with Cruz in Michigan, so a strong third, not second, and Rubio fading even faster than expected.
Actual count as of 3/16, with about 65 delegates still waiting to be awarded (mostly all to Trump):
Trump 646
Cruz 397
Rubio 169
Kasich 142
Rubio has already dropped out as predicted. Kasich will be largely irrelevant going forward, and I suspect he will suspend after Wisconsin on 4/5. Especially after the Missouri result, he will be under pressure to get out.
Next week is Arizona and Utah. Utah is an obvious Cruz win, but Arizona will be a contest. 538 projects Trump as 84% likely to win; I say they are wrong, and Cruz will take it with something like a 45/40/15 split. That starts a winning streak that sees Cruz taking North Dakota, Colorado, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Trump will hold New York, and rebound with wins in the 4/26 regional, but Cruz will win out down the stretch, taking everything except West Virginia and New Jersey.
My earlier prediction was:
I will make it more exact:
The delegate count at the end of the primaries will be something like
Trump 1080
Cruz 1020
Kasich 150
Rubio/other suspended 175
Misc unbound 75
Trump will obviously argue that he should get the nomination with a plurality of the delegates; but by the time July rolls around, Cruz will have the momentum, and will be ahead in national polls. Note also that
There are something like 50-75 completely unbound delegates
In roughly half the states, delegates representing candidates who suspend become unbound and can support anyone they like, even on the first ballot (e.g., Rubio’s 17 from Minnesota are now free agents).
These people – GOP party veterans – are very unlikely to go for Trump, and they will have a full month from the end of the primaries to think it over/be pressured/get bribed. And in fact, the media will be seeking out these people and asking them, and those answers will start being incorporated into delegate counts, and that will feed into Cruz’ momentum. Delegates who are bound by law on the first ballot to Rubio/Carson/ etc., will publically state who they will be going for on the second ballot, and the vast majority of them will also be for Cruz.
Thus, I expect the actual first-ballot vote to go something like
Trump 1100
Cruz 1200
Etc 175
After that, Cruz on the second ballot will be inevitable.
One caveat would be that more disruptions along the lines of Chicago might help Trump. If Black Lives Matter storms the stage and he slugs one of them, he will be proclaimed God-Emperor by acclimation.
It’s classic Make America Great territory with very weak evangelical support. After you get past the Country Club retirees from Chicago & surrounds, it’s basically one big white trash trailer park. Or at least it was when I lived & visited family there.
Yes, there is a large Latin contingent in the population. But they’re not much in evidence in the R primary electorate. I don’t put too much stock in the idea that they (even the Ds swapping parties) will all show up to vote against Trump in the R primary.
If the delegate count is like what you suggest here and Cruz wins the nomination, then I think the GOP will have a very bad night in November. Trump in all likelihood would run as an independent Its not as if he was getting any backing from the party, or has any political ambitions in the future, and playing spoiler against them would be just the sort of payback for insult that he is known for. Even if he doesn’t, the 1/3 of the anti-establishment party that Trump represents isn’t likely to come back into the fold after the party makes it clear it will ignore them in favor of someone who got fewer votes than their candidate.
The Republicans are really in a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation. No matter who they choose a substantial portion of their party will feel betrayed and either stay home or vote for some third party/independent.
Could be. Polls there currently have Trump at ~35%, Cruz at ~20%, and Kasich at ~12%. That leaves ~33% up for grabs, and I say those people break very heavily for Cruz. That will not be easy, as it’s only a week away, you have a lot of people who have already voted, but I think there’s a >51% chance he squeezes it out.
I think the media makes too much of Cruz as the “evangelical guy.” He is, but he’s also the “strict constitutionalist” guy. More importantly, at this point he’s the “not Trump” guy.
Trump will not run as an independent. It would require a boatload of his own money, and he would lose. He’s not really running to advance some kind of agenda or issue, so his only motive would indeed be spite. He can and will be plenty destructive to the GOP just by holding protest rallies and sending tweets, etc., There’s really no juice for him in spending months more campaigning just so he can get 25% in the general.
The disaffection of his supporters, OTOH, will indeed be a real challenge for Cruz.
Well, it does keep his “brand”, about the only thing keeping him afloat, front and center for a good while longer. The only question would be does the return justify the cost.
His whole shtick is that he is a “winner.” How does polling at 25% help his brand? Much better to sit it out and swear he would have won if the game wasn’t rigged.
He’s going to claim the game is rigged regardless, even if he somehow makes the long shot and wins. It will just show what a mega-winner he is by winning a rigged contest!
Anyway, while his chances are looking as good as they ever have, he had to have started this race knowing that winning was unlikely, but he could get a shit ton of publicity out of it. That’s probably even more true now.
From what I was hearing of exit polls yesterday, Trump was beating most everybody with late deciders - except maybe in Ohio where they went Kasich. I don’t get it either, but it’s happening.
Cruz would have to get about 25% of that 33% (over 3/4 of it) to squeeze it out, ignoring Kasich for the moment. Has that landslide of late voters ever happened?
I predict that since Kasich won Ohio, and the person he was competing with for votes has dropped out, he will stay in the race with the hopes that a deadlocked convention would turn to him as being more electable than Cruz while still an actual candidate.
Nope, only in Florida, with Rubio splitting the not-Trump vote.
In Missouri, “last few days” deciders went 55% Cruz, 22% Trump.
In North Carolina, 45% Cruz, 30% Trump.
In Illinois, 37% Cruz, 29% Trump, 26% Kasich.
That’s been a pattern all along.
Keep forgetting to mention: One of the other issues in play here is a current GOP rule that says a nominee must have won at least 8 states: obviously that means only Trump and Cruz. That rule can be changed right before the convention, but it would truly make the party look terrible, and piss off even more of the voters.
The next primaries are in low-population Western states - more Cruz territory. Meanwhile, Kasich will have won only his home state, and only after a lot of work. Cruz is the clear Number Two and will get clearer next week. Really, where else does Kasich have a real shot?
Not that it matters anymore, of course. This is the mop-up stage of the battle Trump has already won.
I’ve heard that waved away by GOP officials as a temporary rule, intended to apply to that year’s convention and subject to change or dismissal when they set the rules for this year.