Either turn off the stupid “Trump==>Drumpf” converter or do not quote anyone with “Trump” in the text.
Otherwise, you will begin collecting Warnings for changing text in Quote boxes.
[ /Moderating ]
No, not at all; or at least not yet. I was clearly wrong about Arizona, but it’s not like the overall prediction of Cruz on the second ballot is proven wrong by one result (anymore than being right about Florida, Ohio, Illinois, etc. prove it correct). I did not factor in early voting was in Arizona – it looks like something on the order of half the votes were cast before 3/15.
My previous prediction for the committed delegate count at the end of the primaries was
Arizona just makes the forecast more like Trump 1130, Cruz 970.
That still leaves Trump well short of 1237, and once you factor in the unbound delegates, I expect it to be more like 1155 and 1070 on the first ballot, and on the second another ~200 delegates are free to go where they like. (For that matter, many if not most of the Trump and Cruz delegates are, too.)
Two more notable things have happened in the last week:
One – that bodes ill for my prediction – is that Kasich is doing better in the national polls than I expected, and for the most part there haven’t been many calls for him to get out. He may yet be a spoiler in a number of places. (Certainly that’s what George Soros has to be thinking in supporting him). The popular theory seems to be that he is running to be Trump’s veep, and that he will throw his support to Trump either prior to the convention or after the first ballot. All the same, I don’t think it will help that much – delegates aren’t bound to follow their candidate’s endorsement, and I think most of them wouldn’t.
The second – which bodes well for my prediction – is people like Romney, Graham and Jeb Bush coming out and endorsing Cruz. That’s a signal to me that they’re giving up on the idea of trying to pull someone (Romney, Paul Ryan, etc.) out of a hat after the first ballot. Obviously, those endorsements aren’t binding or anything, but IMO they know they’d look awfully bad endorsing Cruz all the way to the convention and then ditching him for some third guy.
BTW, the most recent projectionson 538 has Trump finishing with ~1202. So I don’t think a projection of 1120 is totally crazy. Losing Arizona does make Wisconsin very important: a loss there would very seriously hurt Cruz. As of now, though, it’s looking goodfor him there,
So, no, the OP is not (yet) wrong. On the macro level, all is proceeding as expected. Check back after 4/5.
I think it’s very possible that Trump doesn’t get a majority.
What I don’t think is clear is that Cruz will be the nominee if that happens.
He is almost as disliked by the establishment GOP as Trump is. Once nobody comes to the convention with a majority, anything can happen which is why I have trouble believing they would piss off Trump voters for someone they don’t like much more than Trump themselves.
If the GOP really wants to go through with thwarting the will of (most) Republican voters and all the backlash that will go along with that, considering all of the risks and rewards such a move has, I think they would prefer a better reward than Cruz.
Of course the GOP does a lot of stupid things, so who knows…
He is disliked by the people at the very top of the party – the Bushes, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, etc. – for what are essentially personal reasons.
He is not especially unpopular with the rank-and-file of the party, including the low-level leadership types – precinct captains, county chairmen and the like – who are delegates. Many of them are indeed moderate establishment types, but many are also movement conservatives, who regard Mitch McConnell as a RINO squish, and his hatred as a selling point. Yes, they’re going to piss off a section of voters if they bypass Trump. Some people will jump ship, and stay home in November or even vote for Hillary. But some people will do that if they nominate Trump.
It’s easy for voters to say “hell, yeah, blow up the party,” if they don’t get what they want. Delegates have years and years invested in the party, many have ambitions to rise in it, and they’re not going to be eager to burn the whole thing down. They’re thinking about who is more electable in the general, and about Trump’s capacity to do harm to the party in the long-term.
If Trump comes in with 49% of the delegates and Cruz at 30%, that’s one thing. But if it’s Trump 43%, Cruz 37% … and they’re within few points in nationwide polling … and Rubio is encouraging his 166 delegates to vote for Cruz … that’s a different story. Then it’s essentially like a tie. On the other hand, changing the rules to bypass BOTH of them and nominate some random? That’s a third thing altogether.
I’ll stop you there. At a contested convention, who do you think will be making the decisions?
The delegates.
Despite the fevered dreams of political reporters yearning for the days of Boss Tweed and Richard J. Daley, there are no political machines. Mitch McConnell does not have hundreds of well-placed minions who will do whatever he says. Obviously, everyone will be trying to influence the delegates, and we can expect to see the unbound delegates being wooed with all kinds of sweetheart deals, job offers, etc. But “everyone” includes Trump and Cruz, both of whom will be in better position to cut deals and make promises than Lindsey Graham et al, especially given that they will have a huge head start over some third candidate the insiders want to promote. The insiders know that, which is why they aren’t going to try. Helping make sure most of the ~250 unbound delegates go to Cruz instead of Trump is feasible, and from their POV is the least bad option.
What I can’t understand is why Cruz hasn’t turned his dislike into Washington into an advantage. It seems strange. Here we have an election year which is the most anti-incumbent, anti-Washington election I can remember, where the people have explicitly shown over and over again that they don’t want an ‘insider’.
In those circumstances, wouldn’t the fact that Cruz is hated by the Washington establishment for his refusal to ‘play nice’ be a big asset to him? Yet when I hear that discussed, it’s always as a negative: “People don’t like Cruz. Hell, his own party leadership doesn’t like him!” Well, isn’t that the point? Is anyone expecting a reformer to go into Washington and break up the establishment and be loved for it by the establishment?
I guess he’s caught between a rock and a hard place to some degree - he may be disliked by those guys, but he really, really, needs their support right now. So I guess he can’t really go around bragging about how much they dislike him and why that’s a good thing. But surely the PACs for him and others could be trying to turn that negative into a positive.
The guys whose support Cruz would need to come out on top of a contested convention (which is his only hope, given that his path to an outright majority is to follow the Yellow Brick Road from Platform 9 3/4 down the rabbit hole to the second star on the right) would just regard that as an additional intelligence-insulting affront. They know how the game is played, and that such organizations are about as independent of the candidate as Charlie McCarthy was of Edgar Bergen.
True, but if they are that sophisticated they should also be able to understand that Cruz needs to say and do things to get elected that they might not like, and they desperately need Trump to lose. This happens all the time - Politicians go at each other’s throats in the campaigns, then immediately play nice afterwards. I remember how hard George HW Bush went after Reagan, but Reagan picked him for his running mate anyway because politics.
Mind you, that was an era when politicians on both sides of the aisle were grownups.
Thing is, they desperately need Cruz to lose, too. His party-hating asshole credentials are at least as well in order as Trump’s. But Trump is at least a dealmaker.
He played up his “the establishment guys don’t like me” cred a fair bit early on but now he’s pivoted to be the “not Trump” guy. Since the establishment doesn’t like Trump either, it’s not a great point of differentiation. If it was Cruz vs Bush right now I have no doubt he’d be still using that line of attack.
More naivety.
Bush and Reagan were at each others throats about policy and economics - not about penis size and the attractiveness of their wives.
One reason Americans hate Congress is the gridlock - and Cruz is the poster child for gridlock. He can play outsider, but he isn’t nearly as much an outsider as Trump.
Graham was on The Daily Show last night. Noah showed the clip of him saying that the choice between Trump and Cruz was like being shot and being poisoned. He didn’t really walk back the comment - he said Cruz was the one like poison, but poison was better because sometimes you recover. Not exactly a strong endorsement.
But Cruz wouldn’t rip apart the RNC, so they still like him better than Trump.
He’s tried; it’s a standard applause line in his stump speech. But Trump out-outsidered him.
Election outcomes in decreasing order of probability:
[ul][li] Trump is the nomninee. Hillary wins in November.[/li][li] Trump is the nominee, and becomes POTUS.[/li][li] Trump gets about 50% of the delegates but the nomination is given to Ryan-Kasich or such. Hillary wins in November.[/li][li] Trump gets about 50% of the delegates but the nomination is given to Cruz. Hillary wins in November.[/li][li] Trump missteps soon, e.g. showing with a live boy or dead girl, and does not approach 50% of the delegates.[/li][/ul]
Last summer I thought Trump had no chance, but feared that a Kasich or Ryan would be favored to defeat Hillary. Now I’m happy to see that only Trump, among Republicans, has a chance in November. If the Establishment finagles a replacement, a chunk of the GOP base wil be angered and refuse to vote GOP in November.
Given Trump’s penchant for stupidity, #5 in the above list may seem plausible but as Trump himself was first to point out, he could murder someone in daylight and it wouldn’t discourage his supporters.
The Votemaster: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2016/Pres/Maps/Mar25.html#item-1 reports a prediction, based on a state-by-state analysis that gives Trump 1239 delegates. Elsewhere he discusses the possibility that delegates can ignore their instructions or even that the convention could enact a rule freeing all delegates even on the first ballot. There is also, elsewhere on the site, of the National Enquirer claim. He kind of sort of tends to believe it, because if they don’t have evidence they would be in for a massive lawsuit.
Pretty solid analysis.
I was talking about this with a few people the other day. I agree – the party itself is willing to risk losing Trump voters support if it means keeping the republican party at least relatively cohesive. They can probably write off losing the White House and hope (expect) that Trump will eventually appeal to fewer and fewer people with each television appearance and tweet. But to have Donald Trump as the face of the Republican party, when he owes essentially nothing at all to them, poses the possibility of having the leader of his party essentially off the party chain and free to do as he pleases, whether they like it or not. That’s not typically the sort of candidate parties invest their time and money in.
As it stands now, given the very real possibility of a brokered convention nominee and a Trump independent run, the GOP are in danger of losing not only the White House but at least one house in congress. But that’s the way things stand now. However, it’s entirely possible that the wheels fall off of Trump’s express between now and the summer – that’s a very distinct possibility now that Rubio’s out. I also get the feeling that Trump is going to fall victim to his own excesses, and that there may be consequences before the general election. He’s emboldened by being virtually unassailable within the GOP voting base, but even as extreme as the GOP voters have been, I think even they might have their limits. The violence at rallies, the atrocious comments about women, and just the gutter talk coming from his campaign. I think even angry republicans have their limits.
The point of all this is, it’s one thing if Trump continues to win 3 out of 5 races the rest of the way. But if he suffers a significant losing streak, then a brokered convention would be a lot less controvertible. And it’s entirely possible that Trump suffers such a losing streak. Consider California, for instance. Having lived in that state and knowing how intense the republican voters tend to react to the issue of illegal immigration, I thought Trump would dominate Cruz. And yet the first poll has him winning by barely 10 percentage points. Leading, but not comfortably. Trump also needs to do well in Oregon and Washington, and I’m much less confident about Trump’s chances in those states, especially now with Rubio out.
Here’s a good article from Politico, raising essentially two points:
[ol]
[li]Trump is unlikely to reach 1,237 electors[/li][li]After the first ballot a lot of “his” electors are likely to defect (most likely to Cruz).[/li][/ol]
It’s increasingly looking like Trump is not going to make it after all.
The prediction markets still have Trump as the major frontrunner, and I think they have a pretty good track record, but it’s taken a big hit in the past few days – from about 80% down to the low 60s.
I think an open convention is inherently unpredictable, especially considering the lack of discipline (e.g. total batshit insanity) of both Republican candidates and voters in the last several months. Who the hell knows what those delegates will do after the 1st vote?
And that would actually constitute a *win *for the Forces of Sanity. Uh, wow.