On the GOP side,the Wisconsin primary is winner-take-most along the lines of South Carolina. Wisconsin has 42 delegates: 18 will go to the candidate with the most votes statewide, and 3 per Congressional district will go to the candidate(s) with the most votes in each district, with 8 districts.
Not much polling of Wisconsin recently. 538’s weighted poll average has Trump 31.5%, Cruz 31.1%, and Kasich 23.2%. Polls-only 538 probabilities: Trump 48, Cruz 45, Kasich 7; their polls-plus probabilities are Cruz 71, Trump 22, Kasich 8.
A new Marquette University poll shows Cruz way out in front, 40-30-21 over Trump and Kasich, respectively. If he wins by that margin next Tuesday, he might well win all of Wisconsin’s delegates, and start cutting into Trump’s lead.
Nate Silver’s group has a March 22 dated roundtable discussion concerning the survey they took of their “fellow presidential election delegate obsessives” which averaged out has Trump coming shy of the magic number, while the University of Virginia Center for Politics has a March 24 dated crystal ball which shows him just besting 1237.
Both of them figured on Trump doing well in Wisconsin, with Nate & Co. figuring on 25 of the delegates and UoV 30.
However, as it stands now, there is a chance he could do as poorly as only picking up a handful of delegates, perhaps as low as three.
ETA: Because there is one congressional district where Trump is doing well, he could pick up the delegates there.
Wisconsin effectively offers 18 delegates to the statewide winner and another three for each of its eight congressional districts.
Its beginning to feel like Trump has started to run out of steam. There aren’t enough other “divide the vote” candidates left to divide the vote too much. I think Cruz will take Wisconsin.
Bernie will take Madison easily, but the rural areas will likely go establishment, and Milwaukee has a fairly high African American population. They’ll split delegates with Sanders being able to call it a win.
Trump has had a bad week and a big Cruz win in Wisconsin would be a serious setback. Trump needs to position himself as a more reasonable candidate who can unite most of the GOP around him and run a credible campaign in the general. Intellectually he probably understands this but emotionally he just can’t resist getting into ludicrous scraps.
The basic calculation for the Republicans is which hurts them less: alienating Trump supporters by nominating someone else in a contested convention or let Trump drag their party brand through the gutter over five excruciating months in the general election. The depths that Trump has plumbed in the last two weeks suggest that the latter may well be worse.
After Wisconsin, the campaign moves to the Northeast, with New York on April 19, and MD, DE, PA, CT, and RI on April 26. The polls of NY in mid to late March have all had Trump over 50% in NY, with the other two around 20%.
I really think the consequence to Trump of losing Wisconsin won’t go beyond his loss of Wisconsin’s delegates, IOW, I don’t think this ‘setback’ will change the minds of any voters down the road.
The direct effect of the Wisconsin delegates is pretty significant; a big Trump loss will make it harder for him to get to 1237. Beyond that it will also have an impact on the attitude of party insiders many of whom I suspect are disgusted and alarmed by Trump’s antics in the last two weeks but still unsure whether he can be stopped. A big Trump loss will stiffen their spines and ultimately these are the people who will be delegates and decide his fate at the convention if he can’t get 1237.
Republican party insiders lately can’t seem to find their butt cheeks with both hands, a situation I expect to continue through the rest of 2016.
And they may decide Trump’s fate at the convention - within limits. Both Trump and Cruz are committed to preserving Rule 40, which requires having a majority of the delegates in 8 states in order to have one’s name placed in nomination, because each of them knows his chances are maximized if there’s nobody else besides the two of them to choose from. And the chance that the rule can be changed over the opposition of both Trump and Cruz, who will likely go into the convention with about 3/4 of the delegates between them, is pretty minuscule.
So barring a sudden run of success for John Kasich, the convention much choose between Trump and Cruz. The party insiders may get the final word on which of the two becomes the nominee, but that’s as far as their powers will extend in all likelihood. In this case, ‘the party decides’ whether it would rather be executed by hanging or the firing squad.
This is a rarity indeed. Because of how late it is our primary in the past was usually meaningless.
6 months ago I had no intention of voting for Cruz. Though I agree with him on most issues back then Walker, Rubio, and Kasich were my choices of who could win both the primary and the general. I was not entirely alone in that sentiment on these boards if you’ll remember. Funny how things turned out.
I have yet to run into one person or even one sign of anyone who is going to vote for Trump. I predict Cruz will Win.
In my town there was a huge home made TRUMP sign that went up in early January. The guy made it from white plastic. It was about two feet high and ten feet wide and he had it up between two trees in his front yard. About ten days ago someone vandalized the sign by breaking off the lower part of each letter. The rest of the sign was removed a couple of days later.
This is on Long Island.
I think Bernie and Cruz will win in Wisconsin. I believe the Milwaukee hate radio shows have endorsed Cruz. In recent years they’ve pretty much been running the state.
Trump’s campaign does seem to be fading. It seems (to me) he has lost interest. Right in the middle of things he took a six day hiatus from the campaign. What vitally interested candidate does that?
If he loses in Wisconsin he can gain it all back and more by winning in NY, but big Mo might be against him by April 19.
He should take one now, completely incognito, if that’s something he’s capable of doing. At least he wouldn’t be able to say something really idiotic and inflammatory while he was gone.
Cruz will beat Trump and Kasich by a substantial margin, probably with a clear majority of the vote. I suspect Sanders will beat Clinton by a fairly substantial margin as well.
He may get some of it back in NY, but Cruz is going to beat him in a lot of other states, including some states that Trump might have won easily a few months ago.
How can you even talk about momentum with one puny state voting in the middle of a three week dead zone? Personally, I hope this Cruz cheating scandal breaks open.
QFT. (Actually 4 weeks between the AZ/UT primaries and the NY primary, with WI being the only notable political event in between, on the GOP side at least.)
Re Bucky’s comment about Trump’s hiatus: this has been one long political season - I’m sure all the candidates are a bit tired. You gotta take a break sometime, and this is about as good a time as you’re going to get.