With more than 80% of the vote reporting, Ted Cruz is more doubling Donald Trump’s support in the Kansas caucuses. Little Marco is far behind, but above the 10% threshold needed to get at least a delegate or two. Kasich is at about 9% and at risk of getting shut out.
Results:
Kansas caucuses (3 PM ET for Republicans, 4 PM ET for Democrats)
Kentucky caucuses, Republicans only (4 PM ET in the eastern half of the state, 5 PM in the western)
Louisiana primary (9 PM ET)
Maine caucuses, Republicans only (12 PM ET to 7 PM ET, varying by county)
Nebraska caucuses, Democrats only (11 AM ET to 9 PM ET, varying by county)
Kansas is either STRONG on the faith or has its machines programmed. Remember the polls last election?
Kansas is no surprise. But Maine?
I don’t think of Maine Republicans are moderate like in New Hampshire or Vermont, but still…
Maine is only 9% counted right now. I don’t know the geographic spread, though.
Kansas isn’t really a surprise. It’s in the South where we’ll see if Trump is dented or not (I’m guessing not).
Closed primary, and a caucus at that. Doesn’t surprise me Cruz is winning there.
Maine, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t have bet on Cruz winning it, but again, if it’s a closed primary it’s going to be closer than if it was open.
LePage endorsed Christie, then Trump.
Given that half of his own party hates LePage, there’s a non-trivial anti-Trump tranche of GOP voters to be won. Cruz would appear to be winning them.
No obvious moderate in the race, either. )Rubio’s no moderate.)
Courtesy of Nate Cohn and billmon for pointing this out, but Maine wasn’t much of Trump country in the first place.
What an odd hopscotch of support Trump has.
I don’t know, looks familiar to me:
http://www.270towin.com/1960_Election/
Not so odd if you think about it. The east coast bully style is doesn’t travel west all that well. (Christie would have had the same problem.) This map may also line of up with TV viewer habits.
My favorite part of Governor LePage’s endorsement of Trump is that a couple of days after he announced the endorsement on a radio talk show, a New York Times story represented him as having been in a room with other prominent Republican Party leaders a few days preceding his endorsement, personally trying to rally the GOP leaders to form cooperative plans to stop Trump.
LePage has certainly done a number of things more embarrassing, but that’s still very embarrassing.
Maine seems like the most interesting result.
How does a Trump, Cruz, Kaisich race play out? I’m assuming Rubio is the walking dead at this point.
Okay people – time to get out the old 11-dimensional chess board and figure this out once and for all. Rubio has become a joke, so the questions are, between Cruz & Trump:
I’m headed south if Cruz wins. Forget Canada, it will have all the yuppies.
But who’s easier to beat – trump or cruz?
neither
My advance party is in Belize even as we write.
And if so, is it worth the additional risk to have a better shot at Congress?
Tough question. I have a nagging doubt about Trump’s ability to mobilise the Rust Belt; a little warning bell about Republican turnout ticking up and ours down. That Trump consistently does better in open primaries than closed perhaps should be a red flag of some kind. I think Trump would be harder to beat and that’s got to be the significant risk.
But if you are looking at the map for the next census/gerrymander in 2020 Trump may have some merits. A Cruz defeat would be another beating for a beaten dog. A Trump defeat, it seems to me, would be more inclined to tear their party up root and branch.
Can you imagine McConnell’s dilemma…Trump or Cruz? I guess if he is hoping for the loss, he picks Cruz and status quo, his best option, imo, if Hillary is the Dem. But if Cruz should win…..LOL
I imagine it daily; Scylla or Charybdis as I prefer to think of it. Here’s Scylla:
I’m guessing that’s Cruz.
Charybdis seems more substantial and yet obscure:
More like Trump.
But don’t think it is just McConnell and congressional Republicans facing this choice; it’s everyone in their Rolodex and at their favourite restaurants too. And all their good mates on the telly and in on the grift generally. Sad times on K Street. Either way there is going to be a reckoning.
Cruz and Trump.
Scylla and Charybdis.
Rock and a hard place.
You beat me to it, Shaun.
AG
Ouch:
Tough sell but nice to know that no existential threat will distract Republicans from bitter, internecine feuding for every scrap of what’s left of their party.
He’s everyone’s favourite wounded prey:
Shazzam.
Ah! That’s another important angle to consider. If Trump is the nominee, the redstate.com/CPAC crowd will continue their battle cry of “if only the GOP would nominate a real conservative”, but Cruz, as they love to repeat ad infinitum, has a 100% conservative rating. If Cruz were to lose big in November it would really be a punch to the gut for “the movement”. On the other hand it would give the RNC a chance to regain control. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
100% USDA approved, grain-fed, unelectable conservative. Like all of them since at least Goldwater. Conservatism as we know it is like an infestation of bedbugs.
To your underlying question, this is exactly what we should be considering about now. Personally I think Trump takes a blowtorch to congressional races; not sure about states. Cruz has built a powerful constituency among state legislators.
This is where I tend to flub on projections. In the abstract, it doesn’t compute for me that more than 25% of voters are so lame that they’d make an effort to vote for such loathsome creatures. Not Trump or Cruz, Romney, McCain (after he chose a nincumpoop VP), or Nixon. Reagan wasn’t loathsome, merely fake and senile. GWB was dumb. All the others were dull, unimaginative, and mostly clueless; ideal puppets because they can operate without the strings showing.
So far it’s unclear what all the various GOP and rightward leaning voter factions may do under the various scenarios. What I suspect we’re seeing today is that the fundie faction has coalesced around Cruz now that the other fundie options are out of the race. If Trump were out, do the tea baggers all move to Cruz? What portion of Trump’s support is from people that are single candidate voters and otherwise don’t vote? And what does the GOP elite do with a guy like Cruz that they loathe?
Another difficulty in projecting at this time is that we haven’t seen a two-person or even three person GOP debate. Thus, matching any of them up in a two person debate with Clinton or Sanders is prone to error. Before this whole show began, I watch Kasich go one on one with Deval Patrick. Patrick was good, but Kasich was better; so, it was surprising to me as to how lame he’s been in the GOP debates.
We’ve also not seen Clinton under any sort of sustained attack in a debate. She did wither in the very brief ones that happened. Sanders will be Sanders, but would expect he would have more game at that point.
All very wide open as far as I can see.
It’s not 11-dimensional chess when you limit to Trump and Cruz. But…
…the answer to 1 2 and 3 is all the same: neither/both.
What do I win?
Door number 1: Cruz with nukes
Door number 2: Trump with nukes
Door number 3: Whoever the Dems nominate with nukes
What do you win, indeed? Choose wisely!
On the Kansas Dem caucus…
Massive turnout! People are still getting in the door in places. My location couldn’t even caucus, just had ballot type voting. And of the sites I know about, bernie’s way ahead as of now, like I said, extremely long lines.
You live in Kansas, mino? I feel your pain.
Lived there as a kid. Have relatives there and in Mo.
I’m sorry for your relatives. I’m assuming they didn’t vote for Brownback, but that might not be a valid assumption.
Kansas turnout in 2008 was 36,500. Turnout 2016 was 39,000. So a state in Democratic primary with increased turnout.
Only the second state so far with increased DEM turnout over ’08. (I haven’t been tracking the GOP.) But in CO and KS it wasn’t by much.
The pattern is clear. Clinton is only improving her raw vote totals in states that went heavily for Obama in ’08 and have a large population of AAs, but only a fraction of those voters are turning out. Otherwise she’s flat or down.
In OK and KS, Sanders nearly matched the raw votes that Obama received in ’08. HRC got 4,000 more in KS than she did last time, but 89 thousand less in OK (which she did win in ’08). If there were other than crazy loons on the GOP side, all these results for HRC should scare the beezeebus out of DEMs.
I didn’t believe them, but it looks like the people who said that a competitive race is what drives turnout were right after all.
Let’s hope it stays that way…
My favorite tidbit from one of the caucuses today:
Hillary voters: “We’re with her!”
Bernie voters: “He’s with us!”
Trump voters: “Gott mit uns!”
Cruz’s good showing today has to put a big stall on Trump’s momentum. Cruz also won CPAC strawpoll.
So will Trump offer more of the same but louder or will he start rolling out more specifics?
My personal hope is that Trump pivots on climate change so that he can attack Cruz’s now debunked Senate hearings. A Rep climate change debate…oh my!
Be heads ‘sploding in the super pacs if that happened.
But I think Trump is already talking himself into pivoting to the general election or at least away from the deeply conservative constituencies. If he’s thinks he can lose some delegates and still win it makes sense as the race heads away from the South. Florida seems his only ‘must win’ now.
Trump wins Louisiana and Rubio fals to meet the 20% minimum threshold for delegates. And so awakens the establishment from their panicky fever dreams, too, one supposes.
Delegate math looking better today for anyone not named Trump?
Right.
Sometimes, circumstances make it difficult to pull off the sophistry of spin very well. Even conceding that fact, this is bad spin. But very, satisfyingly funny. Rubio is a worm, has discredited himself even further in the last week, and deserves to lose.
It’s only 20% at the state level, in the CD’s there is no threshold, so Rubio will get a few.
Interesting results in the counties that border Ohio – essentially a 3 way race between Kaisch, Cruz and Trump.
Kasich leads in the last Michigan poll (though its ARG)
Pretty clear signs of movement to Cruz and Kasich out of the debate. Rubio looks spent – but can he win Florida?
3/15 is the day of decision: 4 mostly mostly WTA all states with roughly 280 delegates at stake. Trump leads in all 4 WTA states, and I project he would lead 780 to 318 for Cruz and 182 for Rubio. Flip Florida and Ohio and it becomes hard to see how anyone wins a majority – and the GOP has time to figure out a plan to stop Trump.
At this moment if forced to guess I would say Cruz will win the nomination.
Projection here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5tO3BMcuEfjceRUcdu2IV6gmFaFKABFVdvqT9WCEvY/edit#gid=1133454
159
So we know what to watch. Cheers.
A lesson in social media. I tweeted something about Rubio with Kevin Klondike of Chrystal Ball. Steven Hayes retweeted it.
And then Drudge News re-tweeted that.
And that blew up my notifications.
Linkie?
dcg1114 is me on twitter.
notifications climbing by the minute….
Trump is having a rough patch but is leaning on his former two-digit lead to stay competitive. A day is a long time in politics. But Rubio looks very weak.
It is the splits in some of the counties in Kentucky that are amazing. One county was 29-25-22-22.
I have never seen anything like it.
Cruz outperformed significantly in both LA and KY. But it is WHERE Cruz ran well, particularly in KY that was the surprise. Beating Trump in White Collar suburbs, but losing the rural evangelical counties in both LA and KY.
A race turned on its head.
Recent Florida trends are not good for Trump; but isn’t Rubio running against a headwind there, Cruz now resurgent and Bush not an enthusiastic ally?
Noticed Rubio skipped his usual not-victory speech.
Rubio is looking at a tough stretch – finish 4th in MI and probably a bad 3rd in MS.
So if he drops can Cruz win Florida?
This is a very fluid race – as fluid as any since the ’88 Dem race was before Super Tuesday.
Something else: Cruz doing well in the southern Maine Seacoast – rich towns – the home of the Bush’s.
The various GOP base factions do seem to be having trouble sorting themselves out.
Interesting to see that Cruz is gaining with folks like himself and Heidi.
Trump has another problem – most of the contests ahead are closed – so no independents.
Fascinating race. All Cruz has to do is get up and say: “I went to Harvard and my wife is at Goldman, so you know I was just kidding, right? Now, do any of you know how to fix a slice”
Cruz has been nowhere in the north – a non-factor until today. Kasich should be dead an buried – but it he wins Michigan…
Maybe ‘The Donald’ should spend some of his yuuge fortune.
Spending (in millions) – campaign (FEC report date: 1/31) PACs (FEC reports date: 2/22)
Cruz $41 (campaign) $21 (PACs) – total $62
Rubio $33 (campaign) $28 (PACs) – total $61
Trump $24 (campaign) $2 (PACs) – total $26
Kasich $7 (campaign) $11 (PACs) — total $18
If Trump is actually just making it up as he goes along with no actual plan other to pick off one weak candidate (often but not always the weakest) at a time (which is what it does look like), then would have to agree that Cruz has the advantage.
For a few weeks I’ve had the sense that Trump prefers Cruz to be the last one standing among his competitors. Could be that he wanted to decimate that GOP choices first. Or maybe Rubio and Jeb? were just in the way of Trump taking his second home state – and ego thing for Trump; whereas, he didn’t much care about not coming in first in TX and OH. OTOH if there is a method to his madness, Cruz will be the easiest one for him to take out.
For anyone keeping score Trump’s Florida stump speech is now at least a seven on a 1-10 scale for demagoguery:
I’m guessing, as Molly Ivins said, it “probably sounded better in the original German.”
Absent Trump Cruz might have sprung a nasty surprise on the GOP all on his own. Between them they have absolutely destroyed the establishment and tag-teamed it wherever it stirs. The nomination may be still be in doubt but the establishment has been unequivocally dashed to pieces.
Finally Kentucky drops; for Trump. The attending courtiers were getting restless waiting to publicise his
‘press conference’victory dance.So funny because the only reason KY held GOP caucuses was for Rand Paul to get around state law that didn’t allow a candidate to appear on the ballot twice for two different offices. The KY GOP went along with the scheme but Paul has to pay for the caucuses — estimate $250,000 or more.
Not bad turnout numbers considering that they normally don’t caucus.
Even though Sanders won 2 states to Hillary’s one, he still lost ground to her in delegates counts. She won 53 to his 44. Hillary is up to 1121 delegates to Sanders 486, (Including superdelegates). Last poll numbers in Michigan had Hillary up 25%
And…Cruz looks like he’d rather punch Trump in the mouth than take his shit. I am a supporter of neither…I actually find Cruz more frightening than Trump because he is much more intelligent… but bullies don’t like that game.
Not one bit.
AG
I agree. Cruz is scarier.
You knew he’d wind up going after Rubio as a lightweight and portray him as a silly child, but the “Little Marco” description conveys both beautifully. If I give Trump credit for nothing else, I’ll give him credit for this: He’s a zen master in the ancient arts of bullying and assholery.
The problem for Trump is that it looks to me like Rubio supporters are going to Cruz. Demographically, that could be really interesting.
Bernie won ME — more votes than Obama got in the 2008 and Clinton received fewer votes than she did in ’08.
Not scientific — Detroit News — DEM Flint debate poll. Not sure I’ve seen one that’s this lopsided. 96% to 4%. Perhaps HRC’s enthusiastic supporters don’t flock to on-line polls. Might be an age difference thing between HRC’s and Bernie’s supporters.