Will Donald Trump succeed in holding off the Republican nomination? The answer is yes. Despite his massive win over Marco Rubio in Florida and narrow victories over Ted Cruz in Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina, he has yet to win a majority of the delegates awarded — 661 at this writing, with a few more to be added in Missouri and North Carolina. The Illinois congressional district totals are shown in the table.
To be nominated, each candidate must obtain a majority of 1,237 delegates. To achieve this, Trump must win a majority of delegates in the upcoming contests. The March 15 results show how this could have happened. For GOP voters who fear that Trump’s nomination will damage the party, the nation, or both, the question is what to do about it.
Such voters make up a majority or nearly a majority of the Republican primary and caucus electorate, which, as Trump rightly noted, is much larger than in previous presidential election cycles. So far, 18 million Americans have voted in the Republican primaries – just slightly fewer than in the entire 2008 and 2012 cycles.
Trump won 37 percent of the vote. Despite his suggestions, he did not win a huge majority among first-time voters. But that gave him 47 percent of the delegates. To see why, take a look at the March 15 results. If Ted Cruz had won the votes cast for John Kasich or Marco Rubio in Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, he would have defeated Trump and deprived him of several dozen delegates.
Something like that happened in Ohio. Marco Rubio, facing certain defeat in Florida, advised his Ohio supporters to vote for John Kasich. Rubio’s vote there evaporated from 13 percent in a February poll to 3 percent. A similar pairing could have secured Cruz victories in Missouri and North Carolina and in many congressional districts in Illinois.
“If anti-Trump voters can find a better way to coordinate around one candidate,” writes Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight, “they will likely defeat Trump in many upcoming elections.” The obvious candidate is Ted Cruz. The only alternative is John Kasich, who only won in his home state. He likely would have withdrawn after New Hampshire had it not been for Rubia’s debate slip-up; Kasich’s 16 percent was actually 1 percent lower than the 2012 percentage for Jon Huntsman, who withdrew a few days later.
On Tuesday night, an enthusiastic Kasich said he was going to Philadelphia, even though Pennsylvania’s primary election is six weeks away on April 26. The obvious reason: Philadelphia’s suburbs are home to a lot of upper-class voters, which is the only demographic among which Kasich does well.
But the Philadelphia suburbs only cast about a fifth of the votes in the Pennsylvania primary. In Ohio, despite his local popularity, Kasich lost every county along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. He is likely to fare worse against Trump in demographically and attitudinally similar western Pennsylvania, which carries as many votes as the Philadelphia suburbs.
Why didn’t Kasich mention traveling elsewhere? Because the competitions between now and April 26 are not favorable for him. He barely registered in a February poll in Wisconsin (April 5 vote), where Republican suburbanites are much more conservative than those in most northern metropolitan areas.
His supporters are looking to New York, which votes April 19. But registered Republicans there are less inclined to Ivy League cultural liberalism (they are now Democrats) than Italian-American homeowners enraged about high property taxes and corrupt local governments. Among those voters, Cruz could provide competition for Trump. Kasich would simply split the vote and give Trump more delegates, as he did in Illinois.
The last massive race will be in California on June 7. What happens there if the anti-Trump vote is split can be seen by looking back to 2008, when California voted early. John McCain won statewide with 42 percent, while more conservative Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee took 35 percent and 12 percent. But most of California’s delegates are chosen by congressional districts in a winner-take-all format, and with the opposition split, McCain carried 48 of 53 districts, winning 155 of 170 delegates.
Many anti-Trump voters dislike Ted Cruz and consider him selfish (like most senators). But if he is nominated, his interests and those of the party will overlap, at least temporarily. Republicans who want to stop Trump need to hold their noses if necessary and vote for Cruz.
