Winning has been Donald Trump’s cure for all of his failings this campaign. But while his failings have been on full display this week, a Wisconsin win on Tuesday looks unlikely.
Trump trails Ted Cruz in each of the last six major polls, including a Marquette University Law School survey last week that put Cruz in first place with 40 percent of the GOP primary vote, leading Trump by 10 percentage points.
If those results hold, Cruz would not only win Wisconsin, but he’d
take the lion’s share of the state’s 42 delegates thanks to Wisconsin’s
“winner-take-most” primary rules. Those are delegates Trump badly needs
to stay on a narrow path toward the 1,237 delegates required to clinch
the GOP nomination before a possible contested convention.
And Trump’s chase for 1,237 has taken on new urgency last week, as Trump’s rivals repeatedly outfoxed him in the behind-the-scenes struggle to install favorable convention delegates in state after state and Trump himself courted fresh controversy with Republican primary voters.
None of this is new for Trump. In the run-up to the election, Trump answered every critique with his surging poll numbers. And since the voting began, his string of wins and massive delegate lead has been an effective rebuttal to anyone attempting to pick apart his political heterodoxies and disorganized campaign. But his campaign faces fresh problems ahead of the only primary contest for the next two weeks.
The problems only got worse over the weekend. In Tennessee, where delegates will be able to vote freely after two ballots at the convention, the Trump campaign accused party officials of making a last-minute push to approve anti-Trump delegates. Trump supporters rushed a party meeting where delegates were being selected, but the party voted its slate through anyway.
And in North Dakota, where delegates are free to vote how they want from the start, only one of the 25 delegates picked at the state party gathering this weekend is publicly supporting Trump. 18 of those 25 slots, however, were filled by candidates on Cruz’s preferred slate.
While primary or caucus results determine almost all of the delegates’ first-ballot votes, if that ballot fails to produce a winner, many of the delegates are free to vote how they choose in later rounds. And as POLITICO reported last week, those delegates are ready to flee Trump in droves.
Trump did little to help himself in the past week, generating a string of controversies over his Twitter treatment of Cruz’s wife and whiplash-inducing shifts on punishments for women who have abortions. The businessman’s campaign did little to pick up the slack, with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski getting charged with simple battery over his rough treatment of a reporter on the campaign trail.
Regardless of Tuesday’s results, Trump will end the day still firmly in first place, but the campaign foundation has worrisome cracks. And unless Trump can pull off a Wisconsin upset, he’ll end Tuesday with out a win to paper them over.
Wisconsin Republicans will dole out 42 delegates Tuesday. Here’s what to watch for.
The “winner-take-most” system and the rest of the rules
Wisconsin uses a hybrid system to dole out its 42 delegates. The statewide winner gets 18 delegates. The other 24 are allocated based on the results in the state’s eight congressional districts, with the winner in each district claiming all three of its delegates.
As for the people who will actually fill those delegate slots and go to the Republican National Convention, that’s complicated too. Of the 18 at-large slots for delegates for the statewide winner, three are members of the Republican National Committee, while the other 15 are chosen at the state convention in May. The delegates for the 24 district-level slots will be filled at various district caucuses over the next month.
When the chosen delegates arrive in Cleveland in July, they’re bound to vote according to the results of the primary. That’s true on the first ballot as well as subsequent ballots, barring two conditions: The delegates become unbound if the candidate releases them, and they become unbound if the candidate they’re standing for receives less than a third of the vote on any given ballot.
Isn’t this like every other time Trump was supposedly “in trouble?”
Trump has continually disproven his would-be Cassandras, who in the campaign’s earlier stages were eager to declare each Trump controversy a fatal one. Those predictions, however, were largely based on a similar premise: that Trump’s latest flap would be the one to finally drive away his supporters.
In Wisconsin, however, Trump’s problem isn’t that he’s losing support. It’s that he’s not gaining any and his rivals are.
When the Marquette University Law School poll surveyed state Republicans in February, Trump’s sat at 30 percent, good enough for an 11-point lead over Cruz. In Marquette’s latest poll, Trump was still at 30 percent — but now 10 points behind a surging Cruz.
And Trump’s chase for 1,237 has taken on new urgency last week, as Trump’s rivals repeatedly outfoxed him in the behind-the-scenes struggle to install favorable convention delegates in state after state and Trump himself courted fresh controversy with Republican primary voters.
None of this is new for Trump. In the run-up to the election, Trump answered every critique with his surging poll numbers. And since the voting began, his string of wins and massive delegate lead has been an effective rebuttal to anyone attempting to pick apart his political heterodoxies and disorganized campaign. But his campaign faces fresh problems ahead of the only primary contest for the next two weeks.
The problems only got worse over the weekend. In Tennessee, where delegates will be able to vote freely after two ballots at the convention, the Trump campaign accused party officials of making a last-minute push to approve anti-Trump delegates. Trump supporters rushed a party meeting where delegates were being selected, but the party voted its slate through anyway.
And in North Dakota, where delegates are free to vote how they want from the start, only one of the 25 delegates picked at the state party gathering this weekend is publicly supporting Trump. 18 of those 25 slots, however, were filled by candidates on Cruz’s preferred slate.
While primary or caucus results determine almost all of the delegates’ first-ballot votes, if that ballot fails to produce a winner, many of the delegates are free to vote how they choose in later rounds. And as POLITICO reported last week, those delegates are ready to flee Trump in droves.
Trump did little to help himself in the past week, generating a string of controversies over his Twitter treatment of Cruz’s wife and whiplash-inducing shifts on punishments for women who have abortions. The businessman’s campaign did little to pick up the slack, with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski getting charged with simple battery over his rough treatment of a reporter on the campaign trail.
Regardless of Tuesday’s results, Trump will end the day still firmly in first place, but the campaign foundation has worrisome cracks. And unless Trump can pull off a Wisconsin upset, he’ll end Tuesday with out a win to paper them over.
Wisconsin Republicans will dole out 42 delegates Tuesday. Here’s what to watch for.
The “winner-take-most” system and the rest of the rules
Wisconsin uses a hybrid system to dole out its 42 delegates. The statewide winner gets 18 delegates. The other 24 are allocated based on the results in the state’s eight congressional districts, with the winner in each district claiming all three of its delegates.
As for the people who will actually fill those delegate slots and go to the Republican National Convention, that’s complicated too. Of the 18 at-large slots for delegates for the statewide winner, three are members of the Republican National Committee, while the other 15 are chosen at the state convention in May. The delegates for the 24 district-level slots will be filled at various district caucuses over the next month.
When the chosen delegates arrive in Cleveland in July, they’re bound to vote according to the results of the primary. That’s true on the first ballot as well as subsequent ballots, barring two conditions: The delegates become unbound if the candidate releases them, and they become unbound if the candidate they’re standing for receives less than a third of the vote on any given ballot.
Isn’t this like every other time Trump was supposedly “in trouble?”
Trump has continually disproven his would-be Cassandras, who in the campaign’s earlier stages were eager to declare each Trump controversy a fatal one. Those predictions, however, were largely based on a similar premise: that Trump’s latest flap would be the one to finally drive away his supporters.
In Wisconsin, however, Trump’s problem isn’t that he’s losing support. It’s that he’s not gaining any and his rivals are.
When the Marquette University Law School poll surveyed state Republicans in February, Trump’s sat at 30 percent, good enough for an 11-point lead over Cruz. In Marquette’s latest poll, Trump was still at 30 percent — but now 10 points behind a surging Cruz.
The good news for Trump is that polls have him crushing the
competition in the next contest, a New York primary on April 19 with 95
delegates at stake. But Trump’s safest path to the nomination is to
clinch it with a majority of delegates, and poll results like
Wisconsin’s make it unclear how he can do that without broadening his
base of support.
Cruz feels the pressure too
Meanwhile, Cruz’s identity as the lone candidate who can defeat Trump will be tested in Wisconsin.
At this point, the biggest risk to Cruz appears to be John Kasich, who, with poll support consistently in the high teens and low twenties, is unlikely to win. But he could still play Cruz spoiler, pulling anti-Trump votes away from Cruz and paving the way for the billionaire to once again take advantage of a fractured field.
The senator is bolstered by the state party’s anti-Trump movement, which has been almost uniquely unambiguous in favoring Cruz over Kasich. Cruz is also no longer splitting votes with Marco Rubio, his super PAC has attacked Kasich in the last week, he has the endorsement of Gov. Scott Walker and major party players, and he is benefitting from a primary immediately following one Trump’s most tumultuous weeks of the entire campaign.
If Cruz can’t win there and now, then where and when?
There’s the Milwaukee-area, and then there’s everywhere else
Wisconsin boasts distinct strains of conservatism concentrated in the state’s different regions. They have put up a united front in recent elections, especially Democrats’ efforts to oust Walker, but the divisions could show in the primary.
The establishment’s power is concentrated in the suburbs and counties surrounding Milwaukee — the state’s most populous area. It’s a political powerhouse filled with affluent conservatives, many of whom have united behind Cruz in an attempt to take down Trump (though not without a wandering eye or two in the direction of Paul Ryan).
Trump’s hope for overcoming that coalition is two-fold. He needs to turn out anti-establishment Republicans in the state’s rural areas, and, as Wisconsin Republicans have an open primary, he needs to rope in independents and new voters. Trump has long said that blue-collar independent voters will flock to him, and Wisconsin — with places like Milwaukee, Janesville, Racine and Beloit that have felt the sting of deindustrialization — would seem a solid place to back up that claim.
Steven Shepard contributed to this story.
Cruz feels the pressure too
Meanwhile, Cruz’s identity as the lone candidate who can defeat Trump will be tested in Wisconsin.
At this point, the biggest risk to Cruz appears to be John Kasich, who, with poll support consistently in the high teens and low twenties, is unlikely to win. But he could still play Cruz spoiler, pulling anti-Trump votes away from Cruz and paving the way for the billionaire to once again take advantage of a fractured field.
The senator is bolstered by the state party’s anti-Trump movement, which has been almost uniquely unambiguous in favoring Cruz over Kasich. Cruz is also no longer splitting votes with Marco Rubio, his super PAC has attacked Kasich in the last week, he has the endorsement of Gov. Scott Walker and major party players, and he is benefitting from a primary immediately following one Trump’s most tumultuous weeks of the entire campaign.
If Cruz can’t win there and now, then where and when?
There’s the Milwaukee-area, and then there’s everywhere else
Wisconsin boasts distinct strains of conservatism concentrated in the state’s different regions. They have put up a united front in recent elections, especially Democrats’ efforts to oust Walker, but the divisions could show in the primary.
The establishment’s power is concentrated in the suburbs and counties surrounding Milwaukee — the state’s most populous area. It’s a political powerhouse filled with affluent conservatives, many of whom have united behind Cruz in an attempt to take down Trump (though not without a wandering eye or two in the direction of Paul Ryan).
Trump’s hope for overcoming that coalition is two-fold. He needs to turn out anti-establishment Republicans in the state’s rural areas, and, as Wisconsin Republicans have an open primary, he needs to rope in independents and new voters. Trump has long said that blue-collar independent voters will flock to him, and Wisconsin — with places like Milwaukee, Janesville, Racine and Beloit that have felt the sting of deindustrialization — would seem a solid place to back up that claim.
Steven Shepard contributed to this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment