Analysis of the Republican campaign ahead of Super Tuesday
By W.Z. | NEW YORK
AFTER starting with 17 candidates, the Republican field has narrowed to just three real contenders: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. At first glance, it may seem that all three have a decent shot at the nomination: according to RealClearPolitics, the three are averaging 35.6%, 19.8% and 17.4% in the national polls.
Punters, however, have a rather different view of the horse race. The latest odds on PredictIt show Donald Trump has about an 80% chance of winning the nomination, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz trailing behind at 17% and 5%, respectively. (The probabilities don’t quite add up to 100% for technical reasons.) Given his recent string of victories, Mr Trump’s strength is obvious, but why is the market relatively downbeat about Mr Cruz’s prospects? After all, unlike Mr Rubio he has actually won a state.
The main reason is the Byzantine mechanics of the Republican primaries. In order to win the nomination, a candidate must accrue at least 1,237 of the 2,472 delegates during the primaries and caucuses. Delegate-allocation rules can vary greatly from state to state: broadly speaking, most early-voting states allocate delegates on a proportional basis, while those that vote on or after March 15th allocate on a winner-takes-all basis. In South Carolina, an early-voting exception to that rule, Mr Trump won all 50 of the delegates despite taking just 32.5% of the popular vote.
Any system of rules this convoluted is bound to hurt some more than others, and unfortunately for Mr Cruz, he is part of the “some”. Cruz’s most loyal supporters tend to be staunch conservatives and evangelical Christians. Southern states whose demographics favour Cruz tend to allocate their delegates on a proportional basis, while more moderate ones, like Ohio and California, are winner-takes-all states. Ted Cruz is currently leading in Texas at 36%, suggesting that he will come out of the primary with just 89 out of 155 of the state’s delegates. If Marco Rubio were to win Florida by a similar margin, he would receive all 99 of the state’s delegates.
On Super Tuesday, 595 delegates from eleven states will be up for grabs in the Republican nomination. If the latest polls are any indicator, crude maths suggest that Trump will win around 300 delegates on Super Tuesday, compared to just 170 for Cruz and 110 for Rubio. While a poor performance for Mr Cruz on Tuesday would all but eliminate his prospects of winning the nomination, a superb performance would not raise them by much unless he can raise his polling numbers across the country. Assuming current polling trends persist, Donald Trump will win the nomination even if Mr Cruz were to win every delegate on Tuesday.
Will Rubio rise? Although Marco Rubio has never ranked better than third in the national polls, he has at times been the betting-market favourite. He is strongest with college graduates and moderates, in theory giving him an advantage in highly-educated states in the northeast or the west. So even if he were to perform poorly on Super Tuesday, he could conceivably still catch up in delegates.
What actually happens is another story, however, as Mr Rubio’s theoretical strengths have yet to yield any tangible results. Mr Rubio was supposed to inherit the bulk of Jeb Bush’s supporters, yet in Nevada Mr Trump won by double-digit margins with both college graduates and self-described moderates. It is also not clear that he will do any better in blue states: indeed, a recent poll from Emerson College has Mr Trump leading Mr Rubio by 50-16 in Massachusetts. Not even his native Florida seems poised to vote for him.
For months pundits have speculated about the possibility of a brokered convention in July, a scenario that would occur if none of the candidates won 1,237 delegates. Mr Trump’s last two wins have severely diminished those odds. If the current polling trends hold through March 15, Mr Trump will be the only candidate left who could plausibly win the nomination outright. It is now Mr Trump’s game to lose.
