Monday, March 21, 2016

Farewell To Senator Cruz On Tuesday

UPDATE: I am leaving the Utah section below as I have no problem with it. Even the "outlier" poll was way wrong which shows it is almost impossible to poll caucus states with any reliability.

Arizona worked out even better for Donald Trump. He outperformed the aggregate RCP poll (38%) by 9 points 

winning at 47%. His votes at this writing with in 80% in is 116000 votes ahead of Cruz on a miserable 24%.

That was the last caucus state and Cruz ends the evening on 755 delegates with the massive Northeastern states to come.

Trump against 16 candidates got 12,000 more votes than Hillary did against just one;



Some further notes

At 92% Arizona GOP voter turnout 532,000 Arizona Democratic turnout 394,000
Arizona; Cruz 24.4 "All others" 18.6 Kasich 10%
"All others" ran a brilliant campaign to get to 6 points of Cruz
New establishment pick? Rubio wins with strong 3rd place yet again
Rubio 70,500 Kasich 52,444
Arizona Trump vs 16 candidates 246,000 Hillary Vs 1 candidate 232,000
Final March 22nd delegate count Trump 59 (Arizona 58/Virgin Islands 1) Cruz 40 (Utah)Unbound 9 (Am.Samoa) Tot 755
American Samoa Newspaper; GOP meeting "Our (9) delegates will go to the convention unbound" 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ce...
http://www.samoanews.com/conte... …
Congrat's to Opinion Savvy pollster for getting Trump's Arizona result spot on
@Opinion_Savvy
@realDonaldTrump Outperformed the Arizona poll average by 9 points. Got more votes than Hillary beat Cruz by 114,000

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Tuesday March 25th will be the day that Senator Cruz's campaign comes to an end. Yes of course he may very well continue on doggedly until the convention, or until Donald Trump passes the magic 1237 delegate level, but the next round of primary elections are all bad for Cruz. Barring lightning striking politically it does not seem possible for Cruz to stop Trump.

On Tuesday Utah holds its caucus election and in those type of elections, especially where there is a significant Mormon population, Trump does poorly. For what it is worth, an obscure Utah poll has Cruz on 53% and Trump on a meager 11%. The poll seems designed to give Trump the worst possible result-57% of those polled were "strongly conservative" and 54% were 55 years old + including 31% being 65 years old+



This may bode poorly for Cruz as the Utah primary awards all 40 of its delegates to a candidate that gets 50+ of the vote. As Cruz is within the polls supposed margin of error of 4% with its massive bias, then Cruz may well end up under the 50% mark. At that point the delegate distribution becomes proportional and Trump will pick up some delegates.



Arizona is also holding a primary on Tuesday and all its 56 delegates are up for grabs on a winner take all basis. With Trump well ahead (13% in the aggregate of polls) in all polling he would, with a win, have 753 delegates plus whatever he can get from Utah if Cruz is below 50% there.

And that is basically that for Cruz. The next round of primaries, after a bit of a hiatus are Trump friendly to say the least.




In Wisconsin with its 42 delegates Trump was ahead of Cruz in late February 30% to 19%. Given the Michigan and Illinois results for Trump it seems unlikely this is now fertile ground for Cruz. Worse for him Wisconsin is an open primary in which Trump does extremely well with crossover votes from blue collar Dem's.

New York would seem a slaughter for Cruz. The recent poll from Emerson was an astounding Trump 64% Cruz 12%. If this is anywhere near the final result Trump would be on track to receive all 95 delegates at which point Trump would have around 860 delegates with 5 more eastern states to come on April 26th.

These five states, winner take all/most/(1)proportional, have 172 delegates with New Jersey chiming in with 51 "winner take all" on June 7th, the likelihood of that person being Cruz is minimal. That's a total of 223 available for Trump on top of the possible 860 he could very well have after New York. 

There's 375 available further on from a cluster of states including California (172 delegates) which make the math's very clear. Unless something really dramatic happens Utah is Cruz's last hurrah and if he gets below 50% it will be a very muted hurrah indeed.