Donald Trump won Nevada’s woefully mismanaged caucus (“the entire place was in chaos”, said a Republican party official), confirming his status as frontrunner as the field heads towards Super Tuesday.
Even before yesterday’s vote, some pundits were pretty much ready to crown Trump the nominee. Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin wrote on Monday that Trump was in an “extraordinarily commanding position” to effectively clinch the nomination “as early as mid-March”. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza said yesterday “I think it’s almost certainly too late” to stop Trump.
Such talk is too overconfident. Trump does not yet have the nomination in his grasp. The betting markets suggest a 68 per cent chance – what Sherman Kent would have called “probable”, but well short of “almost certain” – to 30 per cent for Rubio.
Trump has notched up three wins with a third of all the votes cast in the four contests so far. (Nevada was his biggest win yet, with 46 per cent.) That’s been enough because the other candidates have split the remaining two-thirds between them. The highest share any non-Trump candidate has got was the 28 per cent that won Iowa for Cruz, followed by Rubio’s 24 per cent in Nevada.
The question is: will results in the 30s continue to be enough for Trump to win? (He’s on 35 per cent nationally). Maybe not, if non-Trump voters coalesce around another candidate – most likely Rubio – as the others dwindle and drop out.
We’re already seeing the party elites do just that. In the three days since the South Carolina primary on Saturday – and Jeb Bush’s withdrawal from the race – Rubio has been endorsed by five Senators (two of them former Bush supporters), 11 Representatives (seven of whom had previously backed Bush), one Governor, one former Governor, and Bob Dole (who endorsed Bush in November).
And the polls suggest a lot of voters will do the same. An NBC/WSJ poll last week found 70 per cent of Republican voters saying they could see themselves supporting Rubio compared to 56 per cent for Trump, and found him beating Trump one-on-one by 57 per cent to 41 per cent. If Rubio can turn a big portion of that hypothetical support into real votes, and soon, he can deny Trump the nomination.
But there are two problems for Rubio: Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Neither looks like they’re going anywhere any time soon. Cruz has won as many convention delegates as Rubio so far, has plenty of money behind him, and is still polling at 19 per cent nationally. He could well add victory in his home state of Texas next week to his win in Iowa. As for Kasich, perhaps a set of bad results on Super Tuesday will make him drop out, but he’s already focusing on Michigan and Ohio – both favourable states for him that vote later in March. The longer Cruz and Kasich stay in, the harder it is for Rubio to unite the anti-Trump vote behind him.
That’ll really matter come 15 March and the delegate-rich winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio. Anyone’s path to the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination probably involves winning both of these states and their combined 165 delegates. Right now, the polls in Florida have Trump leading with 34 per cent and Rubio and Cruz on 17 per cent apiece. A Quinnipiac poll of Ohio released yesterday has Trump leading with 31 per cent, followed by Kasich on 26 per cent, Cruz on 21 per cent and Rubio on 13 per cent.
Of course, Trump’s numbers will probably rise as other candidates fall away – but the polling suggests Rubio’s are likely to rise more. The question is whether he can catch Trump by 15 March – a task that would be greatly helped by the decline and fall of their other rivals.
Even if Rubio wins one or both of Florida and Ohio – and even if that’s enough to stop Trump clinching the nomination – he could still fall short of securing a majority of delegates himself. That would mean a contested convention, which would be a nightmare for the Republican party. Yes, the establishment would probably be able to ensure that Trump did not emerge as the nominee. But he might decide that this amounted to unfair treatment, claim that it invalidates the pledge he signed to support the Republican nominee, and use it as justification to launch an independent bid for the presidency.
In that scenario, being the nominee might be a hollow victory for Rubio.
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