Super Tuesday — My Take

March 1 was the first day with multiple primaries, mostly situated in the South. In some ways it gave clarity, in others in muddied things up. Let’s take a look at how each candidate performed.

Trump

Donald Trump won seven out of the eleven races yesterday. Four of his wins, Massachusetts, Alabama, Georgia & Tennessee, were convincing wins. But he won Virginia by only 35–32 over Rubio, Arkansas 33–31 over Cruz and Vermont 33–30 over Kasich. Overall, his results are on average consistent with a 35% level of support.

While Trump is clearly the front-runner, he is not winning everywhere. He even came in 3rd place in Minnesota. Negative attacks can still hurt him or at least limit his rise. Depressing thought? The field won’t consolidate anytime soon.

Cruz

Ted Cruz had a very good day. Aside from a crushing win in his home state of Texas, he pulled off wins in Oklahoma and Alaska, bringing his total states to four. His overall delegate and vote count put him in 2nd place. I will freely admit that I was wrong in my Twitter predictions that he would bleed support to Rubio. I can hardly blame anyone for seeing him now as the best chance to block Trump.

The flip side? He’s done very well in his own home state and has done okay in other southern states. And he’s good at organizing caucuses. But I remain unconvinced that he can even be competitive in moderate states, let alone win them. Outside of the South and caucuses he's gotten 10–12%. However, I was wrong about yesterday, so I may be wrong about this too.

Rubio

What can I say? He finally won a state- the Minnesota caucus. And he came so close in Virginia. But other than those and 2nd place in Georgia, he was 3rd place everywhere else. In overall delegate count he’s lagging, he was especially hurt by missing the 20% threshold in Texas. This wasn’t a good day for Rubio. One can’t help escape the feeling that his trash talking Trump backfired a bit.

I expect some will call on him to drop out, and he should if he doesn’t win his home state of Florida on March 15. But I’m not giving up just yet. He remains the most personally popular candidate in the race, and is still the best bet for November. And he is the only candidate aside from Trump who is consistently getting 18–25% everywhere. On a personal note, I have no plan B and will continue to support him as long as he’s in the race, after which I will vote anyone but Trump.

The Spoilers

John Kasich came very close to winning Vermont. I was actually rooting for him to win, if only to deny Trump another win. But otherwise he just functioned as a spoiler. It’s hard to take a candidate seriously when he isn’t competing in more than a handful of states. I guess he’ll stay in until losing Ohio.

Ben Carson will continue to stay in the race so long as little old ladies give him money.