Super Tuesday Results From #maximumtrump
Who won? Who lost? WHO CARES!?
Newspaper editors give basic advice to new reporters: “Don’t bury the lede!”
The “lede” is the most important piece of information in the article. It’s the one fact or insight that you want your reader to remember. When a reporter “buries the lede”, they put that important bit deep in the article where many readers will miss it. The editorial advice is to ensure the “lede” is up front and central to the piece.
On Super Tuesday the networks most people watch to understand the election failed in their duty to convey an accurate story about the election because they consistently and almost universally “buried the lede”.
Here’s the real lede from the Republican primary:
Donald Trump did not win enough Delegates on Super Tuesday to make his nomination a near certainty and Ted Cruz emerged as a legitimate threat to block Trump’s chances of a winning the nomination before the convention outright. Marco Rubio’s disappointing performance in several states may have ended any hope he had of continuing to be a factor in the race.
Delegate awards for the elections on Super Tuesday will be approximately:
Trump: 252
Cruz: 208
Rubio: 111
Doesn’t much match the headline does it?
The reportage on Super Tuesday consistently emphasized the “winners” of the states being contested and therefore created the illusion that those victories were somehow the definitive measure of how well or poorly the candidates were doing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For both parties, but especially for the Republicans, the Super Tuesday contests awarded delegates to the national nominating conventions proportionately. A “win” by a few percentage points like the Democratic outcome in Massachusetts didn’t really mean anything since both Clinton & Sanders would get essentially the same number of delegates.
The number of delegates awarded by each state varies tremendously and so the states are not equally weighted. Cruz winning Texas was hugely impactful and the magnitude of his victory (44%) meant that he accumulated almost as many Delegates in one state (~83 Delegates) as Trump accumulated while Trump was “winning” Alabama (~33), Georgia (~45), and Massachusetts (~21) combined.
Until late in the evening, well after 9pm Seattle time, CNN had not shown any delegate awards for the Republican candidates. Until then all their coverage was very misleading. The standard CNN infographic (which is basically the same as that used by all the other networks) showed the state, the percentage totals for the 3 top candidates, and the number of total delegates at stake plus an indicator of the percentage of the vote that had been reported. This clearly gives the illusion that whomever is “winning” is going to get all those Delegates. And several times the talking heads on the broadcast reinforced that illusion by saying things that appeared to suggest that the contests were “Winner Take All”.
They weren’t. Who won was much less important than the magnitude of the victory, and that was less important than the number of delegates at stake, and at least in the case of Texas, another major factor was the rules of the state parties that cut off candidates from receiving any delegates if the candidate did not exceed a certain threshold of support — rules that came into effect for Marco Rubio disastrously in Alabama and Texas.
Worse, even when they started to show Delegate totals they were incorrect. It appeared when considering what the various networks were reporting and what the New York Times was reporting that not enough information was flowing to the news outlets from the state parties to allow them to make comprehensive totals. Many states had not reported full Delegate assignments as of midnight, but that fact was not relayed to the viewers who were seeing Trump with double or triple as many Delegates as Cruz or Rubio when in fact the margin is much, much closer. Even this morning at nearly 10:00am Seattle time, none of the major news outlets have a comprehensive report on Delegate awards. The New York Times for example is only displaying allocation of 555 of the 595 Delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday.
They need to do better.
Trump Is Back in the Box
The #maximumtrump analysis is predicated on the assumption that Donald Trump has a hard ceiling of around 35% of Republican voters and that as long as he’s unable to break that ceiling his path to winning the nomination before the convention is unlikely.
After Nevada’s caucuses last week it looked like Trump might not have a ceiling at all. His high-performance outcome of ~46% could have been a bellwether of a massive wave of success on Super Tuesday, blowing out Cruz & Rubio and virtually guaranteeing Trump the nomination.
That scenario didn’t happen. In fact, Trump fizzled on Super Tuesday.
Trump’s high points were Alabama where he won 43%, and Massachusetts where he won 49%. Unfortunately for Trump, those blow out victories weren’t in states that awarded a lot of Delegates. He got ~33 from Alabama and just ~21 from Massachusetts.
Trump actually substantially underperformed the #maximumtrump pre-election prediction from Monday which assumed he’d win every state but Texas by 10%. He lost Oklahoma, Minnesota and finished in a virtual tie in Alaska and Virginia.
Trump underperformed the #maximumtrump assumption of 35% +/- 5% in Minnesota (21%), Oklahoma (28%), and Texas (27%).
He was in the box in Alaska (34%), Arkansas (33%), Georgia (39%), Tennessee (39%), Vermont (33%), and Virginia (35%).
#maximumtrump currently projects Trump accumulating 1,519 Delegates of the 1,236 needed to win the nomination before the convention. He will not get over 1,236 delegates before the final day of the campaign.
However, there are some major roadblocks in his way to the nomination.
He has to have a hard floor. If his support drops from 35% to 30% he gives up 38 Delegates.
On the 5th of March, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine will be contested. Ted Cruz’ strong showing on Super Tuesday could flip the first three from Trump wins to Cruz wins. On the 8th is the Mississippi primary where Cruz could flip another state.
And the 15th is Florida.
Florida is a Winner Take All state for 99 Delegates. Trump’s victory there is not a certainty even though he currently leads in the polls. The anti-Trump forces in the party are mobilizing money and troops on the ground to take Florida away from Trump. It may well be the make or break moment of the Trump campaign.
The combination of those events in the next 13 days could easily drop #maximumtrump under 1,400 Delegates, which virtually guarantees that Trump would not have enough Delegates to win on the 1st ballot before the final contests highlighted by California on the last day of the Primaries on June 7th. That weakness could create a feedback loop — if people realize that Trump may not be the nominee his aura of invincibility will be broken and his margins of victory in later states may not remain as strong and he could loose some Winner Take All contests, further eroding his chances of winning outright, and accelerating the feedback loop.
Cruz Surprises and Outperforms
Ted Cruz had a magnificent Super Tuesday.
He won Texas by a large margin and knocked Marco Rubio below the qualifying threshold to win At Large Delegates and thus got an additional boost in the state even though Cruz didn’t cross the 50% threshold needed to make it Winner Take All. Rubio’s weak finish likely blocked Rubio from winning more than a handful of District Delegates in Texas. The #maximumtrump estimate is that Cruz won 83 Delegates in Texas, compared to Trump at 55 and Rubio at just 18.
The Monday prediction for Super Tuesday from #maximumtrump was that Cruz would win Texas. What the model did not anticipate was that Cruz also won Oklahoma and he beat Trump by a nose in Alaska.
Cruz underperformed the #maximumtrump estimate of 26% +/- 5% in Massachusetts (10%), and Vermont (10%) and Virginia (17%). He continues to struggle to find support with voters who are not both “strongly conservative” and “highly religious”.
Cruz now has a legitimate case to make that he, not Rubio, is the candidate that the party should rally around to beat Trump. Rubio is the “favorite son” in Florida but he trails Trump by large margins in the recent polls. The pressure on Rubio to yield and not risk a Trump Winner Take All victory in Florida will be enormous.
Cruz has the best campaign of the three major contenders. He has the best social media and grassroots team. His campaign war-chest has plenty of money. And he’s backed by 4 integrated SuperPACs that are each funded by extremely deep pockets. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s almost universally hated by the Republican Party and especially by his colleagues in the Senate, he’d be the unquestioned anti-Trump standard bearer.
On the other hand, a Cruz nomination on the 1st ballot is extremely hard to imagine under almost any set of scenarios. Barring a total collapse of Trump, Cruz isn’t going to get 1,236 Delegates before the end of the Primaries. The best he can do is stop Trump and go into the convention with a large bloc of Delegates, but not a plurality. Can a candidate run a campaign predicated on just not losing but also not winning? We’ve never seen that in modern American politics.
Rubio Got Crushed
Marco Rubio cannot catch a break. Three weeks ago he got eviscerated by Chris Christie in the pre-New Hampshire debate and then got gut-punched in the New Hampshire primary. It looked like that might be the end of Rubio but he bounced back to a very strong finish in South Carolina just a week later and then it looked very much like he was on the right path to become the consensus anti-Trump candidate. The prediction markets converged with Trump & Rubio trading at about equal value to win the Republican nomination.
Nevada was devastating to Rubio. Trump significantly outperformed everyone’s expectations and scored a 46% triumph. That meant that the box was open and Trump had the potential to start putting distance between himself and Cruz & Rubio. Rubio’s value on the prediction markets crashed and Trump’s soared and by Monday, traders had Trump an 85% favorite to win the nomination.
Rubio needed to show a lot of strength on Super Tuesday and instead he showed weakness.
Yes, Rubio won the Minnesota caucus in an upset. It was his first Primary win and it took another state out of the #maximumtrump prediction for Trump.
But that high note was offset by disaster elsewhere.
Rubio missed the 20% cut-off to qualify for Delegates in Alabama, and as noted above, had a catastrophic miss in Texas too (which means that Trump got more Delegates than he would have if Rubio had qualified). He underperformed the #maximumtrump prediction of 25% +/- 5% in Alaska (15%), Massachusetts (18%), and Vermont (19%). He finished fourth behind Kasich in Vermont and tied him in Massachusetts.
Rubio’s fate is now tied to Florida. Like Cruz he cannot win the nomination on the 1st ballot barring a Trump meltdown. If he yields Florida to Trump, Trump’s path to the nomination is much more likely. And Rubio is not showing the kind of strength in Florida that the “favorite son” should be generating. Cruz won his state convincingly. Kasich is polling within the margin of error of Trump in Ohio. But Rubio is losing by as much as 20% in a recent poll in Florida.
The anti-Trump forces want Florida. Lined up against Rubio are the Bush family, the Cruz apparatus, and likely Mitt Romney’s network. The analysis is crystal clear: someone other than Trump has to win Florida.
And Rubio does not look today like that guy.
To stay in with a chance to win, Rubio needs three things: endorsements from key leaders most especially Bushes, a visible commitment to millions of dollars of support for immediate saturation advertising, and poll numbers that start to move his direction in the next 3–5 days. If, after the contests on Saturday the 5th, Rubio has not checked those boxes and/or Trump does substantially better, and/or Cruz wins more states, Rubio is going to be forced out of the race. If the stakes are “Become President of the United States”, the willingness to apply unlimited pressure on a recalcitrant Rubio to quit will be manifestly obvious.
If he stays in, and Trump wins Florida, Rubio is probably done as a politician and he’ll have burned bridges irreparably with the kind of people you never ever want to cross.
If he’s going to yield, it will be Saturday night.
A Note About Delegate Estimates
#maximumtrump Delegate assignments are estimates until confirmed as final by the major news media. The reason is that the rules for Delegate allocation vary from state to state and have many arcane exceptions and special conditions making it very hard to get an exact estimate prior to the confirmation by the state party.
The estimates provided should be very close to the final, perhaps deviating by a Delegate or two, but in the case of Texas, until we know just how badly Rubio performed, and if Trump was able to win any Congressional Districts, we can’t get that accurate. Final Texas totals might adjust by 10–20 Delegates when we get the last word.
Throughout this report we used the “~” sign to indicate “approximate value”.
