At a certain point you have to wonder what they did. Because at this point it seem like God is just f ‘ing with the GOP. Like pulling wings off a fly. As you can see in the live election results data to the right, Ted Cruz looks like close to a lock to win the Kansas caucus. Only 25% of the precincts have reported so far. But he’s had roughly 50% of the tally consistently all the way so far. Unless the distribution of the returns is wildly uneven it’s hard to see how he doesn’t win. (So far no returns appear to be in from greater Kansas City metro region.) That will be Cruz’s fifth win so far. And it does not seem improbable at all that he could win at least one more. (Just as I typed this, the first 5% of precinct results came in from Maine. He’s winning there too.)
When it comes time to write the book on the Trump campaign, you won’t need to write a book. Because we already have this picture.
This is Steve Travers, who stood behind Trump at the rally today in Tampa, with a full body “Trump Wall” suit with the lettering “Mexico Will Pay.”
We’re still early. But the main outstanding question seems to be whether Ted Cruz has a solid night or an amazing night. Cruz has already won the Kansas Caucus. He’s ahead by around 7 points in Maine, both with only just over 9% of the precincts reporting. In Kentucky, the only remotely recent poll showed Trump with 35%, Rubio 22% and Cruz at 15%. That was a little over a week ago. But almost 20% in, it’s Trump 42%, Cruz 31%. Rubio and Kasich far behind in the low teens. Polls close in Louisiana at 9 PM eastern.
We have final results for Maine. Cruz (45.9%) wins convincingly. Trump (32.6%) 2nd. Kasich (12.2%) 3rd and Rubio (8%) 4th. Rubio was the only candidate to fail to surmount the 10% threshold and is shut out for delegates.
One thing to note is that all the votes for those four combined were just over 17,000 people. So small state combined with a caucus. So just a tiny number of people voting. But those are the rules.
Here’s something to keep in mind about the results tonight. The frontrunners – Trump and Clinton – are having a lukewarm night. Sanders and Cruz have both already won two states. But Clinton has already been declared the winner in Louisiana and the early results at least suggest a big win for Trump too (Late Update: Louisiana has now been called for Trump.)
All the networks have called Louisiana. But the margin keeps shrinking. It was over 20 points at the start. But the margin is now down to 6 points – with just under 50% of precincts reporting. A key point here is that the early Trump lead included a lot absentee ballots – which by definition were older votes. None of the networks has retracted their call. But it seems like it will at least be much closer than it first seemed.
Trump wins in Louisiana and Kentucky – but only by middle single digit margins over Ted Cruz. So two wins each for Cruz and Trump, though the caucus factor helped Cruz a lot. The big takeaway from Trump’s speech is repeatedly saying he thinks Rubio should drop out.
The big takeaway from Donald Trump’s press conference tonight was his push for Marco Rubio to get out of the race. But the most interesting part of the night was when CNN’s Jim Acosta asked him if was going to take responsibility for or do something about the recurrent outbreaks of (so far low-level) violence at his rallies.
It got kind of a hairy few a few moments. And I thought it was 50-50 whether Trump would have security toss Acosta from the event or maybe have one of the guys from Duck Dynasty knock him around a bit. But I don’t think either ended up happening.
It was a classic Trump answer, with several digressions and laugh lines – along with a few side points that were completely incomprehensible (see the reference to ten years ago). My favorite part was when he seemed to suggest that on a percentage basis barely anyone gets beaten up at his events. But I wanted to quote the whole exchange at length. So here it is after the jump …
Donald Trump has attendees at Tampa rally pledge to vote for him on March 15th.
When people try to make sense of this topsy-turvy, norm-busting election year, one of the key mistakes they make is to assume that the dynamics that operate for Donald Trump in the Republican primary will operate in a general election. They won’t. I’m not saying Trump can’t win a national election. In a Clinton v Trump match-up I think anything from a shattering Trump defeat to a narrow Trump victory is possible. But many people now believe that Trump can defy political gravity – flouting conventions of propriety, embracing extremist positions, casually changing positions, all with no penalty. That won’t work in a general election.