Trump: Where’s the Rest of Him?
As predicted by the Republican Party, which set up the Winner-Take-All primaries to set up the early choice of their candidate, Trump swept the WTA primaries. The TV networks can only show Trump and the leading runner up, who usually had votes at most in the teens. As a math nerd that needs things to add up to 100%, I was struck by the winning but not A grade percentages that Trump was getting. His percentages ranged from 67% in South Dakota to 81% in New Jersey. That means that a third to a fifth of Republicans are not voting for Trump, but for defunct candidates who haven’t been campaigning for a month, have probably not visited their states, are not on TV, are not running TV ads, are not sending out mailers, and are not making robocalls. This is really an anyone-but-Trump movement that doesn’t even have any backers, organization, or an appointed candidate.
The obvious question is who are this significant fraction of Republican voters going to vote for in the general election? Or are they going to sit out the election? I think that these voters are not going to skip the general election, since they already showed up to vote, even if it was not for Trump. Almost all loyal Republicans are not going to vote for a Democrat. So what will they do? I don’t know. It is true that Trump has had a terrible week, and hopefully he will smooth out by the general election, for everybody’s sake.
Let’s look at the results in detail, ordered by most support of Trump.
New Jersey:…….Trump 80.4%, Kasich 11.3%, Cruz 9.2%;
California:……….Trump 75.3%, Kasich 13.4%, Cruz 6.2%;
Montana:…………Trump 73.7%, Kasich 6.9%, Cruz 9.4%;
New Mexico:…….Trump 70.7%, Kasich 7.6%, Cruz 13.3%;
South Dakota……Trump 67.1%, Kasich 15.9%, Cruz 17.0%.
Trump might have done best in New Jersey because it is neighboring to his home state of New York, and because of his building in Atlantic City. Leaving New Jersey aside, his highest percentage is 75% in California, meaning at least a quarter of Republicans are still favoring someone else. None of the others won any delegates.
(Seniors know that the famous line: “Where’s the rest of me?” Was spoken in a movie by Ronald Reagan.)
