Donald Trump has a clear path to the White House, nobody else (absent a coup at the GOP convention) does.
That assertion has felt intuitively right to me for months, but it was time to back it up. I mean, how could a guy who is barely garnering a third of the GOP primary electorate in such a dominant position? Seems almost counterintuitive. If he can’t expand his support to over half the primary electorate, what makes him so (currently) untouchable?
I’ve split up the Republican field into its three constituent parts. Trump, the Religious Right (Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee), and the Establishment (Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Lindsey Graham). Only Rand Paul fails to fit into any of these categories, so I’ve left him off the equation.
Now using Pollster.com composites, here are the totals for the three groups:
|
TRUMP |
RELIGIOUS RIGHT |
ESTABLISHMENT |
Undecided |
| Jan 7 |
36.9 |
29.5 |
25.8 |
3.7 |
| Dec 6 |
34.7 |
29.1 |
25.6 |
7.8 |
| Nov 4 |
28.4 |
34.1 |
27.3 |
7.4 |
| Oct 4 |
28.1 |
27.6 |
30.4 |
6.9 |
| Sep 7 |
31.8 |
27.7 |
23.5 |
6.9 |
| Aug 3 |
24.5 |
20.6 |
36.7 |
8.4 |
Note how stable those categories are. The Establishment numbers were goosed in August thanks to Scott Walker, who had crossover support with the fundie crowd, but aside from that, they’re stuck at a quarter of the Republican primary electorate. The Religious Right’s numbers were goosed in November during the Ben Carson boomlet, as he had some early crossover support (fundies already loved him, and some in the establishment crowd saw his soft-spokeness as moderation. That pretense didn’t last). Aside from that, their numbers hover between 28-30 percent.
So the fundies may float between Cruz and Carson and whoever, but their total numbers are firmly finite. Same with the pathetic establishment crowd. The few remaining undecided aren’t enough to make a huge difference, and Trump seems to be getting the lion’s share of them anyway. Paul will quit at some point, but at 2.5 percent of support, they won’t have much impact on the race’s macro trends. And I bet they go Trump anyway.
So Trump may be stuck just below 40 percent, far from a simple majority among primary electorate Republicans, but how can anyone else garner enough support to actually challenge him? Cruz has room to grow, but only at the expense of other Religious Right candidates like Carson and Huckabee. Rubio has room to grow, but only at the expense of Bush, Christie and Fiorina.
But there is no way either Cruz or Rubio pick up support from either Trump, whose fans are locked in, or the other competing wing of their party. Bush supporters aren’t going Cruz, and Carson supporters aren’t going Rubio.
Trump has a wing of his party all to himself—angry white tea partiers. And as such, is headed toward victory with a solid plurality.
Of course, this presents his biggest danger—if he can’t get a majority of delegates at the convention, the other two factions may be able to come up with a compromise candidate (*cough*Paul Ryan*cough*) to oust Trump. But as of now, it feels impossible to come up with a scenario in which he doesn’t enter the convention with a solid plurality of delegates.
