Seeing a Cook Political Report/Fivethirtyeight alliance is any political nerd’s dream
come true.
It is, however, sad to see the dream team defending the Republican establishment’s
chances in the presidential nomination fight when the polling is so much
against it and the delegate math is just as likely to deliver an early KO as a
multi-round fight. Cook/Fivethirtyeight produced an excellent piece on how
each of the Republican candidates could win the nomination but the conclusion
it reaches that Florida and Ohio are as important as Iowa and New Hampshire is
based on assumption that is hard to defend. The idea is that an establishment
candidate can emerge from New Hampshire strong enough to make the March 1 primarily Southern
primaries anything but a blowout for the upstart candidates.
That seems unlikely. Rightwing insurgents (Trump, Cruz, Carson) are combining for
62.8% of Republican primary votes nationally, while the establishment candidates (Rubio, Bush, Kasich, Christie) are combining for 22.4%. Of course, things can still change. The key point is that if they don’t, March 1, the day of 13 states has the potential to be completely fatal for everyone not named Cruz or Trump. The Cook/Fivethirtyeight article fails to acknowledge that possibility. Instead, it makes all of the assumptions that favor the establishment and leans into them.
Let’s look at those assumptions.
First, Rubio can clear the field of everyone but Cruz and Trump by March 1st. It is possible, sure, but what are the odds? Kasich is rising in New Hampshire, Jeb has money, Christie has ego, if any of them beat Rubio in New Hampshire they fight on. If Rubio doesn’t clear the field, he is in incredible danger of missing viability thresholds in some of the March 1 primaries. Remember, based on the national polls the entire Republican establishment combined may be polling under the viability threshold in some states. The biggest risk for them on this score is in Texas where Rubio needs 41 delegates, according to The Cook/Fivethirtyeight model. If Cruz has even the slightest home field advantage with otherwise moderate voters than Rubio having to split what is left of moderates might keep him from threshold. The fact is if there’s more than one moderate in the Texas primary, along with a viable Trump and Cruz, that basically means no delegates for the moderates in all of Texas. [Possible second place finishes in a few districts since second is worth 1 delegate in each district but still really hard to see.] This means Rubio wouldn’t just be better off if he
cleared the field by March 1, he pretty much has to clear the field by that
date.
Second, even if Rubio can clear the field by March 1, he hasn’t avoided trouble altogether.
The Cook/Fivethirtyeight nomination math for Rubio assumes he will be receiving
24 delegates in Georgia. The most recent Georgia poll has Trump and Cruz
in first and second position, with Rubio lagging behind with just 8% support. Even
assuming Rubio can get to 20%, that’s not enough for him to win anywhere near
the 24 delegates this model says he needs to do to that he would have to do better than Romney in 2012 in
Georgia who took 28% and also took advantage of a Santorum failure to get to
threshold by less than .5.
The same situation presents itself in all of the Southern primaries on March 1st. The
Cook/Fivethirtyeight model says Rubio needs 128 Southern delegates on that date,
but he would be lucky to get half that.
Third, this model seems to believe Rubio is the strongest candidate in the Virginia,
Massachusetts and Vermont primaries on March 1. The assumption that Rubio
is stronger in New England than Trump is based more on intuition than anything
else. The model also posits Virginia as some sort of establishment bastion, but
former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor got badly beaten in a Republican
primary there. Rubio is more likely not to have a single win on March 1 than
to hit the Cook/Fivethirtyeight benchmarks.
In conclusion, right now the establishment looks more like it’s going to get blown
out on March 1 than carve out the delegate needed for a sustainable path to the nomination. Yet, Cook/Fivethirtyeight doesn’t
seem to see that almost pretending like the math means that the Rubio or the Establishment have a much easier time to delegates on March 1st than they do.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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