Marco Rubio chased the narrative. Ted Cruz chased the delegates.

Super Tuesday was a fantastic night for Donald Trump: he won 7 out of 11 states, racked up major delegate totals and continued his domination of the story and the field. What might be equally good news for the Trump campaign is the results for the candidates that came in behind him. Both Rubio and Cruz now have a story to tell about how he can end up as the Republican nominee. It almost does not matter if the story is true so long as they both believe it to be true. By the time that either or both of their paths to the nomination are proven to be illusory, it will be too late. Voting starts again in a mere four days. Thus whatever plans might need to be hatched to derail Trump, there is simply no time.

In the battle for delegates last night between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, it was all Cruz all the time. Leaving aside Cruz’s home state of Texas, Cruz bested Rubio by an early estimate of 17 delegates. He accomplished this by holding onto very conservative voters in races where they made up a large percentage of the voters. As importantly, Rubio missed two big thresholds in Alabama and Vermont, meaning he lost the chance to get any delegates there. Both states were exceptionally close. Vermont in particular was a kicker; Rubio missed threshold by fewer than 600 votes and made no trips to the state while Kasich, who came in second to Trump, made many trips to Vermont. In an example of what can happen when a candidate drops out of a race yet leaves a shadow, Jeb Bush got 1,100 votes in Vermont. Instead of being in Vermont, Rubio spent a huge amount of time in Virginia. Rubio bet that a win in that big state would provide him with a strong story going forward. Maybe, but it never stood a chance of providing him with a substantial number of delegates. Virginia is a straight proportional state. Even if Rubio had beaten Trump by 1% in Virginia last night, he still would have netted at most one extra delegate. If it was close enough, the rounding likely would have kept him from netting any. In chasing a media narrative, Rubio almost certainly gave away delegates in Vermont and perhaps in Alabama as well.

In another bid for media attention, Rubio engaged in an insult war. Although it is impossible to prove, we believe that this was another classic example of the perils of multi-candidate field dynamics. The personal and often vulgar nature of the attacks might have turned some Rubio people into Cruz people in the deep south. It got him airtime, but he did not necessarily look good during that airtime. It is also possible that the attacks dislodged some Trump voters but they went to Cruz, not in numbers that hurt Trump in delegates but in numbers that helped Cruz to beat Rubio.

This strategy is to some degree attributable to donors. Donors understand the narrative. Donors understand the need to attack. Donors understand winning Virginia. Donors do not understand the rules and donors do not understand multi-candidate field dynamics. The fact is that Marco Rubio to a large degree the creation of the Republican donor class. Washington D.C. donors believed that he was the solution to their demographic challenges and thus they pushed him ahead of where he should have been. Based on what we’ve seen so far, he was not experienced enough to handle this mantle. Rubio’s donor coronation came at the expense of the better candidate, Scott Walker, who did not have the immigration flip-flop problem and who had substantial executive experience.

Donor-driven politics is being shellacked. Yesterday makes it much less likely they can pull out of their dive. The multi-candidate field dynamics continue to work to Trump’s benefit. Two weeks are left on the clock until a major turning point with the winner-take-all states of Ohio and Florida.