[RD] Super Tuesday

All the discussion about Cruz's chances compared to Rubio is pointless. The establishment is never going to back Cruz to prevent Trump no matter who would be willing to drop out.

An extremist tea party true believer is just as terrible to them as Trump is. While a lot has been made of Rubio's tea party beliefs, he has demonstrated to be careerist and unprincipled enough to sing the establishment's tune if that is what's needed. So the non-Trump part of the GOP rallying behind Rubio is at least a possibility, with Cruz it's never going to happen.
 
Camikaze said:
@J - okay, so taking that best-case scenario for Cruz, where does that leave him? Still an awful lot of delegates away from the nomination, with virtually no chance of securing them. It would certainly hurt Rubio, but that's precisely why it helps Trump - Rubio can actually pose some sort of threat in the later winner-takes-all states to Cruz, but there is no data to support the idea that Cruz would do the same.

(BTW, that is largely what I'm citing, also their election podcasts)
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It leaves both of the sucking on a double-digit longshot. Cruz could have 4-1 vs Rubio. He is still on the short end of 10-1 to 20-1 vs Trump.

That said, Cruz does not need the establishment to back him. He only needs them to continue opposing Trump. That wall has started to crack.

J
 
onejayhawk said:
That said, Cruz does not need the establishment to back him. He only needs them to continue opposing Trump. That wall has started to crack.
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There is no effective difference between those things. They want Cruz to become the nominee as little as they want Trump, maybe less.
 
I think that Rubio might drop out following super Tuesday, I put the odds of it happening at 50/50
 
Carson ought to have already, and if Super Tuesday doesn't whittle down the field to 2-3 then it hasn't done its job and Trump is the likely nominee.

Trump is probably the nominee either way if he sweeps it tomorrow.
 
All right, sorry I'm not responding to people but I've come here to rant and my last post just got wiped out by an ill-timed mouse click.

I've seen a lot of terribad TV analysis today gaming out post-Super Tuesday scenarios assuming that because we are in the so-called proportional allocation phase of the GOP delegate allocation process, Trump wins 35% of the popular vote and he gets 35% of the delegates, Rubio 25% and 25%, and so on. This is so effing wrong I can't believe the dumb stuffheads on TV can say it with a straight face, it's like I'm watching a modern scientific conference on the Bohr model of the atom or phlogiston.

There's tons of contests tomorrow (err, today, it's after midnight Eastern time) that are what I called backdoor winner-take-all but 538 calls winner-take-most. Particularly, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma offer massive prizes to the statewide winner and only 3 delegates per congressional district. Even Minnesota and Georgia have more mild forms of this. And that's not to mention that in some of those proportional states like Alaska, there is a minimum threshold requirement of 13%, so if you come in under that you get nothing.

Long story short, I won't be surprised that if Trump wins 35-40% of the vote, he'll walk away with at least 60-70% of the delegates. If he ends up with 45% or more, he could effectively sweep the whole thing.
 
Antilogic said:
There's tons of contests tomorrow (err, today, it's after midnight Eastern time) that are what I called backdoor winner-take-all but 538 calls winner-take-most. Particularly, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma offer massive prizes to the statewide winner and only 3 delegates per congressional district. Even Minnesota and Georgia have more mild forms of this. And that's not to mention that in some of those proportional states like Alaska, there is a minimum threshold requirement of 13%, so if you come in under that you get nothing.
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Texas has it even worse: 20%. Rubio is currently polling for 0 delegates in Texas.
 
538 places him at a <5% chance of getting 50% of the vote in Texas. And you haven't explained why it would be a game-changer in any case.
 
That would be a massive overperformance, which would be news in itself, but walking away with 155 delegates would be a bigger win than all of Trump's to date. That would definitively place him as the only viable anit-trump candidate.
 
Using the 538 estimates, Cruz needs to win 367 delegates tomorrow to be on-track for the nomination. Even if he takes all the Texas delegates, he'd still have to take about half the remainder in order to hit that target. Rubio needs 236 delegates tomorrow to be on-track for the nomination. Certainly without any from Texas, he's going to be struggling too, but that doesn't make Cruz any more viable going forward, either from the perspective of winning future states or from the perspective of being supported by the 'establishment'. Cruz might, in this best case scenario, be able to get closer to his target than Rubio, but that wouldn't increase his capacity to be competitive in other races. True enough, if Cruz wins Texas outright, that will increase his viability, but not to such a significant extent that you could call it a 'game-changer'. For it to be a game-changer, Rubio would also have to spectacularly flop, in which case it wouldn't really be Cruz's victory itself which would be the 'game-changer'.

Cruz then needs to get up to 800 delegates on March 15, whereas Rubio would only be aiming for 606.

The main point is that Cruz must do very well tomorrow - his entire strategy relies on it, and even then he stands very little chance of overturning his massive underperformance thus far.

Trump, for the record, requires 215 Super Tuesday delegates to remain on-target.
 
I woke up 30 minutes early today for no apparent reason. I'm not a superstitious man, but I'm choosing to take that as a sign that I should go vote before work rather than after.
 
onejayhawk said:
Carson is like many low impact candidates. It is not about winning the office. It's about the statement.
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The problem is that there is no statement

onejayhawk said:
Correct.

Cruz has a slim chance at 50%, which means Trump gets 0 delegates. That would be a game-changer. Short of that, expect Trump's bandwagon to roll on.
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Cruz sweeping Texas helps Trump. Everything that delays Cruz's dropout helps Trump.
 
EgonSpengler said:
I woke up 30 minutes early today for no apparent reason. I'm not a superstitious man, but I'm choosing to take that as a sign that I should go vote before work rather than after.
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:) Same thing happened to me. I woke up an hour early and couldn't go back to sleep, so I got an early start, and had time to go vote... Parking space directly in front of town hall and absolutely no line (gotta love my town :D) Anyhoo, since I'm registered as "independent/unaffiliated" I had my choice of ballot. The old lady asked me "So what are you doing?" I had no idea what she meant until I looked down at the table and there was a Red (Democrat for some reason:confused:) ballot and Blue (Republican ballot) and a Green ballot for the Green Party. ( I didn't notice any others but I wasn't looking that hard).

So I said "Democrat" and happily took my ballot to the booth. The first thing I noticed was that Bernie was listed first, then O'Malley... I was thinking "WTH?" then I saw Hillary's name last. There was also this thing called "Town Committee" where you could vote (or not vote) for each person individually or check one box to vote for all 35 of them, but they did not seem to be running against anyone... maybe only the top X vote getters actually get the office, who knows... something for me to investigate today...
Leoreth said:
Cruz sweeping Texas helps Trump. Everything that delays Cruz's dropout helps Trump.
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I'm actually really excited to see how things turn out today. I'm hoping Bernie stays in and Rubio drops out.
 
ParkCungHee said:
That would be a massive overperformance, which would be news in itself, but walking away with 155 delegates would be a bigger win than all of Trump's to date. That would definitively place him as the only viable anit-trump candidate.
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A guy who is going to get totally stomped outside the bible belt is not a viable anti-Trump candidate no matter how many delegates he gets in Texas.
 
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