Who's your money on?Follow

This is how revolutions happen. They're not real Republicans, according to traditional conservatives as well as social right-wingers. AND YET, they register Republican and they vote in a bloc. Traditionalists on both sides are about to be marginalized.

And yet, he got 32.5% of the votes in SC. So you can either imagine that conservative evangelical voters actually do love Trump *or* that a decent number of liberal voters in SC, who hate evangelicals, and hate Bush, and hate conservatives, might just show up to an open primary where it costs them nothing but a few minutes of their time to drop a vote for Trump in the ballot box and give a big "***** you" to the GOP.

One of those is a vastly more reasonable explanation for the votes he got. And yes, if that's the case, he's not going to get that kind of support in Nevada, which is both closed and a caucus. He'll have to rely solely on actual registered Republicans to caucus for him. And while I'm sure there are a number of folks willing to do that, and it's Nevada, which is a strange place all around, I'm not sure how he can expect to get anywhere near the kind of numbers he got in SC.

It's funny because all the pundits are talking about the primaries going forward as though the best that Cruz and Rubio can expect is a semi even three way split. But that assumes that Trump can get close to the same numbers he got in SC, and Rubio and Cruz will evenly split the remainder. I think that SC more or less represents the best he can get in a state race where everything was in his advantage. Now that Bush has dropped out, Rubio has emerged as the sole mainstream candidate, and I think that will result in a pretty significant shift of voters to him. How much that affects the Nevada race is hard to say. There's been very little time between SC and today. But I think it will have some effect at least, and more over time, as more endorsements come in for Rubio (he's already gotten a pretty large number just in the last couple days).

We'll know better over the next few hours, of course, but I suspect that, just as in Iowa, the polling data is not going to be very accurate and things aren't going to go as well for Trump as he thinks. Recall that I said the same thing in the lead up to Iowa, and that turned out to be the case. NH, and SC both allowed for a large number of non-Republican voters in the GOP primaries, so that helps mask Trump's weakness among conservatives. But he can't hide behind that in Nevada, and he can't hide behind that next week.

Edited, Feb 23rd 2016 6:08pm by gbaji

Yeah, but you fail to mention that Trump's support has swollen in part thanks to the hordes of undead that his team of necromancers are raising.

The GOP Nevada caucuses are apparently a giant dumpster fire of terribleness. No one checking IDs or names, people just handing out ballots, reports of double-voting, 2/3rds of the names on the ballot aren't running any longer, etc.

On the plus side, we'll get to see how many votes Rick Santorum gets tonight!

Edited, Feb 23rd 2016 10:34pm by Jophiel

46% isn't the same kind of number as 32% he got in SC, which is a clear indication of how Trump has no real support. I'm sure we'll change gear from how Nevada is an important indicator of how things really are to how Nevada never mattered. Nothing like watching Frankenstein's monster rampaging through the village. Good job, conservatives.

The next few months will mark a phase I like to call 'how Gbaji learned to stop worrying and love the Trump'.

Gbaji or Trump?

Settle your shit, kids. Rubio's got this one all figured out.

This is technically true; you win the nomination by collecting delegates. But, uh, you collect delegates by winning states. And, more specifically, you need to collect those delegates before the winning guy does which is kind of impossible since he's winning more delegates. Especially in the GOP format which lacks the same robust superdelegate system the Democrats "enjoy".

Not that the Dems aren't tied down too, at least partially. If the superdelegates went en masse to and tipped the scales against the candidate overwhelmingly winning the popular vote, your voter base might decide you don't really need them at the polls on election day either.

We'll see what happens when Ben Carson gets back from picking up his laundry or whatever.

Yeah. Probably nothing.

Hypothetically someone could win zero states and sail into the nomination under the flowing case: two candidates who hate each other swing between 1st and 3rd, with the nom winner hitting solid 2nd in most states, and then other minor candidates pledging their delegates to the perpetual 2nd place guy leaving him with most delegates but not a plurality. Since neither of the other candidates woe ally with the other, a brokered convention would lead to one of them taking VP or high Cabinet slot to the on the Nom's ticket in exchange for delegates.

That's probably not likely here, but a similar situation could happen.