Florida and Ohio Primaries Critical in the 'Stop Trump' Movement

In this screw­ball year, it’s dan­ger­ous to say any­thing defin­it­ively, but it sure looks like Tues­day’s Ohio Re­pub­lic­an primary will be the make-or-break point for the “Stop Trump” move­ment. This is as­sum­ing that Don­ald Trump beats Marco Ru­bio in Flor­ida, which seems a bit more likely than not. Then it comes down to Ohio, where John Kasich has been hold­ing a mod­est lead in the polls. 

If Kasich holds Ohio, which is his home state, the del­eg­ate climb for Trump gets very steep. Trump has won 44 per­cent of all del­eg­ates se­lec­ted so far. Ima­gine a straight, di­ag­on­al line from zero del­eg­ates in the bot­tom left corner at the be­gin­ning of the race, up to the num­ber 1,237 in the up­per right corner, the barest ma­jor­ity that se­cures a nom­in­a­tion. Every week, take a look and see if Trump is above or be­low that tra­ject­ory to the ma­gic num­ber. A Trump loss in the Buck­eye State would lift the share of the re­main­ing del­eg­ates that he would need to win to al­most 60 per­cent, a very im­prob­able chal­lenge. So Trump really needs Ohio. Should Ru­bio pull out a win Flor­ida, where polls show a very close race, and Kasich loses Ohio, Trump would be in the same pre­dic­a­ment. If Trump wins both, the Re­pub­lic­an Party bet­ter get used to the idea of hav­ing the real-es­tate mogul and real­ity-TV star as its nom­in­ee.

Some polit­ic­al ana­lysts reas­on that the chances of stop­ping Trump are bet­ter if he’s op­posed by sev­er­al can­did­ates, each with dif­fer­ent ap­peals res­on­at­ing with dif­fer­ent audi­ences but with the shared goal of pre­vent­ing him from get­ting 50 per­cent of the del­eg­ates each week. Oth­ers fer­vently be­lieve that the anti-Trump side needs to rally be­hind a single can­did­ate. Both the­or­ies are plaus­ible. What’s right in one state might not be in an­oth­er.

One cur­rently non­a­ligned Re­pub­lic­an poll­ster, for whom I have the ut­most re­spect, on Thursday privately differed with my con­clu­sion that a Trump loss would be a killer for him, sug­gest­ing that if Ru­bio lost Flor­ida but Kasich won Ohio, it would “not be close to the ball game.”

He sug­ges­ted that if Trump ar­rived in Clev­e­land with, say 1,100 del­eg­ates, 100 to 150 del­eg­ates shy of a ma­jor­ity, he feared “the party break­ing apart.” Ac­cord­ing to his reas­on­ing, Re­pub­lic­an del­eg­ates would be faced with try­ing to as­cer­tain the “least-worst” op­tion—nom­in­at­ing Trump and risk los­ing the pres­id­en­tial race and down-bal­lot con­tests, or not nom­in­at­ing him and risk a fight that would make the 1968 Demo­crat­ic Con­ven­tion in Chica­go look like a kids’ birth­day party.

Head-to-head polls pit­ting each of the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates against Clin­ton show the down­side of nom­in­at­ing Trump.

In a Clin­ton-Cruz match­up, the March 3-6 NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al na­tion­al poll gives Clin­ton a 2-point edge, 47 to 45 per­cent. Clin­ton car­ried Demo­crats 88 to 9 per­cent, while Cruz won among Re­pub­lic­ans (85 to 7 per­cent) and in­de­pend­ents (50 to 39 per­cent). Last month, a CNN poll gave Cruz a 1-point edge over Clin­ton, 49 to 48 per­cent, and Fox News also had him ahead by 1 point, 46 to 45 per­cent.

The NBC/WSJ poll had Clin­ton and Ru­bio tied with 46 per­cent each, with Clin­ton hold­ing 85 per­cent of the Demo­crat­ic vote, Ru­bio 86 per­cent of the Re­pub­lic­an vote, and in­de­pend­ents fa­vor­ing Ru­bio by 11 points. The CNN poll put Ru­bio ahead by 3 points, 50 to 47 per­cent, and Fox gave Ru­bio a 4-point edge, 48 to 44 per­cent.

The NBC/WSJ poll didn’t match Clin­ton and Kasich, but the Feb­ru­ary Fox poll showed Kasich up by 3 points, 47 to 44 per­cent.

By con­trast, the NBC/WSJ poll showed Trump los­ing to Clin­ton by 13 points, 51 to 38 per­cent. In the ABC News/Wash­ing­ton Post sur­vey, Clin­ton led Trump by 9 points, 50 to 41 per­cent. Clin­ton led among Demo­crats 88 to 9 per­cent, Trump was ahead among Re­pub­lic­ans by a less im­press­ive 74 to 12 per­cent, and Trump would win in­de­pend­ents by just 3 points, 43 to 40 per­cent. A new ABC News/Wash­ing­ton Post poll gave Clin­ton a 9-point ad­vant­age over Trump, 50 to 41 per­cent; CNN had Clin­ton up by 8 points, 52 to 44 per­cent; Fox had Clin­ton up by 5 points, 47 to 42 per­cent.

The bot­tom line is that a placebo run­ning as the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­ee would be ex­tremely com­pet­it­ive and might well beat Clin­ton, but not Don­ald Trump.

The Stop Trump folks either need Ru­bio to win in Flor­ida or Kasich to pre­vail in Ohio. If either wins their home states, Trump’s nom­in­a­tion be­comes highly prob­lem­at­ic. If both win, Trump’s bal­loon loses an aw­ful lot of air. But if both lose, a Trump nom­in­a­tion would be all but un­stop­pable.