Trump's Very Super Tuesday

PALM BEACH, Fla.— If it wasn’t already clear, last night’s res­ults un­der­scored that Don­ald Trump is a Te­flon can­did­ate who draws strength from the kind of con­tro­versy that would end most nor­mal cam­paigns. The fren­zied protests last week­end that led to Trump can­cel­ling a Chica­go rally only helped Trump build on his sup­port from a dis­af­fected Re­pub­lic­an elect­or­ate.  His clashes with the me­dia are win­ning him sup­port from con­ser­vat­ive voters who nev­er trus­ted the press in the first place.  His aver­sion to facts and de­tails are ir­rel­ev­ant to Re­pub­lic­ans who want strength and bluster from their stand­ard-bear­er.

In­deed, Trump went a long way in se­cur­ing the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­a­tion Tues­day night, slowly ex­pand­ing his sup­port with­in the Re­pub­lic­an party even as GOP res­ist­ance against him is in­tensi­fy­ing. He won 46 per­cent of the vote in Marco Ru­bio’s home state of Flor­ida, des­pite anti-Trump out­side groups sat­ur­at­ing the air­waves there with over $10 mil­lion in scath­ing anti-Trump at­tack ads. He nearly hit 40 per­cent in Illinois, win­ning com­fort­ably in the af­flu­ent Chica­go­land sub­urbs where his rivals’ mes­sage seemed a bet­ter fit. Even his lone loss in Ohio was something of a mor­al vic­tory: He tal­lied 36 per­cent of the vote in a state where Ohio Gov. John Kasich scores sky-high ap­prov­al rat­ings.

For Trump, the name of the game is still win­ning a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates to avoid a con­tested con­ven­tion, a task that re­mains chal­len­ging. He needs to win about 55 per­cent of the re­main­ing del­eg­ates to hit the ma­gic 1,237 num­ber; my Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port col­league Dave Wasser­man cal­cu­lated he won about 67 per­cent of avail­able del­eg­ates last night. But equally im­port­ant, he shattered the no­tion of wide­spread GOP voter res­ist­ance, demon­strat­ing a geo­graph­ic and ideo­lo­gic­al breadth of sup­port that will make him tough to beat in many of the re­main­ing states, even with a con­sol­id­ated field.

In Flor­ida, Trump won an out­right ma­jor­ity of the vote in af­flu­ent Palm Beach and Broward Counties, ad­ja­cent to Ru­bio’s home base in Miami-Dade. This, in a closed primary lim­ited to re­gistered Re­pub­lic­ans. Two nights be­fore the primary, Trump packed over 6,000 fans in­to an am­phi­theat­er in Boca Raton, wow­ing his sup­port­ers when Air Force Trump ar­rived in the skies above. The crowd was filled with self-de­scribed mod­er­ate Re­pub­lic­ans, many of whom backed Obama in 2008 but long since turned against the pres­id­ent. Trump was their new avatar of hope and change, a politi­cian of strength to counter Obama’s weak­ness.

“He’s say­ing what a lot of Amer­ic­ans have been think­ing for a long time,” said Car­ol Fish­er, a former Jeb Bush sup­port­er from Delray Beach who said she usu­ally backs the “es­tab­lish­ment” can­did­ates by de­fault. “The more I heard him, the more I real­ized I agreed ex­actly with what he was say­ing.”

Des­pite the heated protests against Trump that forced the busi­ness­man to can­cel his Chica­go rally, he per­formed bet­ter in Illinois than he did in neigh­bor­ing Michigan. In Obama’s home state, Trump won 40 per­cent of the wealth­i­est Illinois voters, re­ceived 31 per­cent of the vote from col­lege gradu­ates, and swept 41 per­cent of the mod­er­ate GOP vote. The Chica­go sub­urbs that looked like a haven for Ru­bio and Kasich turned in­to Trump coun­try.

There are signs that Trump would have rocked Ohio too if Kasich wasn’t in the race. Even in a loss, he con­sist­ently car­ried around 35 per­cent of the vote in the Clev­e­land and Cin­cin­nati sub­urbs, a healthy total giv­en Kasich’s home field ad­vant­age. Exit polls showed Trump beat­ing Ted Cruz in a one-on-one match­up, 44 to 39 per­cent, a clear sign that Cruz is hardly a fron­trun­ner if the field is nar­rowed to just two Re­pub­lic­ans. In fact, the anti-Trump Re­pub­lic­ans prob­ably need a strengthened Kasich to dent Trump’s sup­port in many re­main­ing Mid­west­ern and North­east­ern states, where Cruz is a non-factor.

Out­side of Ohio, the main sil­ver lin­ings for the anti-Trump move­ment came in Mis­souri, where Ted Cruz ral­lied evan­gel­ic­al sup­port to come with­in 2,000 votes of Trump and in North Car­o­lina, where Cruz’s strong show­ing in the sub­urbs demon­strated con­ser­vat­ive res­ist­ance to the fron­trun­ner. His weak­ness with Re­pub­lic­an wo­men is also a glar­ing red flag go­ing for­ward, as he only won their vote in two of the five states (Flor­ida and Illinois). A power­ful ad fea­tur­ing wo­men read­ing lewd Trump quotes prob­ably made a small im­pact, and is all but cer­tain to be re­vived by Demo­crats if Trump is the GOP nom­in­ee.

But at this point, the only can­did­ate that can real­ist­ic­ally win the nom­in­a­tion out­right is Trump. Circle two dates on the cal­en­dar to de­term­ine if he’s on a path to do­ing so: April 5, when Gov. Scott Walk­er will be­come the face of the anti-Trump move­ment in Wis­con­sin and April 26, when five North­east­ern states head to the polls. If Trump can pair his South­ern dom­in­ance with a Mid­west­ern near-sweep in three weeks, he will be hard to stop. These races will of­fer a test of wheth­er Cruz can ex­pand his sup­port out­side his com­fort zone and wheth­er Kasich can par­lay his home-state vic­tory in­to mo­mentum along the I-95 cor­ridor and in the Rust Belt.

The math to a del­eg­ate ma­jor­ity is still chal­len­ging for Trump, but he demon­strated he’s cap­able of grow­ing his sup­port even in the face of grow­ing res­ist­ance from rank-and-file mem­bers in his own party . Between 30 and 40 per­cent of Re­pub­lic­an voters said they’d con­sider vot­ing for a third-party can­did­ate if Trump is the nom­in­ee, ac­cord­ing to exit polls. But un­less Cruz or Kasich can tally some ac­tu­al vic­tor­ies in the com­ing month, the Trump train is look­ing harder to stop.