A Cruz presidency would make such prolific use of the veto pen that the government would shut down on a weekly basis.
Well, it doesn't say too much good about Chris Christie either, who has spawned countless memes today because he can't even hide the fact that he's only endorsing Donald Drumpf out of sheer opportunism when he's standing right behind Drumpf on stage. I can get that he might've been piqued by Rubio's attitude, but his response is to endorse someone he's called unfit to be President? What a clown.
From Day A, Krugman said that Christie was an extremist who was pretending otherwise. Now, it's true that Krugman dogs pretty much all Republicans. But it's also true that he got that one right.
538 Delegate Target update: Trump: 334 of 297 - 112% Cruz: 233 of 384 - 61% Rubio: 116 of 242 - 48% Clinton: 596 of 529 - 113% Sanders: 399 of 492 - 81%
Its broker or bust for the anti-Trumps. EDIT: The good news is that Trump underperformed his polling; maybe the attacks that Cruz and Rubio have begun to deploy are starting to kick in?
Trump's support is almost exclusively among people who make up their minds early. They aren't changing their minds. The only way Rubio or Cruz wins is by mobilizing large turnout from undecided voters. That's not happening while Carson, Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz are ALL in the race. Carson's rumored suspension of his campaign will help - if his votes had split proportionally between Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz, Trump would have lost or nearly lost Vermont, Arkansas, and Virginia. That would have been a big change from what we saw last night.
I don't know if he underperformed his polling, but he was bang-on in terms of the 538 polls-plus predictions. He fell short in 2 states (OK by 5 points and VA by 3), but matched or exceeded expectations everywhere else. There's no real sign that he's underperforming; quite the opposite, actually.
There's an argument to be made that more people are going to vote in the more interesting primary. On the Democratic side, 2008 was close. 2016 is not.
They're not completely irrelevant. You know how the Obama campaign found its volunteers, NTLs, and campaign organizers in 2008 and 2012? By talking to the people who came and voted in the primaries. A smaller pool indicates a harder time doing the ground game that Democrats rely on to win.
So the Dems won't get Indiana this time around. Or will they, thanks to Trump ... All sorts of things drive turnout. Plus, comparing a two-person race with a quasi-incumbent with what was until recently a more than a half dozen person race with all sorts of memorable candidates is apples to oranges.
Republican turnout. Which was about 1-2% higher overall than 2008. I don't have the breakdown of these 15 states, and I'm not gonna get it.
Yeah, I know. But I want to see how large the numbers were for Republicans four years ago. The point - evidently - here is that these numbers can be extrapolated and built upon to mean that Republicans are more jazzed up about the election than are Democrats. It seems a pretty shaky argument to be making, as far as I'm concerned. If more R's than usual are voting this year, maybe, just maybe it has to do with having three candidate who are attracting a fairly large number of voters, with Trump bringing in a slice of the potential electorate that normally wouldn't be this engaged with the nomination process. Implying, however, that these various warring groups will unite behind one candidate, and that primary voting totals, which are (to use your accurate term) tiny compared to general election totals, somehow will translate into a tidal wave of Republicans going to the polls in November, seems outright silly to me. Funny things is, for the Dems in 2008, superficially, the same dynamic was at work: Edwards, Obama and Clinton were all seen as strong candidates, and one could argue that Obama and Clinton were attracting portions of the electorate who "normally wouldn't be this engaged with the nomination process". Thing is, Democrats were widely supportive of all three of these candidates in 2008; their policies were similar, and I would have certainly voted for any of them (things eventually came out about Edwards that tarnished his appeal, obviously). This, of course, is NOTHING like what's going on between Cruz, Rubio and Trump, or the way in which the GOP has chosen Rubio as their fallback guy (hardly their first choice), is trying to drag down Trump and is openly admitting how just about everyone in the party personally despises Cruz. Lots of people who, evidently, hate one another are voting in these primaries. It makes for fascinating political theater, but I don't see the potential dramatic death throes of the modern Republican Party as being evidence that they've stumbled upon a bizarre new strategy to expand their voting base.
@Minnman : Here are the rates overall, not by party and broken down by a lot of demographics... http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics Here is a different take: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-aways-from-the-census-bureaus-voting-report/ So without getting into the details of the turnout by party (which given the increasing number of "independents" could be misleading), it is difficult to see where those Republican new found votes are going to come from, given that the most reliable GOP voters (older, white, conservative) have already a very high turnout rate and they have not made any inroads with the groups that usually do not vote GOP. OTOH, the weak point for the Democrats is that their voters are less reliable, but when we are talking of a difference of about 5 million votes in 2012 (66 million for Obama vs 61 million for Romney), and considering that about 2.5 million GOP voters have died in the last 4 years, the differences are becoming too big for the current GOP to overcome.
Early includes Florida and Michigan, so not apples to apples. my math (probably wrong) if I exclude Michigan, Washington and Florida is about 1.9M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resul...rty_presidential_primaries,_2012#Early_states I did find this article. http://content.usatoday.com/communi...nout-bipartisan-policy-center-/1#.VtnVtEDdlak