[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Trump’s lead in New Hampshire was largely from the 45 percent of primary voters who were not Republicans. He continues to pull in LIV and crossover Democrat voters

Trump got 35 percent of "independent" voters out of a total of 45 percent independents. There were also only 3 percent Democrats voting in the Republican primary, according to CNN's exit poll. Trump also got a huge majority of Repubican voters, while everyone else got 8, or 3, or 11 percent. Cruz only got 13 percent of those, so if we had barred all the independents from voting, Cruz's numbers would have only improved by 2 points. Kasich would have lost 2 points. And Bush would have lost one point.

So Trump actually does just as well percentage wise with just Republicans even if we throw out all the independents and democrats.

[freepersup]

Fine analysis... indeed- fine analysis you’ve got there GPH’s.

[sphinx]

Trump did not get a majority of the Republican vote. He won a plurality. The Bush-Kasich-Christie-Fiorina voters will coalesce around a moderate, and Rubio hopes they will ultimately fall to him. Most of the Santorum-Huckabee-Carson-Paul voters should find their way to Cruz, who also hopes to win a big chunk of the Rubio voters if Marco collapses. Cruz should also take the conservative wing of Trump's support if Donald flames out. I still think Trump would lose head to head against any of the others. The order in which people drop out could be decisive, and that is a matter on which financial resources can be key.

The most important wildcard is whether the moderate wing of the party would prefer Trump to Cruz if Ted emerges as a finalist. One of the great tensions in the Republican coalition is the distaste of the moderates for the social conservatives, who actually mean what they say about traditional values, abortion and religious liberty. The RINO's want the social conservatives to work their tails off, donate, and vote ... and then go away, to be seen but not heard. Cruz is an unabashed evangelical and is likely to embarrass the country club Republicans by actually nominating judges who will reverse Roe, defending Christian business people who don't want to participate in gay marriages, and supporting school choice. The truth is, a lot of the establishment Republicans have made their peace with the left on sex, gender, and race issues, and they wish the traditional values crowd would just go away. These people, of course, regard Cruz as an extremist.