After last night, is there any way realistically that Trump doesn’t win Florida?

Hot Air ^ | March 6,2016 | ALLAHPUNDIT

[Hojczyk]

Trump finished very close to where he was projected to finish in all four elections. The reason he “underperformed,” winning just two of the four states up for grabs, is because Ted Cruz overperformed dramatically. And the reason Cruz overperformed is starkly clear in Cohn’s graph, namely, a broad chunk of Rubio’s support collapsed out from under him and shifted to Cruz. According to Alexis Levinson, Rubio banked 20.1 percent of the early vote in Louisiana but just 9.4 percent(!) of the ballots cast yesterday.

Check WaPo’s early vote/election day comparison map of Louisiana and you’ll see Rubio’s early strength vanish before your very eyes, replaced by a late surge for Cruz. When the first returns in Louisiana were reported last night, showing Trump up more than 20 points based on early voting, the networks promptly called the state for him and pronounced it another demonstration of his power in the south. And then, for the next two hours, everyone watched as Cruz surged closer and closer — at one point coming within three points, leading data nerds on Twitter to howl that the networks should un-call the race. Trump held on to win — by less than four points, in a state where RCP’s final poll average had him ahead by nearly 16.

Rubio, meanwhile, finished at a dismal 11.2 percent. That was symptomatic of a national trend yesterday, with Cruz doing better than expected and Rubio doing worse. Obviously, some significant number of pro-Rubio conservatives decided to vote strategically and support Cruz instead.

Graph

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/706337638912040960/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[Hojczyk]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/706337638912040960/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

If Trump win Florida and Ohio its lights out

[KeyLargo]

Rush Limbaugh: ‘Bigger upside than downside’ if Donald Trump wins GOP nomination

By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Sunday, March 6, 2016

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh bucked the GOP establishment Sunday and declared there is “a much bigger upside than downside” to Donald Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination.

“I think with the case of Trump, there’s a much bigger upside than downside,” Mr. Limbaugh said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

The praise from the king of conservative talk radio came as the Republican establishment launched a massive offensive to derail the front-runner, including a scathing denouncement of Mr. Trump last week from 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Mr. Limbaugh said that despite the outrage GOP leaders have directed at Mr. Trump, the billionaire businessman and reality TV star had assembled the broad coalition of voters that the Republican establishment has long sought.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/6/rush-limbaugh-bigger-upside-than-downside-if-donal/print/

[babble-on]

Rubio really needs to drop out this week if the Republican party doesn’t want to rebrand itself as the Trumpublican Party

[Joe Brower]

My crystal ball has never been as clear as I'd like , but at this stage, I predict from the upcoming Florida primaries two things:

1) If Rubio doesn't pull a win from his home state, he will halt his campaign. For this election, anyway.

2) Love it or hate it, I see Trump winning Florida.

For the record, I've been supporting Cruz, although I would vote for either man.

God save the Republic.

Florida Freeper

[House Atreides]

Nah ... Trump’s winning Florida.

[chris37]

Realistically he won’t win Florida if he doesn’t win Florida.

Polls don’t mean a thing.

[ichabod1]

Things are more like they are today than they’ve ever been before - Ike

[chris37]

Things that make you go hmmm.

[MNJohnnie]

Sure, Rubio is pulling a Cristie on Trump. It is entirely possible he dirty up Trumps brand enough that voters go to Cruz.

It is just not very probable.

[txjeep]

Based on this, Cruz would need to win the undecideds (10% in this poll), and steal about 10% from Rubio to take Florida. A tall order, but if Saturday is any indication, a possibility. Trump below 40 is a good sign for Cruz. Might be why he is spending a lot of effort there.

[King of Florida]

If Rubio doesn't pull a win from his home state, he will halt his campaign. For this election, anyway.

If he doesn't win Florida--and I certainly don't expect him to do so--his political career is over. Governor in 2020 (or running again for President)? I don't think so. Expect to see him offering coffee to customers at Norman Braman's BMW dealership in Miami.

[LostPassword]

who “counts” the votes is as important as who voters select.

I’m not ready to go there but I’d be shocked if that hasn’t been discussed at the highest levels of the RNC. Or if there aren’t any local counters with TDS who haven’t thought about how they can independently lose a few selected ballots.

In the end, counters won’t matter. Trump will win or lose on his own. If he gives Trump-haters more ammo this week he may lose.

[Nifster]

Read his position papers. Just because you are lazy doesn’t mean anyone else is

For healt insurance he will make it possible for companies to sell across state lines. This is huge. It is what GOP should have gotten passed and implemented

He will suspend immigration and visitation. Good until it settles down then it can be looked at rationally

He will have border patrol actually in force the law

He wants to kill TPP

[HoosierWordsmith]

There has not been any new polling listed on RCP for Florida since 2/25...over 10 day...and much has happened! However, given the recent Rubio slide, Trump should win Florida easily. But, Johnny Mailbags was pretty close in Ohio even before the last debate (again old data)...it should not surprise that the popular sitting governor would cover his own state.

Nonetheless, if Trump carries both states, it’s probably game and set for Trump! Match, if he gets to 1237...

I think the big question coming out of March 15th will be what does Little Marco do if he gets trashed in his home state? After his terrible debate and Super Saturday performance, and with Cruz pouring $$$ and ground game into Florida, I could envision Kid Rubio dropping to 3rd!

[bramps]

If Trump’s debate performance does not greatly improve in form and substance Thursday night, then all bets are off.

I have to add that I’m just hearing about this pledge he asked for at a recent rally. What the hell was that? That can only hurt him because it has me baffled as to why he did it... and I support him.

[dynoman]

Proof of Ted Cruz Vote Fraud in Kansas and Maine http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2016/03/proof-of-ted-cruz-vote-fraud-in-kansas.html?m=1

Read and think about it for a second. Not that it matters now...

If true there will be less of it in the primary states, especially the open primary states and ones that require ID.

Jeff Roe is from Kansas City. He’s a sleezebag. So was the guy Ted fired, and so is the guy that replaced him - busted for hiring illegal aliens - twice.

There’s no doubt Jeff is well versed in gutter politics.

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“It was Mr. Roe who hired Mr. Tyler to be the Cruz campaign’s spokesman. (In an interview this month, Mr. Tyler said he had “learned a lot” from Mr. Roe. “Jeff wins,” Mr. Tyler said, adding, “I don’t think anything we’ve done is underhanded or deceptive or anything like that.”)

But back home, Mr. Roe’s allies and opponents alike have seen a familiar imprint in the Cruz campaign’s recent exploits, which have included a Photoshopped image of Mr. Rubio and the misleading suggestion, on the night of the Iowa caucuses, that Ben Carson was leaving the race.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/ted-cruz-campaign-manager-jeff-roe.html?_r=0

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All been done before by Jeff Roe. Then there is this;

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"Political consultant Jeff Roe, who is based in Kansas City, is Ted Cruz's campaign manager — and the architect of the Texas senator's surprising first-place finish.

Roe is hardly a household name even amongst the political chattering class. (He has less than 6,000 Twitter followers.) Locally, he's most famous for commissioning the mean-spirited ad that upset State Auditor Tom Schweich and may have factored into his suicide, at least according to former U.S. Senator John Danforth, who blasted "politics that has gone so hideously wrong" in his funeral oration. Roe has been labeled "the Karl Rove of Missouri" — and the people calling him that don't consider it a compliment.

But as last night's results proved, he knows what he's doing. Cruz didn't just hold off all the other candidates vying for Iowa's large block of conservative voters. He did it even while beating Donald Trump. It was a wild, complicated race, and you have to respect the guy who figured out how to propel any candidate, much less one who's thoroughly loathed by everyone he meets, to victory.

In an interview with Chris Wallace a few weeks ago, Roe discussed a few secrets to his success — namely, a simple message and strong branding. Roe comes across as intensely analytical. He doesn't just know how long the average voter looks at a mailer (17 seconds); he knows how long he wants you to look at one touting Cruz (45 seconds). "When we communicate with the voter, we want it to be simple, clear and reinforce our candidate's brand," he says. For Cruz, that was "strong Christian conservative leader."

A recent New York Times Magazine piece delved more deeply into how Roe & Co. made those words resonate for Cruz, who'd hitherto been identified mostly as a conservative, not necessarily a Christian. Writes Robert Draper,

"One morning early in January, in the lobby of a public library in Onawa, Iowa, I listened to Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, as he explained a central challenge of his previous few months. ‘‘Prior to March 23,’’ Roe said, ‘‘if you were to word-cloud ‘Ted Cruz,’ which we do every day — take all the Google mentions and Internet searches, dump them into a file and form a cloud — you can’t find ‘evangelical.’ ’’ In other words, voters were largely unaware of the Tea Party firebrand’s religious faith. To convince evangelicals that Ted Cruz was the ‘‘righteous’’ candidate, Roe told me, his team needed to sell him as such, from the very beginning: ‘‘Regardless of what you’ve got in the bank, you’d better determine the narrative of the campaign, and show that’s who we are, every day."

Last night's results suggest that effort worked beautifully.

Yes, Iowa is unusually dominated by evangelicals, and yes, if Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are any indication, Cruz faces an uphill battle to get the Republican nomination, much less win a single state. But we have to hand it to Roe. Never before has a candidate that so many Americans find this intensely annoying managed to make it this far."

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2016/02/02/missouris-own-jeff-roe-was-the-wind-beneath-ted-cruzs-iowa-wings

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Nothing like this is coming out about the Trump or Kasich campaigns. If there was anything like this going on with Trump the media would be screaming it from the rooftops.