Free Republic

The presentation is an 11th-hour rebuttal to the fatalism permeating the Republican establishment: Slide by slide, state by state, it calculates how Donald Trump could be denied the nomination. Marco Rubio wins Florida. John Kasich wins Ohio. Ted Cruz notches victories in the Midwest and Mountain West. And the results in California and other states are jumbled enough to leave Trump three dozen delegates short of the 1,237 required — forcing a contested convention in Cleveland in July.

A pattern is starting to emerge that holds both promise and peril for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump: Trump does better in “open” primary contests where members of either party can vote, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tends to do better in "closed" contests limited only to registered Republicans.

Here is a quick spreadsheet of the last poll numbers and the results of the Republican contests up to this point that I promised on a couple of threads last night. I started with a few parameters. First, no polling data was included unless there were at least two polls of the contest in the month prior to the caucus or primary listed on RCP (I used RCP for all of the data.) Second, I only listed current candidates. Those who have withdrawn have been lumped together under 'Other'. Third, I have not weighted contests. So little Kansas has just...

GOP Primaries for March 5 (Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine)154 of 2,472 delegates allocated GOP Primary for March 6 (Puerto Rico)23 of 2,472 delegates allocated

In the wake of Donald Trump’s dominant performance in the Super Tuesday primaries last night, desperate speculation about how to stop him from securing enough pledged delegates for a first-ballot win at the Republican convention in July has largely taken the place of speculation about how to beat him outright. Trump took seven of 11 contests, winning by stunning margins in states as diverse as Massachusetts (by 31.2 percentage points) and Georgia (by 14.4 percentage points.) There is evidence that he is not only winning over a large segment of the Republican base but also that he is bringing new...

This thread is about the 2016 Presdidentail Primary Data I have accumulated to date. I have been tracking it since September 1st, and am now set up to track specifically by the vote, and not including non-viote polls any longer. We will let the vote itself tell us what we need to know. Here's the table with the raw numbers: I have established four charts for the GOP and four for the DNC. They incvlude the following for each: -State by State percentage of the Vote -Overall average fo the total Vote -Cumulative Vote Mumbers -Cumulative Delegate Count (including Super...

Why are the Washington elites flocking to Donald Trump in preference to Ted Cruz? Trump, who has thus far been running as an outsider businessman who was going to upend the political order, even boasted about the phenomenon recently. Cruz may be an outsider who is interested in shaking things up, but at least he has been a Republican all of his adult life. Trump, not too long ago, was a liberal Democrat, who favored partial-birth abortion and high taxes.

When people find out I am a political reporter, they usually have only one question for me: "Donald Trump can't really win this thing, can he?" My answer is always the same these days: Absolutely he can. The reason is simple: Trump is the national front-runner, yes, but he is also ahead in a two key early states -- New Hampshire and South Carolina -- and a strong second in Iowa, the state that kicks the whole presidential process off on Feb. 1. Could he totally collapse from that position? Sure. As we know from recent history, voters in Iowa...

The head of the Republican National Committee promises that the Republican nominee will have his party's full support -- no matter who it is. Responding to a question from Fox News' Sean Hannity Thursday night, Reince Priebus said he was confident he could pull his party together even if Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or real estate mogul Donald Trump win the nomination. "One hundred percent. You know the unifying thing about what I have to do is no matter who you're for everyone can agree that we have to have a national party and infrastructure that has its act together...

There have been some small but persistent worry bubbles floating around the blogosphere. They center on the possibility of Donald Trump not getting the Republican nomination because the Republican establishment has been so atrocious in its betrayals of the Republican rank and file that it has sent “millions” of voters to other parties or to the ranks of the unaffiliated. Well I am one of those voters. After decades of being a registered Republican I gave up hoping they would change and actually make good on their promises. Last spring I re-registered as “NO PARTY.” The worry that has developed...

A few factors have increased the chances of a multi-ballot convention.... 17 candidates entered the race and 15 remain. ...five contenders who today appear to have the message, money, organization and poll numbers to play the long game: neurosurgeon Ben Carson, real-estate magnate Donald Trump, Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. What complicates the picture is the GOP’s rule requiring the 28 (states+) that vote before March 15 to award their delegates proportionally. The exception is South Carolina, whose winner-take-all primary was grandfathered in. Add in the eight states voting on or after March...

I'm all in for Ted Cruz and blogging for him, just like I did seven years for Sarah Palin. I'm supporting Cruz for a number of reasons, one of which is I'm pretty sure Gov. Palin won't be running again this election cycle. Family is still her #1 priority, and I respect that. When Cruz was in Alaska campaigning for Dan Sullivan, the Senator and Heidi spent some time with Todd and Sarah at the Palin house for dinner and conversation. Only they know what wassaid there, but I wouldn't bet against presidential politics as one of the topics of...

Malaise: Odds on favorite... It’s the 29th of December and the annual case of General Malaise has infected me. It’s left me worried, not about politics or whether the White House will continue its dismantling of America and Obama’s use of the Constitution and Bill of Rights as a doormat on which he can scrub his soul (if he has one). It really doesn’t have anything to do with Israel, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, ISIL, Oil, Ukrainian Travail or Putin Puttin’ on the Ritz. The Cat Fight has begun; that generalized violation of Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill...

The first test will come Tuesday, when Dr. Milton Wolf tries to end Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts' 33-year run in Congress. Wolf, a radiologist who also happens to be a second cousin of President Obama, has taken heat for Facebook postings of X-rays of gunshots wounds -- while Roberts has awkwardly attempted to laugh off questions about whether he indeed lives in Kansas.

Some of Texas’ biggest business trade groups are moving to counter tea party and anti-government forces that have dominated recent Republican primaries. The movement mirrors the schism happening nationally between hard right and establishment Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently pledged $50 million to back pro-business Republicans in U.S. Senate primaries and fight tea party insurgents. Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the fiscal-hawk group Empower Texans said the Texas Future Business Alliance is nothing but a group of big-money interests wanting taxpayer dollars to flow into their pockets. “This is what we’ve come to expect coming out of the...

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final--and strongest--push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries. “I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.” President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform legislation this year. House...

“I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.”

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) endorsed Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) in his primary against Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin today on Fox News Sunday. Watch: [video]

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer made her much-anticipated endorsement in the Republican presidential nomination contest earlier today on NBC’s Meet the Press — and it went to Mitt Romney, who once had a huge lead in her state but has struggled to maintain an edge over Rick Santorum. Will Brewer’s pick help Romney lock up the winner-take-all state on Tuesday?

Fed up with mounting legal bills and rattled by intense scrutiny of her family and work, Sarah Palin was ready to step down as Alaska's governor months before she left office in July 2009. Emails released Thursday, most from the last 10 months of her time in office, show she told her husband in April, "I can't take it anymore" and complained to spokeswoman Sharon Leighow and aide Kris Perry in March that she had been the target of "many frivolous suits and charges since the DAY I became VP candidate." "I can't afford this job," she wrote. The emails...