Trump Does Indeed Have A Ceiling. The field has consolidated, but Trump isn’t walking away with huge margins of victory. In fact, in the three states since the field winnowed to three, Trump has lost two (Utah and Wisconsin) while winning one (Arizona). Granted, we’re about to head into states far more favorable to Trump, including New York and Pennsylvania. But the notion that he’s consolidating support for a breeze to the nomination simply isn’t true. There have been 31 states thus far holding caucuses and primaries. Trump hasn’t won a majority in any of them.
Trump Isn’t Walking Away With Working Class Voters Across The Board. Exit polls showed that Cruz beat Trump in Wisconsin even among voters with a high school degree or less. As education increased, Trump’s percentages dropped. This is consistent with national findings that Trump is increasingly unpopular with the white working class, his strongest constituency.
Cruz’s Base Is Expanding. Nate Silver puts it this way:
As a sign of Cruz’s potentially expanding base of support, he won 43 percent of the non-evangelical vote tonight in Wisconsin, according to exit polls, beating Trump (37 percent) and Kasich (17 percent).
Conservatives Dislike Trump. Trump won independents in Wisconsin by a small margin, 43 percent to 38 percent, but Cruz won 53 percent of the Republican vote to 34 percent for Trump. The California primary is closed. That won’t help Trump, who draws his support from the most left-leaning elements of the Republican Party base. Trump won moderate/liberal voters by a margin of 41 percent to 29 percent over Cruz in Wisconsin.
We Won’t See “Presidential” Trump Anytime Soon. While Trump tells friendly media faces that he’ll start acting presidential soon in order to remind Americans that he’s fit for office, there’s been no indicator of that so far. After losing in Wisconsin, Trump issued this incredible statement:
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