Ted Cruz May Still Eke Out Victory Over Trump In Race For Republican Nomination

In a race that has increasingly become a “Stop Donald Trump” movement rather than growing support behind any other choice in the race, there is still some hope yet left for the so-called Republican establishment that one other candidate may be able to eke out a victory over Trump.

Unfortunately for them, it’s Ted Cruz — a candidate that the establishment dislikes nearly as much as they dislike Donald Trump.

But Cruz is the only GOP candidate left standing in the race that has a chance of defeating Trump, according to famed statistician Nate Silver, who has predicted election outcomes with an uncanny ability.

Cruz has won Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Alaska, Kansas, Maine and Idaho. He has finished second to Trump in Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi. In fact, 29 percent of primary voters have cast their votes for Cruz, compared to Trump’s 35 percent of votes received.

Trump is ahead in the delegate count, having received 100 more than Cruz at this time. This is not, Silver explains, a trvial gap — but neither is it an insurmountable one. After all, there are 99 delegates up for grab in the winner-take-all state of Florida alone next Tuesday.

Florida, however, still looks as though it is a fairly strong Trump state — increasingly so as native-son Marco Rubio loses even more ground. Further challenging the Cruz campaign is the fact that the rest of the states on the calendar are not as favorable towards him as the states that have gone for him thus far.

But there are three factors that Ted Cruz does have in his favor. He has outperformed what his polling numbers indicate in almost every state. He’s also won states in all four major regions of the country. And, lastly, he does stand to gain a lot of voters if Rubio and John Kasich drop out of the race.

Exit polls performed in both Michigan and Mississippi, two vastly disparate states, underscore the idea that, were the remaining two Republicans to drop out of what is becoming an increasingly two-man race for the White House bid, Cruz would benefit.

When given the option to choose between either Cruz or Trump — as well as the option to simply sit out the race — 75 percent of Rubio voters said they would still elect to vote, and that they would choose Cruz over Trump by 80 percent. In addition, 55 percent of Kasich voters who would still elect to participate would also support Cruz over Trump.

These were the first exit polls that asked voters about one-on-one matchups, and the results, Nate Silver says, are consistent with the national polls that show Trump would lose a great deal of ground if the field narrowed, as well as other polls that show Trump, while having a strong following, remains vastly unpopular with Republicans who do not support him currently.

Silver is not yet ready to predict what the electoral map — and, more importantly, the delagate count — would look like in a one-on-one race between Trump and Cruz. There simply has not been enough polling done in states beyond Florida and Ohio, and the Republican race, Silver says, has not been “predictable along demographic lines, with Trump having performed well in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Alabama and Hawaii.”

Silver did, however, re-figure how the Republican race might have gone if it had been between Trump and Cruz all along.

“What I will do, however, is ‘retrodict’ how the race might have gone had it been a two-man contest between Cruz and Trump all along. Could Cruz have beaten Trump in South Carolina, for instance? To do this, I’ll redistribute support from Rubio, Kasich and other candidates to Cruz and Trump based on the exit poll answers I described above. To repeat, these assume that most of their support would have gone to Cruz but not all of it, and also that a fair number of voters (especially Kasich voters) would sit out the race without their candidate on the ballot.”

In the end, it shows that it is likely that Cruz would have a delegate lead over Trump.

“These figures estimate that Cruz would have won South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana in addition to the states where he already beat Trump. He also would have won Minnesota and Puerto Rico, which originally went to Rubio. Several other states, such as Michigan, Georgia and Virginia, would have been close between Trump and Cruz. Trump would be fairly dominant in the Northeast, however, and would still have won Nevada easily.”

Ted Cruz may be the Republican establishment’s last and only hope against Donald Trump, but with the Republican field still fairly wide at this late date, and candidates Rubio and Kasich showing no sign of dropping out before the contests in their home states of Ohio and Florida, even Cruz’s chances are becoming more slim. Donald Trump nabbing the majority of the delegates ahead of the Republican National Convention is becoming more and more of an inevitability.

Of course, that does not mean Trump will automatically get the Republican nomination. Cruz may still get the prize if a brokered convention, an idea that has grown from a whisper to a shout as Trump gains more delegates, really does happen. For more on that, click here.

[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images News]