Now that Donald Trump is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee, there is pressure on conservatives to support him. The people have rendered their verdict, and elitist Republicans should respect the will of the voters, or so goes the much-repeated refrain. But have the people really spoken? Trump is hardly the consensus candidate of the Republican everyman. In fact, his victory is as much a product of elitism as anything: Cable and broadcast news showered unprecedented coverage on him, and the insider-friendly rules of the GOP nomination process turned a mere plurality of votes into an overwhelming share of the delegates.
Watching Trump rallies on cable television, with thousands of diehard fans cheering lustily at the rantings of their hero, it’s easy to conclude he is a tribune for the average American’s grievances. His legion of aggressive Twitter minions reinforces the impression that his campaign truly is a populist revolt. However, this mistakes intensity of devotion for breadth of support: Trump voters may be loyal, but they are not particularly numerous.
In fact, Trump has won 41 percent of the primary votes cast to date. His share of the total primary vote will increase now that he is unopposed, but most—if not all—previous GOP nominees won a larger share than Trump is likely to achieve. In 2008 John McCain won 47 percent of the Republican primary vote; in 2012 Mitt Romney won 52 percent. Gerald Ford won 53 percent in 1976, Ronald Reagan 61 percent in 1980, George H.W. Bush 68 percent in 1988, and George W. Bush 63 percent in 2000. Trump could still eke out a slightly larger share of primary votes than McCain did, but only if there is large turnout in the handful of remaining contests. In all likelihood, he will be the least-popular nominee in the modern era.
But, it may be asked, what about the large field of candidates? There were 17 major Republican hopefuls in the race, which made it nearly impossible for Trump to do any better. Not true—the majority of the candidates dropped out early, so by the time most Republicans cast their votes, the field of active contenders was about the same size as it had been in prior cycles. In fact, just four candidates this year—Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio—will have scored more than 5 percent of the vote when the last ballots are cast. That is the same number of major contenders as in 2012 and 2008. Three candidates scored at least 5 percent in 1980, 1988, 1996, and 2000—which did not stop Reagan, Bush 41, Dole, or Bush 43 from winning overwhelming majorities in those cycles.
While Trump’s support from average Republicans is unimpressive by historical margins, his champions at the apex of American society have been decisive. As political scientist E. E. Schattschneider once argued, “the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power.” Before a plurality of Republicans could vote for Trump, he first had to be defined as a viable alternative—a decision made not by the grassroots of the party, but by media executives. According to an analysis by the New York Times from mid-March, Trump had already received about $2 billion worth of coverage from the broadcast and cable networks. As a former numbers-cruncher for Right to Rise, Luke Thompson, has shown, the networks began bestowing this largess on Trump before his rise in the polls—and his share of television coverage consistently outstripped his share of support in the national polls.
What drove this partiality? Money, of course. Garrulous and quick-witted, Trump has always been good for ratings, making him a godsend in this era of stagnating or declining viewership. As Les Moonves, president of CBS, told the Hollywood Reporter, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun … I’ve never seen anything like this, and this [is] going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
What a boon it has been for Trump. Sure, his critics were usually included in the cable news roundtables, and a handful of television journalists like Bret Baier and Jake Tapper dug into his questionable business practices and dubious public pronouncements. But this was a drop in the bucket compared with the hours spent covering his rallies, the puffball interviews, and the obsequious jibber-jabber from a brigade of pro-Trump hosts. If one were ever looking for an example of media bias, here it is.
To borrow a phrase from Schattschneider, the flaw in Trump’s populist heaven is that “the heavenly choir sings with a strong upper-class accent.” Before average voters latched on to Trump to express their frustration with the political elite in Washington, D.C., the media elite in New York City designated him a legitimate vehicle for those grievances. His march to victory began in the executive suites at News Corp., Time Warner, NBCUniversal, Disney, and CBS, all of which boosted him, not because he is good for the country but because he is good for the bottom line.
Trump was also helped by the rules of the Republican nominating process. To date, he has received a slightly smaller share of GOP votes than Bernie Sanders has won of Democratic votes. However, the Democrats allocate their delegates through a proportional system, while the Republicans give bonuses to candidates who finish in first place—even if they win less than half the vote. If the GOP rules resembled what the Democrats employ, Cruz and Kasich—and for that matter Rubio—would all still be in the race, and the party would be headed toward a contested convention in Cleveland.
Far from being a bug in the Republican process, this is its key feature. The product of insider calculations, the party rules are intended to dispatch insurgents quickly and hand the nomination to the frontrunner. Of course, the party elite intended a candidate such as Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney to take advantage of the system. As the ones who can raise the most money and hire the best consultants, Bush or Romney was supposed to get the most attention, jump out to first place in the polls, win the early primaries by narrow margins, winnow the field, and eventually build an insurmountable delegate lead.
The plan backfired: Yes, the big donors swung to Bush, but his public appeal was limited. Trump barely spent a dime, but used his media advantage to become the frontrunner. Still, in its own peculiar way, the nomination process actually functioned properly. Its purpose is to elevate the establishment’s candidate—the difference this time is that it boosted the media establishment’s choice, not that of the Republican political establishment.
Trump has effectively won the nomination despite nearly three-fifths of Republicans preferring somebody else. This victory is hardly the stuff of a populist movement seizing authority from the establishment. Instead, it represents the power of the elites to dominate our political process for their own purposes.
Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.
