SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Addressing a crowd of nearly 1,000 enthusiastic supporters at the Century Center along the Saint Joseph River, Carly Fiorina added a line to her stump speech.
On Wednesday, she set her sights on Donald Trump after being introduced before a much smaller Indianapolis crowd as Ted Cruz’s running mate-in-waiting. On Thursday, though, she also mentioned a candidate who has abandoned even the idea of winning Indiana.
“Guess what?” she told her audience. “A vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.” In Indiana, this is basically true. Kasich has no campaign here and no chance of victory.
But what Fiorina left unsaid is that a vote for Cruz in Indiana is a vote for Kasich. Sort of.
This strategic voting paradox might test the limits of voters’ tolerance for game theory. But it only exists because anti-Trump Republicans are now down to their last line of resistance.
After Cruz and Fiorina spoke at the Century Center, I asked a group of women who are ardent Cruz supporters whether they feared Kasich would play the role of spoiler. This is of special concern here, in Indiana’s ever-swingy Second Congressional District, which is likely to see a close finish between Cruz and Trump.
“I know people who really would support Kasich,” said Janet Bettcher, a registered nurse. “But we are not going to be able to vote for him here anyway.”
She didn’t say it as if she meant people shouldn’t vote for Kasich, but as if she were a mathematician explaining to me that you cannot divide by zero. And there is actually something to this. The unwillingness of Kasich voters in Indiana to pull the lever for Cruz could prove the demise of Kasich’s quirky bid for the presidency. A vote for Cruz is actually the best thing they can do for Kasich at this point, and for more reasons than one.
Polls currently show Cruz narrowly trailing Trump, with both somewhere in the mid-30s. Kasich is in a distant third place, but in double digits. All other things being equal, the Ohio governor’s fans will be the decisive voting bloc next Tuesday.
To complicate the situation further, the Indiana delegates who will actually attend the convention have already been selected, and appear to be mainly Kasich sympathizers. But if those delegates are sent to convention bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot, then he will likely be the nominee on the first ballot. They will never get the opportunity to vote for Kasich anyway.
On the other hand, if those delegates end up being pledged to Cruz after an Indiana victory, and if Cruz follows up his win in Indiana with a sufficiently strong performance in California, Cruz will not be the nominee on the first ballot, and the scramble will begin. Here and only here does Kasich derive whatever miniscule chance he thinks he has at being nominated.
So in Indiana, a vote for Kasich is basically a vote for Trump. But a vote for Cruz is also a vote for Kasich.
Hoosier voters who want to stop Trump might find this uber-complicated strategic voting scenario a bit odd. And this kind of strategic voting doesn’t always work. But it’s just the way things are now that the effort to stop Trump has reached its last, desperate stages.
