Many conservatives still hold out the hope that once the field winnows down to two candidates, that Donald Trump can be defeated for the GOP nomination. If only Cruz and Kasich, or Kasich and Rubio, or Rubio and Cruz were to drop out, then Rubio/Cruz/Kasich would beat Trump!
Today’s polls undermine that hope. Donald Trump beats all other candidates in the southern states in one-on-one candidates.
The Bloomberg poll covers Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and it has Trump leading with 37 percent, and Rubio and Cruz tied at second with 20 percent.
Trump is the second choice of 13 percent, meaning he is the first or second choice of 50 percent of voters in those states. That helps explain the following:
Trump beats Cruz 49 to 40
Trump beats Rubio 48 to 44
Trump beats Kasich 57 to 31
Only 20 percent of voters in this poll said they would “never” vote for Trump. That puts his ceiling in these states at 80 percent.
It’s the same story in Michigan. A local Fox affiliate in Detroit found: “looking at the second choices of the various candidates, if everyone dropped out except Rubio and Trump, creating a two-way race, Trump would still win Michigan. The same is true if it was a two-way race between Cruz and Trump.”
In Massachusetts, Trump posts 50 percent in the only recent poll.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
