Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday in Arizona’s Republican primary delivered to him all 58 of the state’s delegates, but even as his win there pulls him closer to the nomination, there are signs the GOP frontrunner remains weak. Meanwhile Trump’s rival Ted Cruz pulled nearly 70 percent of the vote to win the Utah caucuses Tuesday, giving him all 40 delegates there and denying Trump the sort of big sweep he has experienced on several primary days.
Arizona wasn’t a sure thing for Trump, but plenty of factors meant it was primed to be a good state for the populist Republican. The first was Trump’s focus on illegal immigration, perhaps his top campaign issue and one to which Arizona Republicans are particularly attuned. Another was the state’s older GOP demographic, an element of Arizona’s role as a retirement destination. Trump has consistently performed very well among older Republicans, with a message (“Make America Great Again”) that seems tailor-made for aging Boomers.
While it likely wasn’t determinative for Trump’s delegate count because of the state’s winner-take-all apparatus, Arizona’s long early-voting period did seem to depress Cruz’s vote count and margin for second-place there. Arizona Republicans began voting early in the primary on February 24, before Marco Rubio and Ben Carson had even dropped out of the race. More than 18 percent of the vote went to these two and other candidates that had dropped out by March 22. But even if all of the ex-candidate vote had gone to Cruz, that still would not have been enough for the Texan to catch Trump in Arizona.
So if Arizona was a decisive victory for Trump, it was even more so for Ted Cruz across the border in Utah. Cruz won 69 percent of Republican caucus-goers, trouncing both Trump at 14 percent and John Kasich (who incredibly came in fourth place in Arizona behind former candidate Rubio) at 17 percent. By getting more than 50 percent of the vote, Cruz secured all of Utah’s delegates.
On the day, that’s not as big of a haul as Trump, but Utah suggests Trump does have limitations as the field winnows and primary voters are apprised of the stark choice. In Utah, devout Mormon Mitt Romney made a direct appeal to voters there, a majority of whom are his coreligionists, that “a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.” Utah governor Gary Herbert, hardly a right-winger, also indicated in the final days that he would support Cruz.
Unlike in Arizona, where the early vote confused priorities of those not inclined to support Trump, the appeal seems to have worked at sending the establishment-friendly Utah GOP vote to Cruz. It’s one that Cruz himself, speaking on several news programs Wednesday morning, has been making as well. With upcoming primaries in Wisconsin (April 5), New York (April 19), and several states on April 26, there’s no reason to think the consolidation behind Cruz can’t continue—Jeb Bush, for instance, endorsed Cruz Wednesday morning, and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has said he’ll make a decision about his endorsement next week, before his state’s primary.
What’s working in Trump’s favor? Besides his current advantage in delegates, a number of delegate-rich states like New York (95 total delegates), Pennsylvania (71), and California (172) have yet to vote. All three of those states have hybrid winner-take-all by district or winner-take-most systems. Trump adviser Stephen Miller tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD the campaign believes it will wrap up the nomination by performing strong enough in these states to easily reach the necessary 1,237 majority of delegates.
That reads like wishful thinking. Fifty-four of the Pennsylvania delegates, for instance, are directly elected on the ballot and are not formally bound to support a particular candidate on the first ballot at the convention. If Trump continues to alienate other Republicans, it’s possible the GOP faithful who will be elected to represent Pennsylvania at the national convention will be more inclined not to vote for Trump on the first ballot.
Delegates in California, meanwhile are allocated by congressional district. Miller, Trump’s spokesman, sounds confident the campaign can clean up in nearly all of them. But the majority of California’s districts are held by Democrats and aren’t easy to read for how they’ll go in a Republican primary.
The X-factor continues to be Kasich’s continued presence in the race despite the Ohio governor having no mathematical path to even second place in the delegate contest. On Fox News Wednesday, Cruz called Kasich a “spoiler” who is benefitting Trump. The pressure for Kasich to exit the race is likely growing, but whether it will be effective remains to be seen.
