Thirty-seven percent of voters in the Republican nominating contests thus far voted for Donald Trump, which means that 62-63 percent voted against him.
Just how unimpressive is a 37 percent tally? In 1992, after George H.W. Bush lost the presidency in a three-way race with Ross Perot and Bill Clinton (which Clinton won with 43 percent in an electoral landslide), it was seen as a calamitous loss and a huge comedown from the 54 percent he had won against Michael Dukakis four years earlier.
After Wisconsin votes on April 5, Trump’s share of voters will probably fall even further, coming closer to a 66-33 vote against him, which is closer to two-against-one. A little over one-third of the primary vote does not seem like much, but Trump seems to find it more than sufficient. As he told Fox News on March 6, “I have a very fervent group of followers … and they’re not going to be happy if I have the most delegates and … we’re a bit short of a number that was really an arbitrary number.”
And he said on This Week two weeks later, “I have so many more votes and so many more delegates and … whoever has
the most votes and the most delegates should be the nominee.” But as it happens, that number — 1,237 — is not at all arbitrary: It is exactly one vote more than a split decision, and thus the minimal number at which an absolute majority is reached.
In lesser races, one can win a multi-candidate race with a plurality, but with the presidency a majority of a vote delivered by a national body is absolutely required, with no buts allowed. Bill Clinton won in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote, but he racked up more than 300 votes in the electoral college, which was set up to assure not merely a majority of the states but of states so varied in size, location and nature that a diverse consensus is reached.
One needs 1,237 votes in the convention for the same reason one needs 270 votes in the Electoral College: Get 269, and one isn’t president, at least not immediately. In that case the election is thrown to the House, the most democratic of all of the national branches of government. But an absolute majority of one national body is always required, as a president has to be backed by a broad coalition, which is why Trump’s 37, or 34, percent solution is simply not feasible.
But don’t expect Trump or his fans to know why. Trump isn’t really a mere politician, or something as mundane as that. He’s Henry VIII, a spoiled rich brat who was born to a more prudent founder, who took over the family franchise and gilded it up beyond recognition, who had two trophy wives (whom he beheaded) and a mail-order bride he sent back upon seeing, who broke with Rome because he wanted to marry a hot little number, sent most of his critics into the Tower of London, and now and then chopped off their heads.
If they had had tabloids in 16th Century London, he would have been in them, and if they had had “reality” television, he would have
been on that, too. People like this don’t know from James Madison, or words like “consensus,” “coalitions,” and “moral legitimacy.” They know from “Gimme,” “I want it,” and “I want it now.” But he’s not gonna get it unless he gets to 1,237, which may be never. And he can’t do a thing about that.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
