It’s not impossible that Donald Trump finishes in third place in Ohio. The latest Ohio polls show a barn-burner between John Kasich and Trump, but they also show a distinctive Ted Cruz surge in the past 10 days.
Snapshot
Six pollsters have surveyed Ohio Republicans in March. RealClearPolitics averages the last four, and derives an average that shows Kasich up 35.3 percent, two points ahead of Trump. Ted Cruz’s average over those four polls is 20 percent. Rubio is in single digits in all four polls and will finish fourth in Ohio.
One of four polls (PPP) shows Trump leading. Two show a Kasich lead, and the CBS/YouGov poll shows a 33 to 33 tie. Cruz is in the teens in most polls but CBS has him at 27 percent.
Trend
Kasich shows very little movement. In five of the six surveys this month, he’s been between 32 percent and 35 percent.
The only significant movement suggested by these polls is a migration of voters from Trump to Cruz over the course of this month. In the first three polls of March, Trump averaged 39 percent. In the three more recent polls he averages below 32 percent.
In the first three polls, Cruz hovered at 15 or 16 percent. Since then, he’s scored 19 percent, 19 percent, and now 27 percent. Even if that 27 percent is overstated, it’s hard not to posit a Cruz climb. Splitting the six latest polls this way — the earlier three and the later three — shows a Trump drop of about 7 points and an equal Cruz surge.
It’s a leap to say this data represents Cruz picking off Trump supporters, but it’s not a huge leap. Going by the PPP poll, 9 percent of Ohio Republicans were Trump supporters with a positive view of Cruz, and another 5 percent were Trump supporters unsure of what they thought of Cruz. About 6.5 percent of voters were Trump supporters who held Cruz as a second choice, and 15 percent were Trump voters unsure of their second choice.
Reading the tea leaves
Despite his lead in more polls, and his lead in the RCP average, Kasich has to consider himself tied with Trump in the polls. It’s close enough that turnout operation and similar factors matter.
One factor: Kasich has favorability ratings around 70 in recent polls. Trump is well below 50 percent. Nothing has happend in recent days to drag Kasich down. The lowest margin-of-error poll (806 likely voters by Fox News) showed Kasich winning by 5 points.
Here’s a key detail: None of these polls were conducted after Trump shut down his own Chicago rally because of protesters. This incident will have both upward and downward effects on Trump’s standing. The net effect is impossible to predict ahead of time.
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.
