Here’s a simple chart to visualize what’s been happening in the Republican primaries and caucuses. It shows the percentage of the total vote that has been going to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich put together and other candidates in the four February contests, in the March 1 Super Tuesday contests and in the contests from March 5 to March 12.
| Date | Trump | Cruz | Rubio + Kasich | Others |
| February | 33 | 21 | 28 | 18 |
| March 1 | 34 | 29 | 28 | 8 |
| March 2-12 | 37 | 31 | 28 | 4 |
The demographic bases of each are different. Trump draws disproportionately from low-education voters, Cruz from evangelicals and “very conservative” voters, Rubio and Kasich from high-education and high-income. Rubio got the bulk of the R+K votes in February and on Super Tuesday; Kasich has gotten more of them since.
The vote for other candidates has plunged, as one after another has left the race, from 18 percent to 4 percent. But Trump, unlike previous front-runners for the Republican nomination, has gained very little, going from 33 to 37 percent — very far short of a majority.
The big winner has been Ted Cruz, who in March has been getting slightly more votes than Rubio and Kasich put together. Backers of other candidates might argue that Cruz’s totals are inflated by his big victory in his home state of Texas, the nation’s second largest state. But the pattern is fairly clear. If, as polls suggest, Rubio loses Florida, he will likely either withdraw or cease to be a serious factor. Then the question will become whether Cruz or Kasich can expand their constituencies.
My bet would be on Cruz, who currently has 370 delegates to 63 for Kasich, and that it behooves Cruz to argue to upscale primary voters that a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump.
