How Donald Trump lost Wisconsin

 

 

 

 

 

 

The normal formulation for an article like this is to focus on how the winner of a state got the job done. In the Republican primary contest of 2016, at this point, the more important story is how Donald Trump lost. How it was that his opponents -- both on and off the ballot -- blocked him from taking a big step toward his goal of 1,237 pledged delegates.

As preliminary exit polls trickled in, we picked out details reported by ABC News that suggested a Trump-unfriendly electorate. Unlike the Republican electorates in most other states, for example, preliminary exit polls suggested that more than half of voters were merely "dissatisfied" with government, compared to one-third who were "angry." Trump does much better with angrier voters. What's more, more than 4 in 10 voters were looking for someone with experience -- also high for this election season and also a group with whom Trump does poorly.

Once polls closed, the extent of Ted Cruz's victory became clearer. There aren't obvious signs that Trump's recent stumbles did much damage. Preliminary exit polls reported by CNN show that Trump did about as well with women as with men, for example, despite his later-walked-back comment that women who undergo illegal abortions should be punished. That's actually better than he's done in states so far; past exit polling from Edison Media Research suggests that Trump normally does a bit better with men than women. Trump did worse with voters who made up their minds in the last week before voting -- winning 4 in 10 votes from those who decided earlier and 3 in 10 of those deciding in the last week -- but that's pretty typical for Trump. He has a core base of committed support that decides early and sticks with him.

The two tied with voters who only had a high school education or less. They essentially tied among those with no college degree in general. They tied with those in lower income brackets. Those are groups Trump generally wins. They're also groups with whom Cruz doesn't do that well.

Comparing (preliminary!) exit poll data to what's happened in the past, we can get a sense for what may have happened. Trump did about as well as he normally does with less-educated and less-wealthy voters -- but Cruz tied him. In other words: it's quite possible that Trump hit a ceiling, and Cruz consolidated support from people who are no longer in the race.

What's more, Trump appears to have done worse than he normally does with Republican voters and better than normal with independents. He did about as well as he normally does with moderates, but did worse with very conservative voters.

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All preliminary. All can change. But it suggests that Republicans finally did what anti-Trump forces hoped they would: Lined up against the front-runner to hand him a defeat in a consolidated field.

A point to that effect: More than half of Wisconsin Republicans said they were concerned or scared of a Trump presidency -- and that group gave nearly three-quarters of its votes to Cruz.

It's important to note that Wisconsin was never supposed to be a big Trump state. He only led in four of 12 polls taken this year in the state and in only two in the last month (including a clear outlier that came out this week). If there was a place where the Republican party could make a stand against Trump, it was Wisconsin. That's how he lost.

That's not likely to carry over to the next state to vote, Trump's home state of New York. Maybe. It could. But that's a state where Trump is supposed to do well -- and if there wasn't a big negative effect on him from the past week in Wisconsin, it's not clear why we should expect to see him falter there.

Wisconsin's Republicans did what they were supposed to do. Republicans everywhere else may not.