Donald Trump’s not-so-magic number in the Republican primaries is 34 percent. That’s the average share of the vote Trump has received in the first 19 contests. He won one-third of the vote in the four early races, 34 percent on Super Tuesday, and a disappointing 33 percent average in the smaller-state races held this weekend. At a time when candidates usually increase their support, Trump’s is stunted.
This has been the story of the Republican race: Trump, with the help of endless news-media coverage, was able to consolidate and lock down his blue-collar base quicker than his rivals, who spent months fighting among themselves. Only now are Republican candidates and outside groups training their fire at Trump, and it’s clearly paying off.
The biggest beneficiary of the Trump ceiling is Ted Cruz, who is the second choice of many Trump supporters and has been picking up momentum since his better-than-expected Super Tuesday. He won the most delegates over the weekend, crushing the competition in Kansas and Maine, nearly tripping up Trump in Louisiana and holding him to 36 percent in Kentucky. Cruz is now within striking distance of Trump in the delegate count, much closer to the top than Marco Rubio is to second place.
Rubio, meanwhile, performed poorly and didn’t even hit the 10 percent delegate threshold in Maine. Three factors contributed to his collapse: a) his lackluster debate performance in Detroit, where he effectively laid out Trump’s baggage but didn’t make an effective case for himself; b) Mitt Romney’s speech in which he urged conservative voters to back any of Trump’s rivals and swung some late votes from Rubio to Cruz—at least in Louisiana, where Rubio did much better in early voting than on Election Day; c) conservative talk-radio hosts Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and (to a lesser extent) Rush Limbaugh roughing up Rubio as he became the de facto establishment candidate.
The third factor may be the most consequential, with Hannity slamming Rubio as a traitor on his popular TV show and syndicated radio show—a turnaround prompted by a New York Times story suggesting that Fox hosts changed their views on immigration reform after being privately lobbied by Rubio as he pushed the Gang of Eight bill. At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Hannity didn’t interview Rubio, as he did the other presidential candidates. Instead, that honor went to CNN reporter Dana Bash, a card-carrying member of the mainstream media that grassroots conservatives despise.
But despite Cruz’s ascendancy and Rubio’s collapse, the likelihood of a contested convention has never been higher.
