Bush, Fiorina, Kasich, Huckabee, Christie, Santorum, and Gilmore all won zero delegates tonight. Pretty much there’s zero reason for any of them to stay in the race.
I’m curious to see where Rand Paul’s daddy’s supporters went. They’ve been strangely quiet in this election cycle and little Rand only got 1 delegate. Shouldn’t they be out screaming at the top of their lungs that Trump is an Islamophobic neo-con and Cruz is a globalist NAZI who wants to start World War III? They’re usually on all over the internet to troll online polls and harass supporters of non-Paul candidates. It’s pleasant not having to listen to it this election cycle.
O’Malley is doing pitiful as well (0.5%), but I’d agree on him staying in, because the RAT field only has two other candidates and one of them (Sanders) is a socialist nutcase who isn’t even a real Democrat. Your scenario that the Dems would need a backup candidate in the event Hillary collapses is plausible. The powers-that-be in Dem establishment ain’t gonna take Sanders unless they have to.
Looks like the Hilderbeast vs. Senile communist race is too close to call. Might be like the NM RAT primary from 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_Democratic_primary,_2008
8 years ago, Hilderbeast was struggling against a wet-behind-the-ears first term Senator with zero accomplishments, now she’s struggling against a wild-eyed elderly communist that isn’t even a member of the party he’s running in. Hildy is just Ms. Popularity, isn’t she?
Hilderbeast needs to go home and bake cookies for her granddaughter and never be heard of again.
There are still enough Paulbots for Rande to come in a very distant 3rd in those FR Caucuses.
I’d say it’s a combo of Rand being a lousy campaigner who lacks his dads’ Svengali like hold over his followers, Trump sucking up so much oxygen on the “unconventional Republican” front, and perhaps most importantly the fact that Ron got a lot of soft votes in ‘08 and ‘12 with the very weak Republican fields.