Donald Trump could amass most primary votes in GOP history

New York Post ^ | April 27, 2016 | Bob Fredericks

[BradtotheBone]

Donald Trump will likely wind up winning the most primary votes of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history, the author of the influential Smart Politics blog told The Post on Wednesday.

After convincing victories in Tuesday’s primaries in five East Coast states, Trump has roughly 10.1 million votes, about 200,000 more than Mitt Romney got during the entire 2012 primary campaign.

And with the primaries ahead — including in populous states such as California, New Jersey and Indiana — the former “Apprentice” ­reality TV star should easily break the modern record of 10.8 million held by George W. Bush in 2000, according to blogger Eric Ostermeier, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.

“In an election cycle with a high Republican turnout, his numbers are rising, even more so now that there’s only three candidates” left in the GOP race, he said.

The reasons include a combination of Trump’s celebrity, media exposure and higher-than-usual interest in his over-the-top candidacy, Ostermeier said.

The numbers-crunching blogger uses figures compiled by Congressional Quarterly that differ from those compiled by other groups, some of which say Bush got as many as 12 million votes in the 2000 primaries.

But even if that were the case, Trump would still likely shatter the record.

The next big-state primaries include Indiana on May 3 and California and New Jersey on June 7.

[Rational Thought]

With all the polling of a Trump/Clinton race, I do think these actual, huge numbers of Trump primary votes are being overlooked.

[To Hell With Poverty]

The big question is, how many votes has Hillary amassed, and in which states. We have to consider the electoral college.

For instance, in NY she had twice the votes.

However we don’t know how many Bernie/Cruz/Kasich voters would vote for Trump in the general.

Overall it’s a good sign of voter enthusiasm but the tea leaves are still a little too scrambled to get a good reading at this point.

[Beernoser]

The total primary vote totals are interesting, but not really important because in the last 40 years every primary was well over by now. New York primary voting has always been basically nothing because the race was over and there was no reason to vote. Same with all the states voting around now.

The last time there was a fight all the way to the convention was 40 years ago and back then the population of the US was much smaller, and there were much fewer primaries.

So, it’s an interesting stat, but doesn’t really mean a whole lot other than people are more likely to vote if there’s an actual race to vote on.