The point is that anti-Trump people falsely assume that he'll get almost no votes from dropouts. But Trump has maintained his position as 12 candidates have dropped out. (There were 17 initially, now 5). The dropouts' supporters went to remaining candidates - including Trump - proportionally. And polling a three-way race provides data to confirm that exact phenomenon continues with future dropouts.
But feel free to repeat the "Trump ceiling" fantasy. All the anti-Trump pundit are.
Here is the poll headline we were all discussing a week ago: “Breaking: First South Carolina Poll after NH (Trump 36 Cruz 19 Rubio 15 Bush 11)”. Clearly, Trump has lost support (he only go 33% in SC), as has Bush, and Cruz picked up a little, but Rubio picked the most in the actual vote.
The moderates now backing Bush and Kasich likely are going to move to the remaining moderate - Rubio.
Trump now has a choice. Pivot to the left to try to bring in the moderate dropout votes, or pivot to the right and go for Cruz’s conservative votes. Cruz and Trump combined are well over 50%.
We have seen how two-faced Trump can be when he went from trashing Carson to kissing up to Carson and acting like he was the great defender of the surgeon.
So will Trump kiss up to Cruz and go conservative or kiss up to Bush and go liberal? We shall see. Let’s check back on this tread in a couple of weeks.