@AJDelgado13 Cruz & Rubio pledged to support Trump. pic.twitter.com/KcqYI6TjDO— Sting Mccoy (@StingMccoy) March 5, 2016
Posted on 03/07/2016 3:11:55 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I've never been a fan of early voting. Those who vote early do not have the opportunity to include in their deliberations late breaking events or campaign developments that might cause them to re-examine their decision.
I've always believed we're better off having everybody vote on the same day. That way everybody has access to the same information before they pull the lever. (Absentee ballots, of course, should be made available to those who cannot show up on election day due to travel or other unavoidable complications.)
An illustration of this comes from the Louisiana primary on Saturday. Donald Trump barely defeated Ted Cruz in the Bayou State 41%-38%. But it turns out Trump may owe his margin of victory to early voters.
This is because Cruz stormed back on election day, as the Washington Post points out in a piece by Philip Bump entitled Ted Cruz's huge surge in Election Day voting in Louisiana.
Bump compares voting data from early voters with data from day-of voters, and concludes "[T]his looks like the state of Louisiana bailed on Marco Rubio in favor of Ted Cruz."
Nate Silver has additional details. Here were Louisiana's election day vote totals:
Cruz 40.9%
Trump 40.5%
Rubio 9.4%
Kasich 6.8%
But here were the early vote totals:
Trump 46.7%
Cruz 22.9%
Rubio 20.1%
Kasich 3.7%
In other words, Cruz closed a 20 point gap in a matter of days, and actually won the vote on election day. Wrote The Hayride, "Ted Cruz erased a 20-point gap in Louisiana in less than a week and actually won the Election Day vote. That's absolutely incredible."
And Cruz picked up a large amount of his support from Marco Rubio, who tanked on Saturday, and produced a vote total less than half his absentee totals.
What happened? The most plausible explanation is that the debate happened. The last debate happened on the Thursday night before the Saturday election, and by most accounts both Trump and Rubio had bad nights. Trump was defensive all night long, changed his mind on immigration in the middle of the debate, and doubled down on ordering war crimes (only to reverse field the next day).
Rubio likewise had a substandard outing while Cruz refused to mud wrestle with either Trump or Rubio and kept the focus on substantive policy differences between him and his opponents.
Rubio had a perfectly terrible day on Saturday. He could not get out of the teens anywhere, and didn't even crack the 10% threshold in Maine to qualify for even a single delegate.
Cruz won stunning and decisive victories in Kansas (48-23) and Maine (46-33) and lost narrowly in Louisiana and Kentucky (36-32). According to NBC, he has closed the delegate gap with Trump to well under a hundred (392-305).
Bottom line: the bottom seems to have fallen out of the Rubio campaign, Trump's sheen is starting to tarnish, and Cruz seems to be peaking at just the right time. This campaign is far from over.
I’ve been here since 2001 (different name back then), and I’ve heard Rush called worse. Him mentioning that the “Freepers are going to hate him for this” is how I found this site.
And it really isnt anything new to see criticism for all manner of talk radio hosts From Micheal Gallagher, Medved, Ingrham, O’reilly Dr. Laura, Savage, Beck, to Alex Jones and other...election or not.
It was nice of Bryan Fischer to pen this missive for Cruz after Cruz was too much of a political coward to show up at his own rally with the guy.
Why DEMS are Terrified of Trump
Ted Cruz on the other hand may just bring out more Dem voters in support of Hillary.
No doubt a surge. He won 2.5 states Saturday, every poll showed him at least 10 points less than he got, some way more. Whoa Nelly Maine, as Maine goes so goes the country.
Same with some states from last Tuesday.
Keep doin’ the yeoman’s work, my brutha!
I’m right in the thick of it with you.
Thanks for all you do.
That just goes to show that you did not read the article. Which stated that Trump won Louisiana because of the lead he gained from early voting. The article did not say trump lost. It said he lost in the ballots cast on saturday.
It means that there was a large movement toward Cruz in the final days of the race in LA. I think the debate may have had an impact there, damaging both Trump and Rubio, but that is just my opinion. The question is whether or not that trend will continue through tomorrow and beyond.
Nah! Its just menstrual bloat.
What objective meaning does it have?
We will see how real this is tomorrow and on March 15. If Cruz wins or finishes second in either OH, FL, IL, or MI, then he is indeed surging. If he finishes third or worse in these states, he has stalled.
Well lets see, by all the polling data, and the early voting totals Trump should have walked away with four complete and total victories. Yet on Saturday Trump got his butt spanked in Kansas, was beat down in Maine and barely squeaked out victories in Ky, and La
It means that while Trump was 16 points ahead according to the polls, Cruz closed the gap to 3 points. If Louisiana had not had early voting, Cruz would have won the state.
Trump owes his success in Louisiana to early voters, because the people who voted on Saturday preferred Cruz.
True but Cruz had a horrid super Sunday. Of course the lying media won’t say it. I feel for Cruz when the media turns on him. It’s coming. It’s not fun. Trump is being thrown everything including the kitchen sink at him.
Yesturday. I rest my case.
Four to five point wins are barely squeaked out when Trump does it, but I guess Iowa, Alaska, and Oklahoma were blowouts.
Too bad Cruz didn’t “surge” when almost all the Southeast voted..
oh Sorry I forgot that Trump Supporters swear oaths of allegiance to Trump, that all polls are accurate to the letter if they show Trump ahead, and that previous vote totals always show how the next election will turn out.
If one looks at the data, Trump brings out larger crowds of voters. However where is the data that shows that Cruz doesn’t as well on election day, or the data that shows the voters Donald brings out only vote for him?
Second Looking at the early voting in Louisiana Rubio got twenty percent, and on election day only got nine percent. You can’t mean to say Rubio who in all those poll Trump touts is in second place with 23 to 24 percent, and manages to only get 17 percent of the vote.
I know you are talking Kansas, but all four of those states showed the same thing. Trump, Rubio, and Kasich under preformed their poll numbers, while Cruz did better.
You mention Kansas, but if Trump is such a paragon of virtue, then he will renounce his victory in Nevada. Where people wearing gear from his campaign, and openly supporting him where the ones ensuring the fairness of the election. Not checking ID, Separating the Voters when other candidates speakers went to speak, withholding ballots from legal voters, etc, etc, etc.
@AJDelgado13 Cruz & Rubio pledged to support Trump. pic.twitter.com/KcqYI6TjDO— Sting Mccoy (@StingMccoy) March 5, 2016
“Surge” and “momentum” are pure media manipulation.
I never said that, but with Trumps lead in all of the polls for which he takes as gospel. He should be winning every election with 20 percent leads, and when he doesn’t it begs the question of why?
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