TRUMP: Kasich is disgusting!

[Vosem]

I supported Kasich as The Donald's Vice President. But not any longer! It's disgusting how the establishment guys ignore millions of voters. Hope that whole thing backfires and TRUMP crushes Kasich and Cruz on Tuesday as well as in Indiana.

Millions of votes?

not _trump: 13.7m
_trump: 8.5m

That's a margin of more than 5 million votes in favor of #Never_trump. Any convention that nominates _trump would be a travesty to democracy.

[Vosem]

I supported Kasich as The Donald's Vice President. But not any longer! It's disgusting how the establishment guys ignore millions of voters. Hope that whole thing backfires and TRUMP crushes Kasich and Cruz on Tuesday as well as in Indiana.

Millions of votes?

not _trump: 13.7m
_trump: 8.5m

That's a margin of more than 5 million votes in favor of #Never_trump. Any convention that nominates _trump would be a travesty to democracy.

Once again, that's not how this work. Millions of people would have Trump as their second choice as indicated by all national polling that show Trump leading head-to-head nationally, often times by double digits.

That's only the case in the Northeast, though. Outside of it, the indication of both polling and strategic voting is that _trump is the last choice of the overwhelming majority of anti-_trump voters.

_trump would've lost a head-to-head with any 2016 candidate except Jeb Bush.

[Vosem]

You're cherrypicking polls. The current average has _trump at 43 and his opponents put together at 51, and it is close to his all-time high (which he hit in late March, when it was 43-49). National head-to-head polls haven't been conducted in a while (maybe not even post-Iowa at all), but when they were it was clear that _trump could beat only Jeb Bush.

You're right that many (probably most) Kasich supporters would stay home, but the pattern in every state where Kasich was a secondary anti-_trump to Cruz demonstrates that, outside of the Northeast, the preference sequence Kasich-_trump-Cruz is essentially nonexistent, while Kasich-Cruz-_trump is fairly common (especially among my age bracket). In Wisconsin, early polling had Kasich in the mid-20s before he dropped to 14, which was basically correlated with Cruz's increase. _trump failed to get anything at all from Kasich's decline.

If Kasich were to drop out after the 4/26 primaries, _trump would be doomed in every remaining state except NJ and WV.

[Vosem]

Those are literally the last three polls conducted according to our polling page.

You want late March? When Trump was at his worst? Here's PPP on 3/29:

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At his worst, he led Cruz.

Looking for pre-Iowa figures, but as I recall, he only trailed Carson until he slayed Carson and then either Rubio or Cruz has a slight advantage which eventually subsided almost immediately. The other was trailing. You are rewriting history.

Can you even read English? I said late March was _trump's peak. Because, in national polling, it was -- he was at 43 (same as now, actually), but Cruz and Kasich were both weaker than they are now, with undecideds higher. Then he declined during the Wisconsin campaign period, then he gained again when campaigning shifted to his turf in the Northeast. Soon he'll decline again once the campaign shifts to Indiana, Nebraska, and the Pacific Northwest.

Carson probably led _trump by the greatest numbers because he very consistently (except for when he was falling apart in November) had the best favorability of anyone in the field. But only Bush was actually losing to _trump.

[Vosem]

Not much to say to that because it's an outlier and demonstrably false -- unlike basically every other anti-_trump, when Rubio surged after his Iowa performance he took votes directly from _trump (between 2/3/16 and 2/13/16, Rubio went from 10 to 21, and _trump went from 36 to 29). Rubio had demonstrable appeal, for whatever reason, to a fairly large cohort of _trump voters, which is something basically no other candidate has demonstrated at any other point in the race. Saying Rubio would lose to _trump in a head-to-head is ridiculous.