Cruz is dishonest, unlikeable, and his policies aren't popular with the broader electorate.
Is that the reason why Cruz was polling better than Trump was in the general election?
So you think Bernie Sanders would have destroyed Trump in a landslide, right?
No because Clinton also lead Trump by double digits in the polls in April of 2016. If Clinton couldn't beat Trump then Sanders certainly couldn't have beaten Trump. My point was Trump was doing terrible in the polls yet he still won. So if Cruz was doing better then chances are he would have also done better in the popular vote.
I agree that Cruz definitely would've won the popular vote against Clinton. My only fear is he would have had trouble in the Rust belt and may not have gotten to 270 EV's - 2016 Trump definitely had a coalition well-suited for the electoral college, and I'm not as certain if Cruz would've had the same luck.
Curious as to why you'd think this was possible? The following sentence basically explains why I'm skeptical: a disproportionate amount of voters who helped prop up Trump's PV totals were (at least at the time) people who would have never had the same fondness for Cruz, who were scattered throughout the Midwest, who had a propensity until then to vote for Democrats and who wouldn't have even necessarily agreed with his movement conservative message.
I have a hard time seeing Cruz doing better in a statistically significant sense in any urban areas, and while maybe he'd have been a bit stronger in the suburbs, I'm beginning to think that 2016 wasn't just about Trump - that the suburbs were/are shifting away from the GOP no matter what; it wasn't just about Trump's persona or p[inks]y-grabbing. As much as some say Trump was a terrible fit for the 'burbs, Clinton was also a pretty good fit as well.
At any rate, I have a hard time seeing Cruz being able to make up 2+ points in the PV margin given all of this.
