WI - Marquette University: Sanders up 4, Cruz up 10

[TJ in Oregon]

Seriously?, you seem pretty young, but you do understand that Dole and McCain were both very prominent opponents of the "Bush wing" of the party, right? The TP/establishment divide is a product of the Obama era that was not visible prior to ~2009, and _trumpist personal movement dates all the way back to 2015.

McCain ran against Bush, however, he was never a true credentialed conservative. So if you want to claim he was an opponent of the Bush wing, I'll accept your premise only to that narrow point in 2000. By the time he ran in 2008, McCain was NOT a conservative by any means. In fact, Palin was put on the ticket to balance out his "maverick" record a/k/a liberalism.

As far as Dole goes. He's also not a conservative in the mold of Reagan. He was Ford's running mate in 1976 (anti-Reagan) and at the time of his run against Clinton in 1996 was as establishment as you can get as the Senate Majority Leader. While he may have been good at building consensus between the conservative and moderate wings of the party, Dole never had a conservative voting record.

The fact of the matter remains that in this cycle, the establishment/Bush wing of the party has been rejected by the voters. If a contested convention happens and someone from the establishment wing like Paul Ryan -- or even worse -- Mitt Romney ends up being the nominee, the party will be destroyed from within.

The problem with this line of thinking is that, when commonly applied, no on can ever be a true credentialed conservative. The very definition of 'conservative' isn't universally recognized to be the same thing by different members of the party. At the moment those espousing purist conservatism don't seem to think it has any definition at all except opposition to anyone perceived as "establishment". Nominating Mitt Romney could very well destroy the party, yes, so long as the very definition of what the party is supposed to be about is mindlessly burning things down, it will inevitably be destroyed anyway.

[TJ in Oregon]

I don't see how Kasich gets on with just Ohio. There have been plenty of Favored sons in the past and Kasich is no different.

If there's a Trump collapse in the NE - but I just don't see a path where he stays on the ballot if it goes past a first ballot.

2008 was very strange, with Huckabee getting 8 states, Romney 11. Only time in history the nominee had two candidates with that many states, and the only time the eventual winner got fewer than 50 percent of the primary votes.

There are 19 states left, Trump only has 37 percent of the vote. There's still another 7.6 million votes out there, and Trump has to get 4.2 million of those voters in order to get to 50 percent plus one.

That's 55 percent of the remaining vote.

It's getting harder and harder to see the Republicans winning the election regardless, so at this point nominating Kasich on like the 30th ballot of the convention isn't obviously worse than the other options.

[Torie]

I don't see how Kasich gets on with just Ohio. There have been plenty of Favored sons in the past and Kasich is no different.

If there's a Trump collapse in the NE - but I just don't see a path where he stays on the ballot if it goes past a first ballot.

2008 was very strange, with Huckabee getting 8 states, Romney 11. Only time in history the nominee had two candidates with that many states, and the only time the eventual winner got fewer than 50 percent of the primary votes.

There are 19 states left, Trump only has 37 percent of the vote. There's still another 7.6 million votes out there, and Trump has to get 4.2 million of those voters in order to get to 50 percent plus one.

That's 55 percent of the remaining vote.

It's getting harder and harder to see the Republicans winning the election regardless, so at this point nominating Kasich on like the 30th ballot of the convention isn't obviously worse than the other options.

Maybe the best option is to have like 30,000 ballots, and keep the convention going right through the election, with nobody getting nominated.

[Mr. Morden]

I don't see how Kasich gets on with just Ohio. There have been plenty of Favored sons in the past and Kasich is no different.

If there's a Trump collapse in the NE - but I just don't see a path where he stays on the ballot if it goes past a first ballot.

2008 was very strange, with Huckabee getting 8 states, Romney 11. Only time in history the nominee had two candidates with that many states, and the only time the eventual winner got fewer than 50 percent of the primary votes.

There are 19 states left, Trump only has 37 percent of the vote. There's still another 7.6 million votes out there, and Trump has to get 4.2 million of those voters in order to get to 50 percent plus one.

That's 55 percent of the remaining vote.

It's getting harder and harder to see the Republicans winning the election regardless, so at this point nominating Kasich on like the 30th ballot of the convention isn't obviously worse than the other options.

Maybe the best option is to have like 30,000 ballots, and keep the convention going right through the election, with nobody getting nominated.

Hey, the Democratic Convention is just one week after the Republican one.  So a more modest goal would be to simply have enough Republican ballots to keep the convention going for a second week, in order to drown out all the coverage of the Dems.  Maybe Kasich will be nominated on the 100th ballot, just as Hillary Clinton is giving her acceptance speech.

[Matty]

pretty good on r side.

[yankeesfan]

pretty good on r side.

Still the gold standard.  They were the first to show the shifts to Sanders and Cruz.