Don't know, but without Trump on the ballot and without Christie hurting him ahead of NH vote, I'm seeing Marco Rubio winning convincely in New Hampshire and narrowly ahead of Cruz in South Carolina( of course, even winning well in Nevada without Trump)...so presenting him as the frontrunner ahead of Super Tuesday...keep in mind that with a frontrunner different from Trump, traling candidates would have kept out since SupT...
People shouldn't underestimate Jeb, Trump is just good at breaking down his opponents, the only candidate he had some trouble with was Cruz. Cruz is really the only candidate who showed resiliency in the face of Trump's attacks, which proves that he had the strongest base of support.
Christie was never going to drop out after IA, his whole campaign was NH, and he had zero respect for rubio, so that was always going to happen. All Christie did is what Jeb should've done to him, but Jeb was always intimidated whenever Trump was in the room, Jeb did a lot better in the IA debate without Trump. Though it was too late for Jeb and he was not as vicious as he needed to be at that point, of course, the argument could be made without Trump that Jeb never would've been weakened so much to benefit Rubio in the first place and he never would've even needed to be vicious in normal conditions. Rubio's line against Jeb was in the same vein that he used against Christie in NH exactly as Christie described it, the 'drive by shot + 30 second memorized speech bashing Obama'. Jeb really should've been the one to call him out on it.
Anyway, the only reason why rubio/cruz lasted so long is that they refused to attack, had they attacked earlier, they would've collapsed. Walker probably runs well ahead of rubio in a Trumpless primary.
As for Cruz, he was originally going to want to take the populist route similar to Trump.
Jeb also doesn't collapse.
The only reason rubio lasted so long is because he refused to take on Trump and because Jeb didn't do his job well, and he was the second choice to Jeb for establishment voters.
And the only reason he did well in SC is due to tag-teaming with Trump against 'lyin ted' there. Rubio didn't have a campaign other than trying to avoid Trump.
Don't see what the fascination with NV is, the Hispanics there are Mexicans not Cubans, they would've either gone for Jeb or would've gone the populist route with Cruz like they did with Trump.
Anyway, the primary likely comes down to main 3 candidates, either Jeb/Walker/Cruz, with Jeb being the candidate with the only viable path to 1237, if Jeb fails to perform and if no one gets a majority of delegates, then Cruz takes it at the convention.
If you don't think Jeb makes it, then just replace Jeb with Kasich, except Kasich didn't have a shot at 1237, unlike Jeb, which means Cruz would take it at the convention anyway.
*By the way, why do people keep talking about the NH debate as a big deal, Trump was leading the IA polls, there were many people who backed away from him at the last minute because they were upset that he didn't attend the debate, If Trump had attended, argument could be made that rubio never would've done as well as he did in IA in the first place.
