Trump’s Trump Card: Blue-State Republicans

His strength with Reagan Democrats could make him a force in the primaries—but he’ll need to win Iowa first.

By Josh Kraushaar
January 14, 2016
The National Journal


Even as Don­ald Trump holds com­mand­ing leads in pres­id­en­tial polling, I’ve main­tained that an es­tab­lish­ment can­did­ate still has the in­side track to win­ning the nom­in­a­tion. As my Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port col­league Dav­id Wasser­man out­lined, the rules of the game are de­signed to fa­vor the suc­cess of more-mod­er­ate can­did­ates. If Trump or Ted Cruz wins the early-state con­tests, the pro­por­tion­al rules of al­loc­at­ing del­eg­ates will pre­vent either from run­ning up the score. And the win­ner-take all rules for many of the more mod­er­ate “blue” states on March 15 and bey­ond should fa­vor a more prag­mat­ic Re­pub­lic­an down the stretch—at least on pa­per.

But these cal­cu­la­tions are based on a premise that I’m hav­ing a bit more trouble ac­cept­ing these days—that blue-state Re­pub­lic­ans are more likely to sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment can­did­ate than their red-state coun­ter­parts. It’s an es­pe­cially shaky as­sump­tion to make with Trump, giv­en the polit­ic­al ped­i­gree of his strongest sup­port­ers. To put it an­oth­er way, many of Trump’s sup­port­ers are self-de­scribed mod­er­ates and view him as the more cent­rist can­did­ate. (Based on his his­tory of hold­ing lib­er­al po­s­i­tions and past dona­tions to prom­in­ent Demo­crats, they have a point.)

The or­din­ary rules of the polit­ic­al game haven’t ap­plied to Trump so far, and if he lives up to the hype early on, there’s little reas­on to be­lieve he’ll fade as the race moves in­to more mod­er­ate ter­rit­ory. If Trump wins Iowa—the one state where he hasn’t led in many pub­lic polls—it’s hard to see where his mo­mentum stops. Such an out­come would prove that his sup­port­ers’ com­mit­ment is much more con­sequen­tial than his lack of or­gan­iz­a­tion. He’d then be heav­ily favored to win New Hamp­shire, where he’s led throughout the cam­paign and where the es­tab­lish­ment is badly splintered. He’d be well-po­si­tioned in South Car­o­lina after that. With his pop­u­list, anti-im­mig­ra­tion mes­sage res­on­at­ing in the Deep South, it’s hard to see how he would fade as the primary sea­son con­tin­ues.

The es­tab­lish­ment’s best hope is that an al­tern­at­ive can­did­ate emerges as Trump’s foil. This is where geo­graphy sup­posedly plays to that can­did­ate’s ad­vant­age. On March 15, win­ner-take-all primar­ies will be held in Flor­ida, Illinois, and Ohio. Wis­con­sin’s win­ner-take-all con­test is on April 5, and a five-state North­east­ern primary oc­curs three weeks later.

But even if the es­tab­lish­ment field is nar­rowed down to one can­did­ate by that point, it’s not a giv­en that this can­did­ate would beat Trump in a head-to-head match­up. As The New York Times’s Nate Cohn con­cluded, Trump’s strongest voters are “self-iden­ti­fied Re­pub­lic­ans who non­ethe­less are re­gistered as Demo­crats” and are well-rep­res­en­ted in the in­dus­tri­al North and Ap­palachia. There’s a reas­on why Trump spent time last week in Low­ell, Mas­sachu­setts and Bur­l­ing­ton, Ver­mont—in two New Eng­land states that hold primar­ies on Su­per Tues­day. And polls show Trump’s fa­vor­ab­il­ity stead­ily im­prov­ing among GOP voters, coun­ter­ing the wide­spread be­lief that he’ll flame out when the field nar­rows.

Trump is also per­form­ing ad­equately out­side his base of white, work­ing-class voters. In a di­vided field, he’s in first place at 21 per­cent among col­lege-edu­cated voters in New Hamp­shire, and he wins 17 per­cent of them in Iowa, ac­cord­ing to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journ­al/Mar­ist polls. He tal­lies 26 per­cent of the most af­flu­ent caucus­go­ers in Iowa, ac­cord­ing to Quin­nipi­ac. If he fal­ters, it will be be­cause these softer sup­port­ers would be the first to aban­don him if he doesn’t live up to ex­pect­a­tions. But if he achieves early suc­cess, the breadth of his cur­rent sup­port should sus­tain him in more demo­graph­ic­ally di­verse states. As it is, Trump is show­ing re­mark­able re­si­li­ence in Flor­ida polls des­pite run­ning against two home-state icons in Jeb Bush and Marco Ru­bio.

This is why the GOP es­tab­lish­ment should be much more con­cerned about stop­ping Trump in Iowa than train­ing its fo­cus on Cruz. Cruz’s ap­peal is ideo­lo­gic­al, con­cen­trated in the Deep South and states with high con­cen­tra­tion of evan­gel­ic­al voters. He’ll struggle to con­sol­id­ate sup­port above the Ma­son-Dix­on line, where his brand of con­ser­vat­ism isn’t as res­on­ant. The path for­ward for an es­tab­lish­ment can­did­ate to take on Cruz is clear. By con­trast, Trump’s sup­port­ers are more prag­mat­ic—GOP voters of all ideo­lo­gic­al stripes view him as strong, eco­nom­ic­ally flu­ent, and suc­cess­ful—and his ap­peal is more na­tion­al.

Right now, Trump is like a buzzed-about pub­lic stock of­fer­ing whose the­or­et­ic­al “value” is based on polling and the pre­sump­tion of fu­ture suc­cess. There’s a reas­on he be­gins most cam­paign ap­pear­ances by cit­ing his first-place poll num­bers.

But it’s dicey to use polls to han­di­cap this type of nom­in­a­tion fight. With Trump as the race’s de­fin­ing fig­ure, this is a race about mo­mentum. Trump either has it, or he doesn’t. Iowa is a po­ten­tial launch­ing pad. If Trump wins the first-in-the-na­tion caucuses, he’s po­si­tioned to suc­ceed across the primary map—in blue states and red ones. But if he dis­ap­points in Iowa, his bubble is likely to burst.

Article Link to the National Journal:

Trump’s Trump Card: Blue-State Republicans

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