With a comprehensive win in the Nevada caucuses – across every demographic group – Donald Trump is strengthening his grip on the Republican party presidential nomination battle. Adding to his victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries earlier in the month, this latest win is particularly significant, showing even in caucus states and despite Ted Cruz’s much vaunted ground game he is engaging Republican voters like no candidate since Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s and 1980s.
By 15 March, when remaining large state delegate contests shift to winner take all, it may be too late for a panicking Republican establishment to stop him. The Trump insurgency has swept the small state, religious and constitutional conservatism of the Tea party republicans aside. Both Cruz and Rubio appeal to part of that previously insurgent movement, but neither has shown deep enough appeal to consolidate the anti-Trump vote among angry Republican voters who feel let down by the party establishment and congressional leadership over many years. In Europe, we have seen electoral insurgencies driven by new political forces on the left, right, or nationalist in nature. In the United States, anger with the elite is taking shape in the form of insurgencies within both mainstream political parties – the first time we have seen this in the politics of the western world, but probably not the last.
In doing so, Trump is remaking the Republican party and American conservatism as a stridently populist, natavist force. The liberalism of the party of Lincoln and the compassionate conservatism of the party of Bush are no more. Jeb Bush started last summer with substantial establishment backing as presumptive nominee, but spent $130m in a dismal campaign that proved out of ideas and out of its time. Current Real Clear Politics average of recent polling shows that Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump by around three per cent – not much different from Barack Obama’s single digit wins over John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. But Trump’s favourability ratings are dire among Democrats and independents, at -70 and -27 respectively. In this year, though, who can be sure that the Trump populist movement may not have scored inroads by November into the blue-collar Democrat vote which Reagan and George H W Bush captured in the 1980s, and which Clinton has experienced problems winning in the Democratic nomination process so far?
With Trump leading the delegate count already by more than 60 over his rivals, next up for Republicans are the critical Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in 12 states from Massachusetts to Texas with 595 delegates at stake; a further nine states and 328 delegates between 5-8 March including Michigan and the deep south; and critical winner-takes-all contests in Ohio and Florida on 15 March, worth a combined 165 delegates, together with mainly winner-takes-all Illinois and proportionally awarded delegates in North Carolina, worth another 141 delegates. Trump is behind in only two of the Super Tuesday states, and only by single digits in Texas to Cruz. If Cruz fails to win convincingly there and in most of the south over the course of the next fortnight, his race must surely be over. He lost evangelicals resoundingly to Trump in both South Carolina and most strikingly in Nevada, being trounced 41 per cent to 27 per cent.
Rubio’s campaign, which has emphasised his strong polling against either Democrat contender in November, needs to show he is a winner now, after five straight losses – Florida’s 99 delegate winner take all battle on 15 March is a must-win for his campaign, and should Kasich withdraw before Ohio that may aid his chances there.
The inescapable fact is that if Trump has won the bulk of the states by 15 March, he will be the nominee.
What of the Democrats? Conventional wisdom is that Clinton is rebounding from the near tie in Iowa and blow-out loss in New Hampshire. She has seen off Bernie Sanders by six per cent in the Nevada caucuses and taken the lead among pledged delegates and an overwhelming lead among the 700 superdelegates. With an expected strong win in South Carolina this Saturday, her superior ground game will rack up a substantial delegate count by the end of Super Tuesday.
The key difference between the Democrat and Republican contests is that the Democrats award delegates proportionately for more than 15 per cent of the state wide vote throughout all 50 states and other territories. So a string of Clinton victories will build a lead which Sanders cannot mathematically overcome without winning later contests with an unrealistic 70 or 80 per cent of the votes. She leads in 10 of the 12 Super Tuesday contests next week, and in most by double digit margins. Sanders will have strength in some of the upcoming caucus states like Minnesota, which Obama carried in the 2008 nomination battle, but he trails significantly in upcoming races in big states like Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and across the south. He must win big in Massachusetts next week to sustain the momentum of his campaign. Unless he can break out of his demographic wall with black, older and more centrist voters, and eat into Clinton’s lead with Latino voters, it seems improbable he can secure a majority of delegates or the nomination.
Nevertheless, his campaign has been important. It has put income inequality front and centre in the Democratic platform for the election. It has shown the pain that younger voters feel with a post-economic crisis economy that sees them with stagnant wages, rising student debt, and less opportunity to do better than their parents’ generation. It has forced Clinton to show a dexterity and empathy in her messaging that eluded her in 2008. Arguably it has strengthened her as a communicator and candidate, to add to her formidable skills on policy. Her challenge for the general election will be to galvanise an unsettled Democratic base seeking honesty and authenticity in its politics, reach out to independent voters and moderate Republicans opposed to the demagoguery of Trump, and to defeat the vacuity of populism, protectionism and isolationism. The British centre-left may not have a vote in this contest, but we have a voice, we must hope Clinton’s brand of progressivism can score a victory for a world without walls, shape the next decade and show a winning direction for centre-left politics.
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William Bain is a policy consultant and is the former member of parliament for Glasgow North East. He tweets at @William_Bain
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