NUMBERS

Donald Trump is now claiming that Ted Cruz stole the election in Iowa.  There is no doubt that Ted Cruz’s campaign was ruthless in getting the win in Iowa.  Just like the Trump campaign and all the other campaign.  Cruz just did a better job.  The story about Ben Carson leaving the race was generated by CNN, not the Cruz campaign.  Trump knows this just like he knows that Cruz is clearly eligible to be President.  Trump is starting to look and sound desperate.  If he attacks Cruz with this during the debate Saturday Cruz will eat his lunch.

The reason Donald Trump lost is easily explained by looking at the numbers.  The first number is Donald Trump’s unfavorability rating.  It is at 60% which is the highest since Gallop started measuring this around 1992.  This means that in any election, anywhere, if people change their mind at the last minute they will almost never choose Donald Trump.  He is currently running about 38% in New Hampshire:

http://www.whdh.com/story/31126831/hiller-instinct-7newsumass-lowell-new-hampshire-tracking-poll-day-3

Note that the article describes Trump as “frozen” at 38%.  That is pretty accurate.  Trump has hit his ceiling and the only possible direction for him is down.  He may win in New Hampshire, but he will get a lot less than 38% and it will be viewed as another loss.

Another number is the percentage of people who were motivated by someone who shares their values.  New York values play well in New York and on Fox News.  They didn’t play well in Des Moines.  The people motivated to vote for Cruz showed up in droves.  Most “experts” thought that if turnout was over 130,000 that Trump would easily win.  The theory was that all these new and excited voters would probably be for Trump.  Most experts felt that the only way Cruz could win was if there was bad weather and only the old predictable die-hards showed up.  This explains Charles Krauthammer saying this looked like a good night for Trump while the banner showing Ted Cruz racking up the vote totals was playing in the background.

Yes a whole lot of people showed up, but they weren’t people lured by the siren call of the Trump celebrity tour.  They were people who were most concerned about getting a President who shared their values.  The pundits assume that all of these people were evangelicals.  Keep in mind that the pundits were wrong before and they are wrong now.  While Cruz openly solicited the votes of evangelicals, so did Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.  That is why Trump brought out Jerry Falwell. Evangelicals are not single issue voters.  If you doubt that, ask Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.  The values that brought out the voters were standing up to the establishment, defending the constitution, defending religious freedom and defending the second amendment.  The results were stunning.  The turnout in Iowa exceeded everyone’s expectation and a huge percentage of the additional voters went for either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

There is one more number and this one really matters.  The only one with a higher unfavorability than Donald Trump is the United States congress which has an unfavorability rating of over 75%.  People in both parties are sick and tired of the establishment.  Cruz understands this better than anyone.  That is why he said you gave Republicans a big victory in 2012 and 2014 and nothing changed.  People are sick and tired of getting burned by the Republican establishment.  Donald Trump exists because he looked like the guy to stand up to the establishment.  Now he is embracing them and bragging about their support.  He is hammering Ted Cruz for being hated by everyone in Washington.  He is right about that.  Cruz is also clearly hated by Fox News.  That just may be the best possible reason to vote for him.

TDM