Cruz Wins Iowa, Trump Wins New Hampshire

Here's Matt Lewis, looking kinda prognostic, at the Telegraph UK, "Cruz wins Iowa, Trump wins New Hampshire - and the Republicans have a floor fight at the convention":

I haven’t seen anyone really go out on a limb yet and make predictions about the Republican primaries. So it's time to engage in some wildly premature political punditry.

This, of course, is risky. There are so many variables. What happens if one candidate drops out and scrambles things? What is more, factors in the political universe - say, God forbid, another terrorist attack - can quickly swing public opinion. (Remember how Ben Carson’s numbers declined after the Paris attacks?)

It is with all these caveats disclosed that I boldly present my picks.

The good news is that these predictions are based on a study of past primary elections, conducted by elections analyst Henry Olsen, who is the co-author of a new book, The Four Faces of The Republican Party.

If I were betting today, this is how I think things might play out in the New Year:

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wins Iowa on February 1. He’s surging there, having picked up several key endorsements, and his flavour of conservative evangelicalism matches the state’s Republican primary base. (Disclosure: my wife previously consulted on Mr Cruz’s US Senate campaign.)

A few days later, Donald Trump wins the New Hampshire primary. This is the one I’m least confident in. Trump is way ahead in the polls there, and he does surprisingly well with Republican moderates who make up the largest faction of the Granite State’s primary base (see John McCain’s success there).

Still, New Hampshire voters decide late and the state likes to surprise us by playing kingmaker. So someone like Chris Christie or Marco Rubio could conceivably mount a late surge.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wins South Carolina on February 20. The Palmetto State is thought of as a very conservative state, but as Olsen points out, it “mirrors the nation” and usually goes for the “somewhat conservative” candidate that defines Rubio's constituency.


Cruz wins Nevada on February 23, and then performs very well in what has been dubbed the “SEC Primary” – a collections of Southern states that will hold their primaries on March 1.

At this point, Cruz will have momentum, but maybe not the numbers. His problem? Because of rules governing this primary process, delegates in these states are awarded proportionally. What this means is that Ted Cruz wouldn't receive all the delegates; he could conceivably run the table without really running up the delegate score.

After some smaller contests, the big states of Florida and Ohio vote on March 15. Importantly, these are “winner take all” states, meaning that the winner of these states could rapidly accrue delegates. And, assuming Rubio won South Carolina (my theory is that you have to win one of the first three states to remain viable), he should be well positioned to win these delegate-rich states...

Well, predictions are hard, especially about the future, heh.

More.

I'll hold off on my own predictions. I'm not so good at it, although I have a hunch Trump's going to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, which would give him enormous momentum going into the Southern states. But we'll see. We'll see.