How would the race look like now had Rubio won Florida?

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

I've been thinking about this now for a while, how would the race currently look had Rubio won here instead of Trump?

I'd be almost entirely sure we'd be heading towards a brokered convention, at least moreso than now. I'm sure Kasich would still be in the race and Cruz wouldn't be as strong as he is now. I still think Rubio would have eventually dropped out, just not on March 15th.

[Maxwell]

I mean it would be kind of shocking result, but if all his other numbers were the same, it would only be a minor speed bump. I guess he would be getting second in Utah and third in Arizona before officially becoming a Cruz hindrance and giving away Wisconsin to Trump.

[Fargobison]

He may have won Utah and Wisconsin.

Romney would have loved to get behind him in UT and the Sykes types in Wisconsin liked Marco from what I understood.

[Vosem]

He would've come in second in Arizona. Considering the results in Idaho and Nevada, Cruz probably would've edged him out in Utah, but with both under 50 and the delegates allocated proportionally; Wisconsin might've been very narrow between Rubio and _trump, and it's difficult to say who would've won, though I'm inclined to say 35% (maybe a small number would've left for Rubio; 32-34%) would've been enough for _trump to win, a la South Carolina.

He would've received more delegates in the contests since Florida, but that 99 delegate removal would've also been extremely meaningful. If all three candidates were to remain in through the end, though, I think _trump would end up meaningfully stronger in California, such that by the end of the process he'd have more delegates than he most likely will in real life. It's quite difficult to say, though.

This all assumes that Kasich still wins Ohio. If Rubio wins Florida but Kasich loses Ohio, Rubio probably wins Utah and Wisconsin by absorbing the full Kasich vote along with a solid chunk of the Cruz vote, is on track to split the Northeast (NY/CT/RI/DE going _trump, Rubio favored in PA/MD), win California, and then tussle with Cruz at a brokered convention -- Cruz likely still has the upper hand in delegate selection, though Rubio wouldn't take it all lying down like _trump.

The really interesting question with regard to this election, I still see as Romney running and receiving the $100 million in January 2015 instead of Jeb. _trump would still have risen into a national lead, but he wouldn't have been able to knock Romney out like he did Jeb, and Romney is the perfect combination of strong in New England and parts of the West while weak in the South to split the early states with Cruz (IA/SC going Cruz, and NH/NV going Romney), leading to _trump not winning a state until Super Tuesday and ending up in early March holding a national lead and still being a decided third-wheel in the delegate count.

[bagelman]

He may have won Utah and Wisconsin.

Romney would have loved to get behind him in UT and the Sykes types in Wisconsin liked Marco from what I understood.

Yep, Cruz was just their fallback option after Rubio dropped out, and Rubio was just their fallback option after Bush dropped out.

I think it's possible that Trump could have won WI by a slim/unimpressive margin as a result of vote splitting between establishment reps Rubio vs. Kasich and conservatives Rubio vs. Cruz.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Trump still takes Arizona easily.
Cruz still takes Utah easily.
Wisconsin - Who the hell knows?

Whoever comes fourth in Wisconsin drops out, unless it's Trump or Cruz.

[136or142]

The Four Horsemen would be leading the U.S.

[Holmes]

Whoever comes fourth in Wisconsin drops out, unless it's Trump or Cruz.

Trump probably would've still gotten his reliable 35%, and the anti-Trump vote would've been more fractured. I'd guess Kasich comes in fourth and Cruz barely wins.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Whoever comes fourth in Wisconsin drops out, unless it's Trump or Cruz.

Trump probably would've still gotten his reliable 35%, and the anti-Trump vote would've been more fractured. I'd guess Kasich comes in fourth and Cruz barely wins.

The only thing keeping Kasich in the race right now is the belief that he's the only "electable" active candidate with delegates, and somehow the delegates at a brokered convention will see reason.  With Rubio still in the race, he wouldn't even have that.  A fourth-place finish in a Great Lakes state would be the end of his viability as a candidate.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Whoever comes fourth in Wisconsin drops out, unless it's Trump or Cruz.

Trump probably would've still gotten his reliable 35%, and the anti-Trump vote would've been more fractured. I'd guess Kasich comes in fourth and Cruz barely wins.

The only thing keeping Kasich in the race right now is the belief that he's the only "electable" active candidate with delegates, and somehow the delegates at a brokered convention will see reason.  With Rubio still in the race, he wouldn't even have that.  A fourth-place finish in a Great Lakes state would be the end of his viability as a candidate.

Didn't he get 4th in Illinois?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Whoever comes fourth in Wisconsin drops out, unless it's Trump or Cruz.

Trump probably would've still gotten his reliable 35%, and the anti-Trump vote would've been more fractured. I'd guess Kasich comes in fourth and Cruz barely wins.

The only thing keeping Kasich in the race right now is the belief that he's the only "electable" active candidate with delegates, and somehow the delegates at a brokered convention will see reason.  With Rubio still in the race, he wouldn't even have that.  A fourth-place finish in a Great Lakes state would be the end of his viability as a candidate.

Didn't he get 4th in Illinois?

Coming out of Mar. 15, Kasich and Rubio could have both said they were strong electable alternatives to Cruz/Trump who won their respective home states, despite Kasich's poor showing in Illinois.  However, there could really only be room for one.  Rubio would need to state his case by stopping Trump in the Mid-Atlantic.  Kasich's case would need to be stated in Wisconsin. 

A fourth-place finish by either probably would have winnowed the race down to three, but Wisconsin would have been more important for Kasich.  He probably would have needed to pick up a significant share of the delegates there.  If he came in a distant second or worse he probably would have bowed out in favor of Rubio.

[Vosem]

He would've come in second in Arizona. Considering the results in Idaho and Nevada, Cruz probably would've edged him out in Utah, but with both under 50 and the delegates allocated proportionally; Wisconsin might've been very narrow between Rubio and _trump, and it's difficult to say who would've won, though I'm inclined to say 35% (maybe a small number would've left for Rubio; 32-34%) would've been enough for _trump to win, a la South Carolina.

He would've received more delegates in the contests since Florida, but that 99 delegate removal would've also been extremely meaningful. If all three candidates were to remain in through the end, though, I think _trump would end up meaningfully stronger in California, such that by the end of the process he'd have more delegates than he most likely will in real life. It's quite difficult to say, though.

This all assumes that Kasich still wins Ohio. If Rubio wins Florida but Kasich loses Ohio, Rubio probably wins Utah and Wisconsin by absorbing the full Kasich vote along with a solid chunk of the Cruz vote, is on track to split the Northeast (NY/CT/RI/DE going _trump, Rubio favored in PA/MD), win California, and then tussle with Cruz at a brokered convention -- Cruz likely still has the upper hand in delegate selection, though Rubio wouldn't take it all lying down like _trump.

The really interesting question with regard to this election, I still see as Romney running and receiving the $100 million in January 2015 instead of Jeb. _trump would still have risen into a national lead, but he wouldn't have been able to knock Romney out like he did Jeb, and Romney is the perfect combination of strong in New England and parts of the West while weak in the South to split the early states with Cruz (IA/SC going Cruz, and NH/NV going Romney), leading to _trump not winning a state until Super Tuesday and ending up in early March holding a national lead and still being a decided third-wheel in the delegate count.

Really?  Are you sure?  "He's a nice guy, but he's a loser.  He had his chance.  He lost.  America needs a winner, not a loser!"

Yeah, decently confident. Romney fended off five different anti-Romneys in 2012; Gingrich in particular hit a chord similar to _trump's. There are easy responses to calling _trump weak that weren't tried out over the summer that Romney would have brought out instantly. It wouldn't have prevented _trump's rise, but unlike Bush, Romney would've kept the 20% he would've gone in with. But it would've been a geographically different 20%; stronger in parts of the West and Northeast while weaker in the South, that would've perfectly allowed Romney and Cruz to shut _trump out in the early states and probably prevented the decisive _trump delegate lead from ever emerging.

What happens next is unclear, to me. Romney seems limited on Super Tuesday to just MA and VT -- AK is difficult to judge (though I think it still votes Cruz) and VA seems 50/50 between him and _trump. Cruz, meanwhile, would've done very well from Romney's comparative weakness among Southerners and social conservatives compared to Rubio, winning TX, OK, AK (as OTL), but also MN & AR, giving Cruz a solid lead in both delegates and states won coming out of Super Tuesday (Cruz would've had 7; Romney 4.5, depending on VA; _trump 3.5, depending on VA). Cruz would've emerged as the distinct frontrunner by mid-March, especially since without Rubio in the race he would probably have swept all four states of Super Saturday (KS, KY, LA, ME).

[Kingpoleon]

Kasich campaigns in WI more, absorbing most of the swing Cruz voters and the swing Trump voters. I expect a narrow victory there as the other three all want to do amazingly in Arizona/Utah.

[Vosem]

Subbing _trump's name is going to get tiresome in a long post, so I'll just do it here at the beginning and not in the remainder of the post.

OK. I didn't really do elaborate calculations for Alaska or Minnesota, where I simply went with a gut feeling that Cruz would win both states. In northern states (MA+VT), I gave Romney the full Rubio+Kasich contingent along with 1/6 of the Trump vote (very far from 1/2), since in real life no serious campaign really challenged Trump in Massachusetts or Vermont, and Romney has extensive experience campaigning and winning in such areas. (Sure, Trump won 49% in MA, but Romney won 72% in 2012, which suggests to me that a majority of Trump's voters originated with Romney, and with a home-court advantage Romney should still get a decent portion of them; this gives the following results):

MA: Romney 44, Trump 41
VT: Romney 54, Trump 28

I counted Virginia as a part of the South; in the South I combined (3/5)Rubio+Kasich to get a Romney baseline (giving the remaining 2/5 to Cruz; I think a decent part of the Rubio vote would not have been amenable to Romney), and then proceeded to do a modified 1/8 Trump->Romney calculation anyway; there's some evidence that there was Bush->Trump movement after SC among low-information voters, and there would've been some business/Northeastern types who liked Trump who might've preferred Romney; it's also a mild penalty for having failed to win a single state before Super Tuesday. This gives the following results in the South:

Alabama: Trump 38, Cruz 29, Romney 20
Arkansas: Cruz 40, Trump 29, Romney 23
Georgia: Trump 34, Cruz 34, Romney 26
Oklahoma: Cruz 44, Trump 25, Romney 23
Tennessee: Trump 34, Cruz 33, Romney 23
Texas: Cruz 51, Trump 24, Romney 18
Virginia: Romney 32, Trump 31, Cruz 30

Notice the only really guaranteed state for Trump is Alabama; Georgia and Tennessee are basically coin-flips favoring Trump (his margin in Georgia is less than 0.5), and any of the three candidates could conceivably have won Virginia. There's very little way to argue that after these results, Cruz would not have a massive delegate lead, possibly a majority of all delegates.

At this point, we move to Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine: I hope you agree under the circumstances I've described all four vote for Cruz. Romney might've been able to construct an operation challenging Cruz's in Maine; I doubt it. We next go to the HIMM states; I think Romney could've basically replicated Cruz's coalition in Idaho; most likely won in Michigan by taking Kasich+Rubio+some small section of Trump's support, as I envision him doing in the north; Mississippi would probably still have voted Trump (though it's not inconceivable that Cruz could've taken it if some of the coin-flips on Super Tuesday do go his way), and I think how Hawaii votes is unknowable, because we don't know how much of Trump's support came from Romney and how much would've preferred him.

The FIMNO states are next. It's hard to say what Florida would've done without Rubio's home-state effect or Trump being the overall delegate leader, but Trump would probably have won if he was still a serious candidate. Cruz would probably have carried North Carolina & Missouri; in the north, where little of Rubio's support prefers Cruz to Romney, Romney would've very likely carried Illinois and probably Ohio as well, though perhaps not by as much as Kasich.

I can keep going, but the point is that the race turns into Romney v. Cruz primarily, with Trump as a third wheel. I can see Trump staying in and forcing a contested convention, but I could just as easily imagine him leaving after Super Tuesday and turning it into a straight fight. Either way, my basic points stands.