How The March 22 Primary Elections Went Down

To follow up on my own question about Utah in the general election, Harry — yeah, usually I’d be super dismissive of a poll showing Democrats with a shot there. I can vaguely remember early polls from past presidential elections showing Republicans running competitively in Connecticut, Barack Obama with a chance to win North Dakota, and so forth. You take enough polls, especially in the early going, and you’ll get a few goofy results. The thing about Utah, though, is that it’s dominated by one demographic group, Mormons, that doesn’t have a big presence in other states. And they have some plausible reasons to object to Trump — they’re a minority group in many senses, and Trump’s populist politics are potentially dangerous to any minority group. So it’s not that hard to imagine a big shift among that one group that isn’t replicated elsewhere. It’s easier to imagine Clinton winning Utah than winning Nebraska, for instance.

One thing to keep in mind as we watch the returns on the Republican side tonight is that the calendar slows down considerably over the next month. Between now and April 19, we have only the Wisconsin (April 5) and New York (April 19) primaries. That means we’ll be moving to a state-to-state campaign. It’s not until April 26 that we have a night with multiple states voting at one time again.

Question

“Would a third party stand a chance given Trump and Clinton’s negative favorability?” — commenter Zach Dasher

Answer

In the abstract, it’s a very good opportunity for a third party candidate to run. The challenges are still manifest, however. For one thing, it’s a little late at this point to be assured of ballot access in all 50 states. But more importantly, it’s hard for a third-party candidate to build a winning coalition. You might think, “well, there are plenty of independents,” but independents don’t necessarily agree on all that much. Some of them are more Trumpian, some are more Bloombergian, and some are “closet partisans” who are independent in name only. So most of the time, a third-party candidate is going to take votes unevenly from the two major parties. And whichever major party she takes fewer votes from will tend to win with a fairly clear plurality.