Wisconsin Primary Elections: Live Coverage And Results

With Kasich performing poorly in exit polls and in votes reported so far, I’ll repeat the question I asked earlier. Is his poor performance a sign that Republicans are voting tactically in order to stop Trump — or that Kasich’s campaign is on the rocks, making it even easier for Trump to accumulate delegates in the Northeast? I lean toward the former interpretation, given what we’ve seen from Republican voters in other states, but it’s worth bearing in mind that Kasich has won only his home state of Ohio and has not been much of a factor in most other places.

I have to admit that I sometimes don’t get what voters are thinking. On the Republican side, 38 percent of voters think that Trump has the best chance to defeat Clinton. Granted, general election polls aren’t all that predictive at this point, but Trump is getting crushed in every poll.

Looking more closely at the religious reasons behind Cruz’s strength in Wisconsin, Pew research indicates 22 percent of the state’s population identifies as evangelical Christian, and 25 percent as Catholic, with 71 percent of the state identifying as Christian of some denomination — an affiliation that tends to be supportive of Cruz. Another 25 percent are “unaffiliated,” including atheists and agnostics. (The nation as a whole is also 71 percent Christian, with a different mix of denominations than Wisconsin.) This weekend, Cruz hosted a screening of the conservative faith-focused film “God’s Not Dead 2” as part of his campaign swing through the state.