Wisconsin Primary Elections: Live Coverage And Results

Of the 31 states to hold some type of presidential preference vote — I don’t count Colorado, Wyoming or North Dakota in that group — Trump has yet to receive a majority in any of them. Cruz could win a majority tonight in Wisconsin; he’d also previously done so in Utah. (And in Wyoming, if you want to count county convention results.)

On most primary nights, Cruz has had to wait long into the evening to get his first victory. Tonight, he clearly didn’t, but it’s more than that. His margin over Trump is likely to fall as more votes come in from the northern and western parts of the state. But if you’re looking for momentum (whatever that exactly means), Cruz is getting the results reported in the right order. On the East Coast (where primaries are taking place later this month) viewers are seeing big Cruz margins march across their screens.

An American Research Group poll conducted last Friday through Sunday showed Trump leading Cruz by 10 points in Wisconsin. Every other poll after February showed either Cruz ahead or Trump up by two points. With Cruz the projected winner, and possibly headed for a double-digit win, that’s looking like another big miss by ARG. The firm also showed Clinton ahead of Sanders by a point, and he may win by double digits, too. Even the best pollsters have the occasional miss — and sometimes a whole bunch of them do at the same time — but ARG has had more than its share of misses so far in this election. It showed Cruz ahead in Texas by a point; he won by 17. It showed Trump losing by two points to Kasich in Michigan; he won by 12 points. And it showed Kasich finishing ahead of Cruz in South Carolina; Cruz beat there by 15 points. Results like these in past races helped earn ARG a C- in the last version of our pollster ratings.