TRUMP OR CRUZ-WHO RUNS BETTER AGAINST HILLARY?

TRUMP OR CRUZ-WHO RUNS BETTER AGAINST HILLARY?

Republicans are down to their final choice: Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. And for party loyalists, the decision basically comes down to which one – if either – can defeat presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

There’s a lot of talk about Trump’s potential crossover appeal with what’s left of white, working-class male Democrats. Cruz, for his part, argues that he would mobilize conservatives in a way not seen in a generation and storm the White House.

Fortunately, we have some actual data to test their hypotheses.

In the two latest national polls that measured head-to-head matchups between GOP contenders and Clinton, the harsh judgment of the general electorate toward frontrunner Trump got even harsher.

Surveys from WSJ/NBC News and WaPo/ABC News show Clinton trouncing Trump by 13 points and 9 points respectively. Trump has always fared poorly in head-to-head matchups with Clinton, leading her in only five of 49 national polls conducted since last year.

But things seem to be getting worse – approaching a Dukakis-sized wipeout for the GOP – and it’s not because of anything Clinton is doing. She continues to mostly trail Cruz as well as other nominal candidates.

So what’s the deal?

Trump’s abysmal numbers with women and struggles with better-educated voters are probably the driving forces behind his overall problems with beating Clinton. But he’s also suffering because of the deepening rift in his own party. Trump is trying hard to show some graciousness toward his fellow Republicans, but we can still expect this final pairing between him and Cruz to be an atomic blast of nastiness.

There’s also the barrage of negative advertising with which conservative groups are now pummeling Trump. Though designed to defeat him in the GOP primary, the devastating attacks on Trump’s character and business record will have an effect beyond the GOP electorate. Much like the case with the 2012 Republican nominee, the attacks of the primary season will carry over in the general election. The attacks on Mitt Romney over his business record and taxes started with his primary rivals in January and ended with his eventual November defeat.

Should Trump actually sew up the Republican nomination outright, he would certainly see his numbers improve. There’s always a bit of a dowry for the nominee as intra-party rivals soften their resistance following primary fights. But that effect is likely to be muted this time given the murderous fighting and the depth of the divide between Trump’s populist revolt and the rest of the party.

But there is no evidence that Trump’s Democratic crossover appeal is nearly significant enough to offset his other huge demographic problems.

Of course, neither is there any evidence to suggest that Cruz’s conservative call to arms will change the electorate in a meaningful way. It’s just that Cruz isn’t starting in the deep hole that Trump is to start.

Cruz has not yet been subject to the avalanche of attack ads that would surely greet him in a general election and Trump’s ugly, personal attacks on Cruz will also surely intensify in the near term.

But for now, it’s safe to say that Cruz is a better general election bet than Trump. There’s more variability with Trump – positive and negative – but Cruz can at least promise to essentially keep the GOP coalition intact and at least keep it close with Clinton.

Kasich ahead in Ohio - Fox News: “Ohio Governor John Kasich bests Donald Trump among Buckeye Republicans by a 34 to 29 percent margin. Ted Cruz is third with 19 percent.  Marco Rubio trails with just 7 percent. That’s according to a new Fox News poll of Ohio likely Republican primary voters.  The governor’s edge is within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Kasich is bolstered by positive evaluations of his job performance as governor.  He has a sky high 79 percent approval rating among the Ohio party faithful. Even so, nearly one quarter of Kasich supporters say they could end up voting for another candidate (23 percent).”

[GOP delegate count: Trump 458; Cruz 359; Rubio 151; Kasich 54 (1,237 needed to win)]