How Cruz won Wisconsin
Ballotpedia's scope changes periodically, and this article type is no longer actively created or maintained. If you would like to help our coverage grow, consider donating to Ballotpedia.
This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
April 6, 2016
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz handily defeated billionaire developer Donald Trump in the April 5 Wisconsin Republican presidential primary, 48 to 35 percent. He did so by swamping Trump in the state’s GOP suburban stronghold and stitching together a new coalition of primary voters.
With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Trump actually won twice as many counties as Cruz did, 48 to 23 (one, Pierce, was tied; and in another, Waushara, Trump carried by one vote). But Cruz won big in the more populated counties in the eastern half of the state; especially the suburban and exurban counties around Milwaukee where a Republican candidate must do well in order to win a general election in Wisconsin.
Cruz carried each of the big three counties around Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee by 39 percentage points, three times what his statewide margin over the Trump was. Trump’s weakness in these three counties—he couldn’t muster over 24 percent in any of the big three—could be an ominous sign for Republicans if he winds up as the party’s nominee. If a GOP presidential candidate can’t carry the suburban and exurban vote by a solid margin in swing states like Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina, those states are likely to wind up in the Democratic column.
This area in Southeastern Wisconsin is the political base of GOP Gov. Scott Walker, who served as Milwaukee County Executive for eight years before he was elected governor, and his endorsement of Cruz certainly helped the Texan. During the primary campaign, Trump frequently criticized Walker’s stewardship of the state, which may have antagonized some of the governor’s strongest supporters in the state who backed him in three hard-fought elections, including a contentious recall battle in 2012.
Cruz also thumped Trump in the other swing counties in the Fox River Valley, Sheboygan, 60-to-25 percent, and Fon du Lac, 55-to-33 percent. Overall, Cruz won all ten of the counties that produced the largest numbers of GOP votes in Tuesday’s presidential primary. Conversely, in the 20 rural counties that produced the smallest numbers of GOP votes, Trump captured all of them.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich finished a distant third and he was unable to finish second in a single county in Wisconsin. His best county was Dane, home to the state capital of Madison and the University of Wisconsin, where he got 29 percent to Trump’s 30 percent and Cruz’s 38 percent.
The television network exit poll in Wisconsin, a representative sampling of voters as they left their precinct polling stations, found that Cruz was able to form a new coalition of GOP primary voters that critically shaped his success. In Wisconsin, Cruz not only won an overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters who described themselves as “very conservative,” he also won a solid plurality of those who called themselves “somewhat conservative.” That was a break from previous primaries where Trump had beaten Cruz in close contests. In Missouri, where Trump won the GOP primary by a slim margin over Cruz, the billionaire not only won a plurality, 43 percent, of the voters who described themselves as “moderate,” he also won a 43 percent plurality of those who said they were “somewhat conservative.” In the North Carolina primary, Trump also won the state with the support of pluralities of both moderate and somewhat conservative voters.
The last two Republican presidential nominees, Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008, essentially won their respective nominating contests by assembling coalitions of moderate and somewhat conservative Republican primary voters. But if Cruz is able to replicate the very conservative-somewhat conservative coalition he pulled off in Wisconsin in upcoming primaries, he could rack up a number of victories that would put him in a formidable position going into a contested Republican convention in Cleveland in July.
The Wisconsin exit poll also had some warning signals that the two leading Republican candidates, Trump and Cruz, could both have a difficult time uniting their party in the fall campaign. Wisconsin GOP primary voters were asked how they would vote in the general election if their options were Trump, Hillary Clinton and a (unspecified) third party candidate. Among those who voted for Kasich, less than a quarter said they’d vote for Trump. More said they’d vote for Clinton, 31 percent, or a third party candidate, 36 percent. Another eight percent said they wouldn’t bother to vote. Among Cruz voters, only 48 percent said they’d vote for Trump, while 25 percent said they’d support a third party candidate, 14 percent said they wouldn’t vote, and eight percent said they’d back Clinton.
The outlook for Cruz wasn’t much better. Among Trump voters, only 39 percent said they’d vote for Cruz in a general election against Clinton. Likewise, only 42 percent of the Kasich voters said they’d cast a general election ballot for Cruz.
To be sure, this is the phase of a primary contest where emotions among rival candidate factions can run high. If either Trump or Cruz becomes the eventual GOP nominee, the opposition to Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would no doubt be a unifying force for Republicans. But whoever eventually prevails in Cleveland, the top of the GOP ticket could face a huge task putting the GOP back together again for the fall campaign.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and will be helping to project the Democratic and Republican winners throughout the election cycle.
See also
- Presidential election in Wisconsin, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
