Republican voters held primaries in Arizona and Utah on March 22nd.* These two states make up 2/3 of what we can call the I Formation Triple Red Primary in the Mountain West. The third player is Idaho which held its Republican primary election on March 8th.
History & Origin of the I Formation Triple Red Primary
Americans love football with their politics, as well as baseball. And football is a contact sport.
All three Western states are members of the Triple Red Conference. Since 2004, in every presidential election they have been solid for Team Red, and run up the scores to blow-out football game levels, eclipsing anything you might see in a mere baseball game.
Twice Utah has scored more than 70 points for Team Red, and Utah always puts 60 or more points up. Arizona is a little less prolific, winning by an average of 9 points per game. In nine presidential election games since 2004, the smallest Mountain West Red margin has been 8; the largest 48 points. With routine scores like that, it is surprising the D-Conference opponents even bother to show up.
Anyone who has ever played football, and many who are fans but never played the game in pads, know about football’s X’s and O’s. They are the classic way of diagraming formations representing the 11 players from each team on the field at once and how they should move. A team may have 15 to 100 different plays, with variations and options, for both offense and defense.**
In a substantial way, it is an American analogue of the algebraic notation system for the ancient game of Chess. Both systems include visual diagrams and cryptic codes readily understood by the devoted fan. Both can be used to record a game that has already been played, and plan strategy for one that has not happened yet. Both can seem incredibly opaque to the casual onlooker. Just like American politics.
A classic offensive football formation universally known, and used by teams from Pop Warner League to the NFL, is called the I Formation. The reason Idaho, Utah, and Arizona make up the I Formation Primary should be straightforward based on their near perfect geographical alignment, and a quick reference to basic football offensive formations. The basic I Formation is deceptively simple, but exists in a number of modifications, with a bewildering array of options and twists, as circumstances may require. Also, presidential politics is a contact sport, just like football.***
The I Formation Triple Red is Reliable Red Country.
March 22nd Arizona Primary Results
Let’s talk about the Arizona contest. The 58 delegate votes in a winner-take-all format made it the biggest prize of the night. It was the only one of the three where there was a head to head Republican and Democratic primary election held at the same time. 940 thousand Arizonans in total cast their votes. 56% of them supported Republican candidates, a margin of 121,735 votes.
Donald Trump was the overall vote leader with 249,916. However, considering just Republican voters, he still only managed to garner 47% of his party’s votes. He is creeping slowly towards a simple majority, but he still hasn’t made it. Not once in 32 contests to date. No football game is won at half-time, or in the 3rd quarter. No coach would go very far (or get his contract renewed) with an 0 for 32 record.
Let’s factor in Clinton and the Democrats. Trump beat her this time by a margin of 14 thousand votes. Even this is a troubling result. Republicans enjoyed a turnout advantage of 56-44. Yet Trump’s share of the entire vote is only 1.5% points higher than Clinton. He performed well below his expected victory margin.
There were just two active opponents against Trump, and Kasich got only 10% support. As for number two Republican Cruz, number two Democrat Sanders beat him by more than 30 thousand votes in a Republican State. Further, Clinton and Sanders combined beat Trump and Cruz together by 17 thousand votes (1.8%, more than erasing Trump’s margin over Clinton). In other words, there is weakness evident down the line for the candidates with the harshest anti-immigration positions, even in Arizona.
So, the contest was still largely Trump vs. Clinton. He won, but not by much, after a lackluster performance. How will Trump ever convert Democratic leaning swing state voters (on whom the outcome of the national election will depend), if this is the best he can muster in Republican country?
Arizona has been the poster child for a number of years for punitive, anti-immigrant rhetoric and action by the state legislature and former Governor, Jan Brewer (2009-2015), and is the home territory of tough-guy Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County. Trump’s tough talk, no-excuses routine should be a natural fit. But the actual primary results offer no ringing endorsement of his approach by real voters who’ve heard it all before.
Governor Brewer Rudely Yells and Points Her Finger at the President of the United States
Rank and file Republicans do not want to witness a third-in-a-row failed attempt to win the Presidency, by a fast talker with the biggest, most beautiful plans (believe me), no political track record, and less than stellar pre-season exhibition stats.
March 8th Idaho Republican Primary
Idaho Republicans cast 220 thousand votes in their primary on March 8th. Cruz was the winner with 45% and 101 thousand votes, over several opponents. Trump finished in second place with 28% of the vote, a respectable showing. Cruz won by 38 thousand votes, a healthy margin of 17%. In the proportional sharing of the state’s 32 delegates, Cruz received 20 to Trump’s 12.
It was not a 50% majority win for Cruz, but it took place on a day when three other elections took place. Trump’s relatively anemic showing in this large–area, low-population western state may be the result of the cumulative strain of multiple simultaneous contests on Trump’s limited professional campaign resources. His organization may have a relative dearth of state offices, local volunteers, a lack of voter data profiles, and limited personal communication with voters, etc., compared to Cruz’ more experienced campaign effort investment.
March 22nd Utah Republican Caucuses
There isn’t too much to say about the Utah results, except that it was a crushing win for Cruz over the league front-runner Trump, by 69% to 14%. (89% of precincts reporting). Trump didn’t finish in second place either, losing to along for the ride, John Kasich (17%) by 5 thousand votes. Trump often brags that he always finishes first or second. So his crown in-the-making has been a little tarnished.
It is also worth noting that Trump, a Protestant, was at pains to question the faith of Mitt Romney (a devout Mormon and 2012 Republican Presidential nominee who won Utah with 73% of the popular vote) several times, in public, in Utah during the week before the 2016 primary. That crudeness, repeated more than once on TV, by itself, might have been reason enough why Cruz beat him by nearly 100,000 votes in an election where only 177,000 in total were cast. Cruz gathered 5 times as many votes as Trump.
Utah is not a formal winner-take-all state for convention delegates like Arizona, but there is a 50% majority winner threshold, so in fact Cruz did take them all. Before the vote, Trump expected to claim his share of delegates based on proportional voting totals, and thus strengthen his national delegate lead. Forty delegates to Cruz, a shutout for Trump.
It is true that Utah held a caucus and not a primary, and that there were about 200 thousand voters in Utah compared to 930 thousand in Arizona. In Arizona, there were 4 times as many votes, in a state with just 2.25 times the population of Utah. So, a larger proportion of voters participated in the primary than in the caucus, and the Arizona result is arguably a stronger indicator of voter sentiment.
But the Utah results repeat a consistent trend present since the very beginning of the primary season. Trump tends to perform worse in caucus states. That’s where he is most likely to lose. He is often beaten soundly, with victory margins by his opponents that may reach or exceed 50%. In Utah Cruz won 69-14.
A Candidate’s Independent Ground Game
Why should this be so? A caucus win generally requires that a campaign have a robust campaign organization, coordination by experienced political veterans, lots of volunteers, a get-out-the-vote operation, phone banks, neighbor-to-neighbor canvassing, repeated knocking-on-doors, sophisticated IT voter data banks, resource targeting and logistics, local transportation, networking with local and county elected officials, generous funding, etc.
All these items are the principal tools of a modern professional campaign. They can be lumped together under the single term of a ground game. They are needed state by state, unique in every sate. They cannot be picked up and flown-in from state to state in short order. There is a significant problem of scale-up and executive management when more than one contest occurs on the same day, All national elections since 2000 have proven that the better ground game wins.
Caucus Results May Indicate Campaign Health
It has been noticed before elsewhere that Trump has an exceedingly thin and spotty national campaign structure. He has nearly no professionally-led organization at all in state after state. He began trying to create one, largely starting in February of this year, seven months after he launched his campaign. His current national campaign manager has never run a national campaign, and only one unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign (in New Hampshire) for an incumbent Senator, who lost.
Media Exposure (free or paid for) and the Ground Game are the two pillars of campaign success. Trump has been successful so far with a media exposure strategy as his bedrock approach. He stumbles when he needs boots on the ground, as in caucus states. I believe his guiding tactic has been to just clear the bar for the nomination in Cleveland, before he runs out of the personal resources he is willing to gamble. He can then ask the national Republican party structure to make up the difference for the state by state ground game he has consciously chosen not to invest in for himself.
Every candidate depends to some degree on financial and logistical support from their national party. Successful candidates also create an extensive independent campaign ground game for themselves. They do it early. They devote tens of millions of dollars to make it work. That is why national campaigns are so expensive. Media and the Ground Game both are shockingly costly.
They cannot be substituted for each other in the crush of an all-out presidential election. From the start of the white-hot political activity on Labor Day, until election day when there are 50 contests at once, media ads or Twitter appeals will not get the party faithful and undecided voters inside the voting booths.
Of all the Republican contenders, Cruz has the closest to a functioning national ground game. That is one significant reason why he has won where he has. The poorly developed ground game is Trump’s greatest external campaign weakness. It is a significant part of why he has not done well in states which hold caucuses compared to those with primaries, despite his enormous advantages so far, by many fold across the board, in media exposure. The pattern of weakness in caucus states is an early indicator of the general health of a candidate’s independent national campaign apparatus, outside and parallel to that of the party.
The Fall Problem for Trump’s Ground Game
The real problem for Trump, if he should become the eventual Republican nominee, is this. Clinton has been preparing a massive ground game for two years to win the 2016 election. She has raised more than $130 million dollars so far, and has the highest cash already on hand of all the candidates. She has the luxury of being able to focus significant attention and new resources on the fall campaign right now. The national Democratic Party did better than the national Republican Party in the elections of 2008 and 2012, so they start out ahead with tested ground game techniques that have succeeded.
There will be about three months left from the end of the Republican convention in July until the election on November 8th, just over 100 days.
That is not enough time to build a world class operation from scratch. The Republican party does not have spare resources to give to Trump to substitute for his part of the effort that he has delayed funding. They will have their hands full defending a very large number of competitive Senate races, and making up for the lingering defects in their 2012 national operations.
Some of the essential components of a winning ground game cannot be purchased at any price. Some people will not want to join a campaign that has been so caustic and divisive, no matter how much money is offered. For those people and resources that may be available, the cost at such a late date will be astronomical.
Trump has said he will spend whatever it takes. He has said he is self-funding his campaign. The total, according to his campaign financial disclosures, has been about $25 million so far, about $18 million of that a loan to himself, not a cash donation. It will likely cost $1 billion or more dollars for this 2016 presidential campaign. He is already more than $100 million behind as of March. If Trump has the wherewithal to produce several hundred million dollars of his own money for his part of the campaign ground game effort, he hasn’t shown it, all the while he is getting beaten up in caucus states, and he is short of a majority of delegates.
There is precious little evidence he has bought the essential construction materials to build an independent national campaign structure for the fall. It is still 3 months before the end of the primary season. There are few signs of a significant growth bulge in his state by state proto-network to prepare for the whirlwind. After his raucous campaign rallies, no one seems to stay behind to do the grunt work and coordinate for the long haul with local supporters. Maybe he will change his tactics. Hillary, her staff, and her committed volunteers have been working on this assiduously every day for two years, no matter what else is going on around her. None of them is waiting to see what happens in Cleveland in July.
Summary of the I Format Triple Red Primary Season
In Arizona, Idaho, and Utah, three Mountain States Republican primaries were held in March. The final tally was two wins for Cruz, and one for Trump. Each won one primary, and Cruz won the tie-breaker caucus. Of the 130 delegates awarded, Trump won 70 to 60. This 10 delegate difference is an advantage of less than ½ of 1% for Trump in all three states combined. He didn’t hurt himself, but he didn’t add substantially to his lead either. Trump has still failed to reach a majority of 50% Republican support in any of the contested states through March 22nd. It does look like his support may be a somewhat wider groove than a fixed rut.
These three red states seem safe enough, though Arizona might be a pretty close game on the fall schedule. The pre-season #I ranked quarterback has a tendency to get sacked, his Red Zone performance is sub par, and he has had problems learning some parts of the basic playbook expected of all members of the Team. There is some time left before the Exhibition Season is over to try and correct these faults, but not very much.
*No disrespect is intended to the island territory of American Samoa. American Samoa also held a Republican Caucus on March 22nd to assign their 9 delegates. All of them were officially declared unbound, though it was reported that both Cruz and Trump had earned 1 delegate vote each. The 57,000 American Samoans are considered U.S. nationals, but not U.S. citizens, so they are not able to vote in Presidential elections. The results from their 2016 caucus illustrate how complex and arcane the detailed delegate selection rules can be. Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile exercise in democracy for the Republican Party to clearly show its inclusive nature and generous spirit towards other people living on the American mainland.
**X’s and O’s were originally taught to football players as a Coach wrote on a chalkboard in front of the group. I learned from Coach Martens the O’s were the offensive player alignments, and the X’s were for the defensive players, regardless of who had the ball. The shorthand symbols and lingo was quickly adapted for use on paper, and team members were given playbooks to study at home to learn positions, routes, and play calling codes. After the play diagrams are thoroughly familiar to the team, the plays are reduced to short combinations of secret words or letter codes to call out to the team in the huddle or at the line. The other team’s players may hear them, but they won’t know the exact coded meaning in a different team’s system. It is pretty effective, but not foolproof.
***A football I formation in the flesh. From a televised game between USC and Florida State University, The position of the I formation backs are marked just before the play starts. Florida State has the ball on offense.
