The New Observer
April 20, 2016
An angry white voter rebellion at the corruption and manipulation of the Republican Party’s nomination process dealt Ted Cruz a crushing defeat in the New York state primaries yesterday, entrenching Donald Trump as the popular choice of that party’s supporters.
Exit polling also definitively showed that nonwhites have overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party—reinforcing the long-held prediction that Trump needs to take in more than 65 percent of the white vote in order to win a presidential election.
Trump’s sweeping win was far in excess of even the most optimistic opinion polls, and Cruz’s crushing defeat was much worse than predicted.
Trump took the lion’s share of the delegates, while no-hope spoiler candidate John Kasich took three—but Cruz polled so few votes that he took none.
The mass vote for Trump is obviously a reaction to the Republican Party’s behind-the-scenes manipulation of the delegate totals ahead of the Republican National Convention (RNC), where the presidential candidate will be nominated.
The party changed voting rules in several states to allow for “voteless” delegate selections. These rule changes allowed the party organization—and not the voters—to select delegates to the RNC—and were strictly controlled to exclude all Trump supporters.
As a result, even though Cruz is clearly the unpopular candidate, he significantly closed the gap between his delegate total and that of Trump, a process which the latter called “rigged” and “crooked.”
The only way Trump could now win enough delegates outright before the RNC, would be to score dramatically well in almost every single remaining primary—victories of the magnitude obtained in New York.
Failing that, Trump will have to rely on unbound state delegates or defectors from candidates who have already fallen out, to clinch the nomination.
Equally significant, a detailed exit poll in New York State conducted by NBC News shows that nonwhites have all but left the Republican Party in favor of the Democrats—and Hilary Clinton in particular.
The exit poll for the Republican primary vote revealed that 91 percent of its participants where “white,” with 61 percent voting for Trump, 24 percent for Kasich, and 15 percent for Cruz.
Only 3 percent of Republican primary voters were black—and almost all voted for Trump, while 5 percent were “Hispanic/Latino”—and almost all voted for Trump.
The number of “Asians” or “others” voting in the Republican primary was too small to count.
By contrast, only 59 percent of Democratic New York state primary participants were “white,” with their vote split evenly between Clinton and Bernie Sanders. A large number of these voters were actually Jewish.
Of the 41 percent nonwhite Democratic Party primary participants, 22 percent were black (75 percent for Clinton, and 25 percent for Sanders), 14 percent were “Hispanic/Latino” (64 percent for Clinton, and 36 percent for Sanders), 2 percent were “Asian,” and 3 percent were “other.” In total, 68 percent of nonwhite Democratic primary participants voted for Clinton and 32 percent for Sanders.
* Another fact to emerge from the exit poll was that, despite intense controlled media attacks on Trump for allegedly being “sexist,” an overwhelming majority of female Republican primary participants voted for him. Trump took 57 percent of the female vote, while Cruz took 15 percent.
* A New Observer staff member had the great pleasure of casting a vote for Donald Trump yesterday.