Could Trump Have Been Stopped in 2016?

Writing in the National Review, Never-Trumper Jim Geraghty is warning that the Democrats have to stop Bernie Sanders by uniting under a single candidate. While this is written as a warning for the Democrats, it's mainly an examination of how a candidate he hates managed to win the primaries.

As Geraghty sees it, good and decent Republicans could have saved the party if only the huge pool of candidates had stepped aside and allowed support to coalesce around a single acceptable candidate, probably Ted Cruz. While it's true that Trump won the nomination with only 46% of the vote, it's a stretch to think that another candidate could have beaten him.

Let's start with polls. RealClearPolitics has a list of polls for Trump, Cruz and Kasich during the primaries. As of this point (early February) four years ago they stood with Trump at 39%, Cruz at 18% and Kasich at 8%. So, if Kasich had dropped out and thrown all of his support to Cruz, Trump would still be ahead. That's how it was for all of January and February. Of course there were other candidates in the race and it was not clear that Cruz and Kasich would be the last hold-outs.

Things got more interesting in March. For a lot of March, Cruz and Kasich combined did have more support than Trump. By April Trump was right about equal to Cruz and Kasich combined and that's how the race ended. So if one of them had dropped out and thrown all of his support to the other and none of his supporters voted for Trump instead, then Trump might have been defeated. But that's a lot of "ifs". A big one is assuming that Cruz would prefer to see Kasich as president over Trump. I do think it's a given that Kasich would prefer anyone to Trump including Hillary Clinton but he was convinced that the RNC would somehow fix things so Trump was not nominated and, as the last candidate standing, he'd get the nomination. I suspect he didn't care much for Cruz, either. For that matter, I really wonder if Geraghty would have been any happier with President Cruz than with President Trump?

Any idea that Trump could have been stopped vanishes when you look at the statistics. Trump won 41 primaries and 1,441 delegates. Cruz won 11 primaries and 551 delegates. Rubio (who dropped out early and endorsed Trump) won three primaries and 173 delegates. Kasich only won Ohio and only had 161 delegates. The anti-Trump would have had to win a whole lot of primaries to beat Trump.

And it should be pointed out that most Republicans did not share Geraghty's hatred from Trump. Of the 2016 Republican clown car, Only Jeb! and Kasich didn't endorse Trump when they dropped out (Cruz waited until after the convention. The idea that they would all drop out early in order to stop Trump founders on those endorsements.

So, is the Democratic Party in danger of having the same thing happen with Bernie? It's too early to tell but there are crucial differences. Bernie is currently the front-runner but that's been fairly fluid. All of the candidates are below 30% which leaves a lot of room for them to grow. In contrast, Trump was a clear front-runner in nearly every poll for months before the first primary. He began 2016 around 35% while everyone else was below 15%. So, where Trump was the clear front-runner in 2016, there is no such front-runner in 2020, only the candidate who is slightly ahead.