This Article is From Feb 10, 2016

Why Donald Trump Won Twice In One Night

Why Donald Trump Won Twice In One Night

Donald Trump reacts at his 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire February 9, 2016. (Reuters)

Donald Trump won New Hampshire on Tuesday night, and not just because he finished with the most votes.

The results extend his biggest advantage: a divided opposition. They all but ensure that several mainstream Republicans remain in the race - perhaps even long enough for Trump to take a big delegate lead on Super Tuesday, March 1.

As recently as a few days ago, New Hampshire seemed as if it could produce the opposite effect. Marco Rubio had just taken a strong third in the Iowa caucuses, and a handful of polls showed him moving into the upper teens and into a strong second place in New Hampshire.

Instead, Rubio fared poorly in the last debate. He was in fifth place in the New Hampshire returns with more than half of precincts reporting Tuesday, trailing John Kasich, Ted Cruz and even Jeb Bush by a meaningful margin.

Trump could not have asked for much more. If you were ranking Republicans in terms of their chances to defeat Trump and Cruz, you would probably list Rubio, Bush and Kasich. Yet they appear likeliest to finish tonight in exactly the opposite order - maximizing the likelihood that all three stay in the race.

The presence of so many viable, mainstream Republican candidates poses a huge challenge to the party's establishment. Most obviously, the three have split mainstream voters and donors, and will continue to do so. But it is even worse: They have used their donors' money to viciously attack one another, instead of Trump.

The strong showing for Kasich is particularly inconvenient for the party. His appeal is narrowly concentrated among moderate voters, who are overrepresented in New Hampshire. He doesn't have the broad appeal or organization necessary to turn his New Hampshire strength into a serious race.

But his showing in New Hampshire could be enough to prevented a Republican with broader appeal - like Rubio - from consolidating the coalition of mainstream conservative and well-educated moderate voters who could eventually defeat Cruz or Trump.

Bush and particularly Rubio have the potential to build broader coalitions. But both have now failed to capitalize on huge opportunities. There are well-founded doubts about both candidates, which will make it harder for voters and party leaders to coalesce behind either.

All of this could change just as quickly as Rubio's fortunes changed during the last week. But there's no question that Tuesday's result means it will take longer for the party to coalesce around any of the candidates - and raises the possibility that it will simply never happen. A continued split among the mainstream candidates would not only increase the possibility that Trump wins the nomination, but also the prospect that no candidate will amass a majority of delegates before the convention.

Cruz failed to demonstrate any meaningful appeal beyond his base of "very conservative" and evangelical voters in Iowa. He appeared to have won about 12 percent of Tuesday's vote. That's modestly above past winners of Iowa who have gone on to lose in New Hampshire, like Mike Huckabee, who won 11 percent in 2008, or Rick Santorum, who won 9 percent in 2012. Cruz won just 4 percent of moderate voters and just 9 percent of "somewhat conservative" voters.

The weakness of Trump's opposition should not detract from his own performance. He appeared to have won about 34 percent of Tuesday's vote - above the 31 percent he held in pre-election polls.

After Trump's disappointing showing in Iowa - he underperformed the polls by 7 percentage points - it was reasonable to wonder whether he could maintain the support of voters as they headed to the ballot box, or whether he could turn out his supporters without a strong field organization. Whatever explained his underwhelming showing in Iowa certainly wasn't at play in New Hampshire, and there's no reason to be sure it will happen in the next Republican contest, South Carolina.
© 2016, The New York Times News Service
.