http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2587658Byron York: Wisconsin final arguments: Cruz expected to win, but race could tighten
By Byron York (@ByronYork) • 4/5/16 2:12 AM
MILWAUKEE — Ted Cruz ended his Wisconsin primary campaign where he is strongest, and Donald Trump ended his where he is weakest.
Cruz held his final rally at the Waukesha County Expo Center, in the heart of Wisconsin's GOP stronghold "WOW" counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. It's where Cruz, bolstered by a united-front talk radio campaign in which Wisconsin's most influential conservative hosts have spent weeks bashing Trump and talking up Cruz, is expected to win big. And indeed, his Waukesha crowd was large, loud, and enthusiastic.
Trump went to the downtown Milwaukee Theater, in the heart of Democratic stronghold Milwaukee County. The greater Milwaukee area is deeply divided into Republican and Democratic parts: "Metropolitan Milwaukee blends one powerhouse blue county (Milwaukee) with the highest-performing Republican suburbs in America," the Journal-Sentinel noted in 2014. Trump went to the Democratic part. He got a big crowd — he always does — but reportedly did not fill the theater as fans have come to expect.
The question as election day dawned is whether the shift that took place in the race last week — when Trump's attack on Heidi Cruz and various other ill-advised comments began to catch up with him — whether that momentum shift has continued, or whether it has slowed.
The race was shaken last Wednesday, when the respected Marquette Law School released its final poll on the race, showing Cruz leading Trump by a 10-point margin, 40 percent to 30 percent. Those results were bolstered a day or two later by a poll from Fox Business which showed the same gap, with Cruz at 42 percent to Trump's 32 percent.
Since then, however, there have been three newer polls, none of them as revered here in Wisconsin as the Marquette survey, showing a tighter race. A CBS poll had Cruz up by 6 points. An Emerson poll showed Cruz up by five. And an ARG poll released on election eve and immediately labeled an outlier, had Trump — not Cruz — in the lead, by 10 points.
Put aside ARG. The other surveys have put an end to some of the speculation that Cruz's lead might grow well beyond 10 points. "These polls have dampened some of that talk," said one state Republican operative late Monday. "People still have the sense that things have shifted toward Cruz and he ought to win — the question is by how much, and will Trump win some delegates."
"He might win by 12," said the operative, "and he might win by three."
Sunday and Monday were the most conventional days of campaigning of any race that has Donald Trump in it. Trump poured it on, for him, with a bunch of rallies and even a (rare) traditional-style retail stop at a diner. Cruz did several rallies and town halls, and on Monday had a few appropriately Wisconsin-ish cheese-focused events, with a visit to Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha and later to Glorioso's, an Italian market in Milwaukee. Cruz's daughters were valuable players during the retail portion of the day. At Mars, one of them tried, unsuccessfully, to put a cheesehead hat on her father, while at Glorioso's, Cruz asked his daughter if he could have a taste of her raspberry sorbetto. She emphatically said no. "What are you gonna do?" Cruz said with a smile and a shrug.
Cruz finished up his Wisconsin campaign with a strong lineup of endorsers. The Waukesha rally Monday night featured Carly Fiorina and popular-with-Republicans Gov. Scott Walker. (The event was emceed by Charlie Sykes, who has been leading the talk radio charge against Trump.)
Like other local politicos, Walker tapped into his fellow Wisconsinites' considerable self-regard to argue that a Cruz victory in the state could be a pivotal moment in the troubled Republican presidential race nationwide. "We are good and decent and honorable people, and we're here to tell people across America that we're voting for someone tomorrow that we stand with, not against," Walker said. The primary, he continued, could be "a turning point to move this campaign in the right direction."
Whether that will turn out to be true or not isn't clear. Yes, a Cruz victory could make Trump's already-difficult job of reaching 1,237 delegates even more difficult. On the other hand, there are a lot of big states left to vote, and Trump could be positioned to do well in them. The race that many thought would take a critical turn in Wisconsin might continue virtually unchanged when the candidates head to the next state.
