Ted Cruz’s South Carolina performance will conform to my model, if the exits are right. They show him winning the very conservatives 39-27 over Trump. But he loses somewhat conservatives by a 34-20 margin (Rubio gets 26 percent). And Cruz gets a paltry 9 percent among the 17 percent of the electorate who are moderate (Trump wins 31 percent, Rubio 25 percent, and Kasich 20).
This is exactly the voter profile that Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum showed in 2008 and 2012. And that’s not good enough to win, not even close.