If Americaâs 58th presidential election validates Ted Cruzâs audacious âbase plusâ strategy, he will have refuted assumptions about the importance of independent âswingâ voters and the inertia of many missing voters. Critics say his plan for pursuing the Republican nomination precludes winning the presidency. Jason Johnson, Cruzâs chief strategist, responds: âIâm working backward from Election Day,â because Cruzâs plan for winning the necessary 1,236 convention delegates is an extrapolation from his strategy for winning 270 electoral votes.
George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. He is also a contributor to FOX Newsâ daytime and primetime programming. View Archive
All presidential campaigns aspire to favorably change the composition of the electorate. Cruz aims to substantially reconfigure the electorate as it has recently been.
Between George W. Bushâs 2000 election and his 2004 reelection, the turnout of non-Hispanic whites increased by an astonishing 10 million. Barack Obama produced a surge of what Johnson calls âtwo-election voters.â In 2008, the African American voting rate increased from 2004 while white voting declined slightly; in 2012, African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites.
In Florida in 2012, turnout of non-Hispanic whites declined from 2008 even though the eligible voting-age population increased by 864,000. Nationally, the Census Bureauâs Thom File writes: âThe number of non-Hispanic white voters decreased by about 2 million between 2008 and 2012.â In the past five elections (1996-2012), their share of eligible voters declined from 79.2 percent to 71.1 percent and their share of the turnout declined from 82.5 percent to 73.7 percent, while the Hispanic and black shares of votes cast increased about four and three percentage points, respectively.
Nonvoting whites, especially those without college experience, are among Cruzâs principal targets. His geniality toward Donald Trump reflects the Cruz campaignâs estimate that perhaps one-third of the Trumpkins have not voted in recent elections. If so, Trump is doing downfield blocking for Cruz, beginning the expansion of the 2016 electorate by energizing people whose alienation from politics has made them nonvoters.
Cycle after cycle, says Johnson, the percentage of true swing voters shrinks. Therefore, so does the persuadable portion of the electorate. Cruz aims to leaven the electorate with people who, disappointed by economic stagnation and discouraging cultural trends for which Republican nominees seemed to have no answers, have been dormant during recent cycles.
Consider Pennsylvania, which has voted Democratic in six consecutive elections and which James Carville described as Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east and Alabama in between. Cruzâs aim, says Johnson, will be âto improve on Romney at the margins in the Philadelphia suburbs,â do three points better than Romney (5.5 percent) among African Americans (with many âtwo electionâ voters staying home with Obama gone) and to locate and motivate many previous nonvoters in Pennsylvaniaâs âAlabama.â In 2012, Obama became the first Democrat since George McGovern in 1972 to lose the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Whites without college experience include disproportionate numbers of nonvoters whose abstention in 2012, according to the Market Research Foundation, produced Obamaâs Electoral College victory. The Cruz campaignâs substantial investment in data scientists serves what Johnson calls âbehavioral micro-targeting,â changing behavior as well as gathering opinions. If a person drives a Ford F-150 and subscribes to Guns & Ammo, he probably is conservative. The challenge is to make him a voter by directing to him a package of three- or four-issue appeals tailored to him.
Cruz has county chairs organizing in all 172 counties in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. National Reviewâs Eliana Johnson reports that through the second quarter, Cruz had raised more âhardâ dollars than any of his rivals, and super PACs supporting him have raised more than all but those supporting Jeb Bush. Jason Johnson describes the delegate selection process as follows:
Of the 624 delegates at stake on March 1, 231 are from Cruzâs Texas and Georgia, where Cruz inherited Scott Walkerâs entire operation. With Oklahoma, whose closed primary will be especially conservative, these three states have 274 delegates, almost a quarter of the number needed to nominate. Eighty-seven of the 155 delegates allocated on March 5 will be from Louisiana and Kansas. On March 15, when winner-take-all primaries begin and 367 delegates will be allocated, Bush and Marco Rubio will compete for Floridaâs 99 delegates, while Cruz is well-positioned for North Carolinaâs 72 and Missouriâs 52 (Cruzâs campaign manager, Missourian Jeff Roe, has run many campaigns there).
Whenever this cycleâs winnowing process produces two survivors, they might be two young, Southern, first-term Cuban American senators. Rubio would be the establishment choice. Cruz, with his theory of the election, would not have it otherwise.
 Source: The Washington Post