Lurching toward the 2016 nomination

The Wisconsin primary election results have given us more food for thought in a caucus and primary season that was already a banquet fit for a queen or king!

Donald Trump lost another contest. Iowa was his first disappointment with Steve King's favorite Texas Sen. Ted Cruz upsetting the earliest of the apple carts. That makes it harder for Trump, Cruz, or the straggling and struggling Gov. Kasich to achieve the majority of 1,237 delegates necessary to get the nomination outright on then first ballot at the GOP convention this summer.

The results make it all the more urgent for Trump to win the New York primary in a big way. If he fails to overwhelm Cruz in his own home city and state the future looks dim indeed for the Manhattan millionaire.

On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders scored another victory over his supposed invincible opponent Hillary Clinton. The results from Wisconsin make it all the more urgent for Clinton to win the New York primary in a big way. If she fails to overwhelm Sanders in her own home state the future looks terrible indeed for the former New York Senator and Secretary of State. I cut and pasted my statement about Trump from the previous paragraph, which is so very interesting because in both parties the Empire State (New York) and The Big Apple loom so large in the 2016 contest.

The elites (i.e. establishment) of the Democratic and Republican parties are in panic mode. They do not like heated, unstable and long nomination seasons. They are also really apprehensive of the front-runners who may end up nailing the nomination.

The Republicans are appalled that Trump has remained a strong contender, winning a majority of contests and creeping toward the majority of delegates. From all indications the GOP national leadership is also very unhappy with the insurgent Ted Cruz who has defied the leadership and generally been a pain in the neck of the party.

The Democratic poobahs (the term is from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera 'Mikado”), the pompous, self-important, and sometimes haughty top leadership and donorship of the party cannot believe that Sanders, a 74-year-old 'Democratic Socialist,” is giving their long-standing preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, a run for her money again as in 2008. They are convinced that Sanders would have a hard time winning the general election which is why the 'superdelegates” who are party leaders from all 50 states and the DNC are mostly pledged for Clinton.

I'm asked every week by CTV Canada's premium cable news network, for whom I do analysis, if Bernie Sanders supporters would vote for Hillary Clinton if she were the party nominee. We don't have reliable polling numbers on that but it is an intriguing question.

For the Republicans there is an additional problem of huge proportions that emerged from the exit polls in the Wisconsin primary.

My colleague, political science professor Dave Andersen pointed out that to the question, 'If Trump is the nominee who will you vote for in November?” 66 percent of Cruz voters said they would vote for a third party.

Then Trump supporters were asked, 'If Cruz is the nominee, who will you vote for in November?” Seventy-one percent of Trump voters said they'd vote for a third party.

This is the most extraordinary resistance and rejection of the two front-runners in the same political party that I've ever seen. It makes it hard to understand what magic would be necessary for those two halves of the GOP to be brought together around either Cruz or Trump. If a different candidate, say Kasich, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or even Paul Ryan, is nominated, there will be howls of objection from those millions of voters who have worked hard for the two top dogs this season.

There is no doubt that this is a complex and fascinating election year and American democracy will be tested as rarely before.

' Steffen Schmidt is professor of political science at Iowa State University. Comments: steffenschmidt2005@gmail.com