5 numbers

5 numbers that explain the Wisconsin results

By Steven Shepard

Ted Cruz consolidated Wisconsin GOP primary voters who wanted to stop Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s presidential primary, winning nearly half the vote – and the vast majority of highly prized delegates to this summer’s national convention.

In the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders romped over Hillary Clinton to maintain his recent momentum, driven mostly by younger white voters, especially men.

Here are five numbers from exit polls conducted with voters that explain how both Cruz and Sanders defeated the national front-runners:

47%: Ted Cruz'z support among "Somewhat conservative" voters

Cruz secured his roughly 15-point victory by winning over voters who had thus far resisted his candidacy – more moderate voters for whom Cruz’s staunch conservative platform proved too strong a repellent.

But in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Cruz was the anti-Trump. Polls going into the primary showed Trump winning only about a third of GOP voters – which is about where he ultimately finished.

Cruz naturally ran up a huge margin among the most conservative voters: He won 65 percent of Republicans who described themselves as “very conservative” – who comprised around three-in-10 voters.

But the consolidation in recent weeks behind Cruz from Republicans of all stripes was a signal to more moderate voters that the Texas senator was the best way to stop Trump. Cruz also got the endorsement of home-state Gov. Scott Walker, who is still popular among Wisconsin Republicans.

The Club for Growth’s political arm typically preaches hard-line fiscal conservatism, but their argument to Republicans in Wisconsin was aimed at a broader audience. “If you don’t want Donald Trump to win,” their TV ad said, “your choice comes down to this: math. Only Ted Cruz can beat Donald Trump.”

The GOP wagon-circling propelled Cruz to win “somewhat conservative” voters – 47 percent to 36 percent – who made up 43 percent of the electorate. And Cruz even took a significant chunk of self-identified moderates: 29 percent, roughly equal to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (28 percent), and not too far behind Trump (40 percent).

49%: Cruz's support among white voters without a college degree

Downscale white voters have been a key part of Trump’s constituency – but Cruz attacked that base head-on.

Cruz beat Trump among non-college whites, 49 percent to 38 percent. John Kasich got just 12 percent of these voters.

Cruz’s share was equal to his performance among white college graduates (49 percent). But fewer of them backed Trump (30 percent), with Kasich slightly higher among graduates (18 percent).

55%: Wisconsin GOP primary voters who Republicans to Nominate the candidate who wins the most wins

If Tuesday’s result in Wisconsin – Cruz winning 36 of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates – increased the chances of the Republican convention commencing without a presumptive nominee who has a majority of delegates, it also showed the dangers of a protracted fight on the convention floor that wrests the nomination away from the vote-leader.

The exit poll specifically asked GOP primary voters what should happen if no candidate wins a majority of delegates: 55 percent said they wanted the candidate who won the most votes during the primaries to be the nominee, while 43 percent said they wanted convention delegates to choose the candidate they think would be the best nominee.

This didn’t break perfectly along the lines of candidate support, though Trump backers were more likely to say they want the candidate who won the most votes to win the nomination. Among the majority that wants to hand the nomination to the candidate who won the most voters, 53 percent supported Trump, but another 36 percent voted for Cruz.

The 43 percent who want to turn the nomination over to the delegates to choose the best candidate were more stridently anti-Trump: Cruz won 64 percent of these voters, compared to 22 percent for Kasich, and 11 percent for Trump.

But the fact that roughly 40 percent of Cruz voters on Tuesday night said the candidate who won the most votes should be the nominee underscores the difficulty of building public support for a convention-floor effort to deny Trump the nomination if he enters with more delegates than his competitors.

73%: Bernie Sanders' support among voters under age 45

Sanders continues to benefit from overwhelming support among younger voters – but it wasn’t only the millennial set that backed Sanders. Sanders defeated Clinton by a nearly three-to-one margin among voters aged 18-44, 73 percent to 26 percent.

That was built on huge margins among the youngest voters – 82 percent among voters under 30, for example – but Sanders also won 69 percent of voters in their 30s, and 56 percent of voters in their 40s.

Hillary Clinton won seniors, 62 percent to 37 percent. But they only made up about 18 percent of the electorate on Tuesday night – a smaller percentage than many of the states that have voted thus far.

64%: Sanders' support among men

The gender gap came through for Sanders: He actually won women by the narrowest of margins, 50 percent to 49 percent. But he ran up the score among men, 64 percent to 35 percent.

It’s been a constant fault line in the campaign: In the 21 states where there were exit or entrance polls conducted, Sanders performed better among men than women.

Another boon for Sanders in the makeup of the Wisconsin electorate: Whites made up 83 percent of Democratic primary voters on Tuesday – more than any other state where there have been entrance or exit polls outside of Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Sanders won white voters, 59 percent to 40 percent. Among the other 17 percent – the majority of which was African-American, Clinton won, 57 percent to 43 percent.