Best remaining chance to stop Trump - consolidate the Kasich/Rubio "establishment" lane

Last night was a rough one for the anti-Trump crowd (including myself), but it's not over yet. Well, it is over for John Kasich or Marco Rubio, but the other one still has a role to play.

Below are the results from the past 7 days. As I have done previously, I consider the outperform numbers as especially important.

These results deliver a few stark messages:

• Trump is dominating the race but has never gotten 50% of the vote. He clearly has a high "floor" of about 25% -- supporters who will support him no matter what -- but his failure to improve his performance in recent weeks shows that he also has a ceiling somewhere just shy of 50%. He is slightly underperforming his polls, which indicates that he remains subject to damage as his abominable personal and professional practices are exposed.
• Cruz is dramatically outperforming his polling and is the only competitor to Trump on a national basis, but he cannot compete with Trump in many big states -- at least not in a heavily divided field.
• Rubio is collapsing everywhere, dramatically underperforming his polling in several states and finishing fourth behind Kasich in Maine, Michigan, and Mississippi.
• Kasich is performing most poorly among the candidates, but he has experienced a small surge in the past week. 

My immediate reaction to this is to say that Kasich and Rubio need to get out (two weeks ago!) to let Cruz take on Trump one-on-one. But then it strikes me that many of the largest remaining states might be tough for Cruz to win one-on-one with Trump, and that an establishment-lane candidate might actually have a shot there (as was the case in Virginia, where the support for Kasich+Rubio far exceeded Trump's support).

Polls show that Kasich is within 5 points of Trump in the crucial Ohio race, while Rubio is down 15 in Florida. These two states award delegates on a winner-take-all basis, so there is no benefit in a close loss. Every poll of Ohio shows that Kasich beats Trump IF Rubio's support goes to Kasich. But the converse is not true in Florida. If you're supporting Rubio, you must really think he can overcome that 15-point deficit in Florida. I do not see a Rubio recovery here. And if Rubio loses his home state, can you imagine any reason he would have meaningful success in the states that follow? On top of all this, it's clear that Kasich and Rubio are competing in the establishment lane everywhere they go, and that Kasich has had the better of that matchup lately.

This is not at all the race we wanted to have, and many candidates should've dropped out sooner (imagine Jeb Bush dropping out after New Hampshire or Ben Carson dropping out after South Carolina). But it is the race we have.

If Rubio were to drop out now, his support would split between Cruz and Kasich. Then, with only Cruz and Kasich to split the anti-Trump vote, they could prevent Trump from getting to 1237 delegates. Looking forward to a contested convention, Kasich would be a distant third-place, so he almost certainly could not be the nominee. It'd probably need to be Cruz, who could channel at least some of the Trump supporters' dissatisfaction with government. At this point, that outcome may be the best we can hope for.

#NeverTrump