While Republican Party insiders angle for a last-minute alternative to Donald Trump, GOP voters are warning against convention deals that seem to go against the will of the rank and file.
A majority of Republican voters want Trump to get their presidential nomination if he’s ahead but short of a majority heading into their convention, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. And a big majority want any contested convention to be off limits to politicians who didn’t first run in the primaries - such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin or 2012 nominee Mitt Romney.
The findings puncture some Republican hopes that a more establishment-friendly candidate such as Ryan or Romney could become the party nominee at a contested 2016 Republican National Convention if front-runner Trump doesn’t clinch the nomination before then.
Fifty-two percent of Republicans said the party should nominate Trump if he has more delegates than any rival heading into the convention, with only 40 percent saying the party should look elsewhere.
“There is clearly a sentiment on the part of a majority and even more among key groups that if he has the most going in but failed to secure it, he should still get the prize at the end,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York.
Trump himself has warned that a contested convention could result in disaster, unless he got the nomination: “I think you’d have riots,” he told CNN last month, noting that he’d picked up support from millions of voters. “If you disenfranchise those people, and you say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short’ ... I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”
If Trump does not have the votes clinched from the primaries to win the nomination on a first convention ballot, that would mean a contested convention in which many delegates would be up for grabs on subsequent ballots.
And GOP voters are clear, by 65-29, that they want only candidates who already have run in the primaries to be eligible.
“There’s very much a notion that if you weren’t in, you shouldn’t win,” said Miringoff. “If they go outside to any of those folks, it would be done at great jeopardy and at great risk. The electorate would not be happy.”
The survey findings underscore a belief that after months of campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire and participating in debates “then all of a sudden the convention jolts in a different way, would not present a very pretty picture,” Miringoff said.
Party rules adopted in 2012 already limit the convention’s eligible field of candidates. A candidate has to win a majority of delegates in at least eight states to be considered for the nomination, according to those rules. The rules could be challenged before the convention, however.