Could Trump have won 1-on-1 against any candidate?

It's no secret that the Republican party had a crowded field. Donald Trump exploited this fact to win the Republican nomination. If there would have been a two-person race from the beginning, I'm not sure he could have defeated any of the other candidates he faced.


Trump embraced a highly vocal and harsh approach to campaigning. He was the most visible of the candidates. His strong words made it difficult for anyone to develop a soft opinion of him. Most people either love him or hate him. The people who love him voted for him in the primaries. Those who hate him split their votes among the other candidates. When candidates started dropping out of the race, he didn't get as much of a boost as the other remaining candidates did.

There are factors in the crowded field other than splitting votes. The media doesn't like to give everyone running equal time. The crude candidate who was winning in the polls was always an obvious choice for coverage. Who do they cover beyond that? It wasn't an easy choice, and the media didn't always make the effort to show the other candidates. Coverage was far more disproportionate than if they would have had a definitive rival.

There are also key differences between starting with two candidates and cutting back to two from a crowded field. Trump had a ton of momentum in his campaign prior to the establishment of Ted Cruz as the only candidate with a reasonable shot at stopping him. Additionally, Cruz couldn't take the resources from other candidates that benefited from the anti-Trump crowd.

If any of the candidates would have challenged Trump in a one-on-one matchup, things would have been much different. The media would be more focused on two options rather than just the frontrunner. They would be able to establish a better sense of who the two candidates were. Campaign resources would be better distributed. It could very well have come down to voter preference rather than decisions based purely on opinions related to just Trump.

Donald Trump is a hated candidate. I don't think that any of the other candidates would have generated more hate. If the Republicans could have found a single candidate to challenge Trump from the beginning, the anti-Trump sentiments likely would have put that candidate on top. I honestly believe that all of the other Republican candidates could have defeated Trump in such a scenario.