[welfare]

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign...d-a-united-gop

While some in the media spent much of Super Tuesday reveling in Joe Biden's awakening from political death, they entirely missed the untold story of Super Tuesday: President Donald Trump's record-breaking vote counts and turnout.

Despite being an uncontested incumbent, President Trump managed to break several turnout and vote-count records in blue states and key swing states.

In Vermont and Minnesota, Trump's vote totals beat every past incumbent's total in the last four decades. In Maine, the president's vote total bested every primary candidate's total since before President Ronald Reagan. In Massachusetts, the story was similar, with Trump aggregating a higher vote total than past incumbent Republicans since before Reagan.

And in deeply blue California, with 82 percent of precincts reporting, President Trump collected nearly 1.4 million votes.



Turnout numbers similarly showcased the enthusiasm of Republican voters. In Colorado, for example, Republican turnout for Trump on Tuesday was greater than the past three Republican primaries combined.

The evident enthusiasm for Trump was made clear in red states, in swing states, even in blue states on Tuesday evening, indicating that the Republican Party is more unified than ever before and is growing in numbers.

Indeed, Tuesday night's results are reflective of the data the Trump campaign collects in the lead-up to rallies. The campaign routinely finds that about a quarter of those who register to attend Trump rallies are Democrats and around 10 percent to 15 percent did not vote in 2016.



For example, in Nevada - the most recent blue state where the Trump campaign held a rally - 27 percent of rally registrants were black or Latino and 32 percent of registrants overall did not vote in 2016.

Tuesday night's results, combined with rally data, indicate that the Trump coalition is growing larger and is more energetic than ever before.