Ted Cruz: Donald Trump Can’t Beat Hillary Clinton in November, I Can

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 22, 2016   |   1:06PM   |   Washington, DC

Now that the South Carolina primary election has whittled down the Republican field to essentially a three-man race featuring Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, pro-life voters are sizing up the candidates even more closely. One aspect they’re considering is which candidate has the best shot at defeating either of the pro-abortion Democrats — Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

In a new interview, Ted Cruz says he can beat Hillary Clinton and that Donald Trump can’t do that. According to polling data, he’s right to an extent. But polling shows another candidate, pro-life Senator Marco Rubio, actually has the best shot at defeating Clinton in the general election.

First, here’s what Cruz said (video shown below):

DICKERSON: “You made the case that you’re the only candidate who can unite the diverse parts of the conservative coalition but when you look inside the exit polls, you do very well with those who identify as strongly conservative but you have trouble in the other areas. How are you going to solve that problem?”

CRUZ: “One of the very encouraging things we saw in the exit polls we young people. We were in first place among young people in South Carolina. It’s interesting because we also won young people in Iowa and we took second among young people in New Hampshire. If you can stitch together that kind of coalition with young people bringing together conservatives and evangelicals and I’ll tell you in Iowa we also won Reagan Democrats, working class voters.

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As you know, John, historically in order to have chance to win the nomination you have to win one of the first three states. There are only two people that have done that. Donald Trump and me. And one of the things we’re seeing is across the country, there are a lot of Republicans who think Donald Trump is not the right guy to go head to head with Hillary Clinton, that we probably lose that match up. About 70% of Republicans believe that.

We’re seeing people come together behind our campaign because we’re the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump and that can beat Donald Trump. You can’t beat Donald Trump from the left. You can’t beat Donald with a candidate who is supported amnesty. Donald wins that head to head. Head to head with me question beat Donald Trump by 16 points and so what we’re seeing, John, is incredible. People all over the country are going to tedcruz.org, over 980,000 contribution we want a strong conservative. We want someone who can beat Hillary and I beat Hillary and Donald sadly the polling shows doesn’t.”

Recent polling data does show Cruz with a 1-3 percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton in head to head matchups whereas Trump is currently losing to Clinton in mano-a-mano matchups in three of the four most recent polls by an average of about 3 percent.

But Cruz is not the candidate who fares best against Hillary. The polling shows Marco Rubio with almost a 5 percent lead over the abortion advocate in the four most recent polls.

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