The Big Winner: Reagan Again

He tops everyone in Wisconsin

The big surprise, for a change, was that there was no big surprise. Last week's primaries in Wisconsin, Kansas and Louisiana wound up the first phase of the 1980 campaign and began a two-week lull during which some candidates actually snatched a few days' rest before plunging on to the next contest in Pennsylvania on April 22. The result: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan solidified the huge leads they have been building throughout a campaign season marked by enough twists and abrupt reversals to make "volatility" the political buzz word of 1980.

Both leaders swept to victory by sizable margins. In the process, they padded their already fat leads in numbers of delegates and disheartened their rivals. Among the Democrats, California Governor Jerry Brown dropped out of the race entirely after winning a paltry 12% of the votes in Wisconsin, the chief battleground. On the Republican side, maverick John Anderson won only 28% of the Wisconsin vote, a third-place showing so poor that it wrecked whatever hope he had left of winning the G.O.P. nomination. It also cast doubt on his ability to lead a vigorous third-party challenge, though he is leaning more than ever in that direction.

Altogether, the race once more looked about the way it had after Carter's and Reagan's overwhelming victories in the mid-March Illinois primary convinced many politicians that they were almost sure to win their respective parties' nominations. But there was one significant difference: the new results indicated that Carter might have a far more difficult time beating Reagan in the November election than had been supposed early in the campaign.

Wisconsin's peculiar election laws make its primaries a unique test of a candidate's strength not only in his own party but against potential opponents on the other side of the fence. Voting is totally open to anyone who can prove residency in the state for at least ten days prior to the primary. Voting machines list all the candidates in both parties, the order determined by lot; where paper ballots are used, each voter is given both a Democratic and a Republican ballot and told to mark whichever one he wishes. Wisconsin has a history of sending signals to candidates: to John Kennedy that he was on the way to nomination in 1960; to Lyndon Johnson that he was in grave trouble in 1968. This year the signal was that voters are turning away from the Democrats. Last week, for the first time in 20 years, the Republican vote topped the Democratic vote, and heavily, 895,000 to 621,000. Moreover, enough independents and Democrats voted for Reagan to make him the top vote getter in the fragmented field; he outpolled Carter by a narrow 360,000 to 348,000.

It could have been worse for the President. The White House, stung by Ted Kennedy's surprise victories in New York and Connecticut, was clearly worried as polls showed Carter slipping badly from his top-heavy lead of a few weeks earlier. They also showed a huge number of voters undecided. In addition to the frustration over the hostages in Iran, economic troubles loomed large. Jobless contruction contractors turned up at a Rosalynn Carter motorcade through Green Bay to wave signs that read WILL I EVER AFFORD A HOME? and SEND JIMMY BACK TO THE NUT FARM.

Kennedy, who had originally not planned to campaign in Wisconsin at all, decided to give it a last-minute try and flew in two days before the polls opened. Once on the scene, he put on a whirlwind dawn-to-dusk drive. Joking, laughing and punching at the air like a boxer, he drew excited crowds. But these efforts could not overcome Kennedy's difficulties or a President's ability to make optimistic news. Carter's early-morning TV statement hailing a "positive step" in Iran just as the polls opened appeared to help stem the Kennedy tide. Surveys indicated that Democratic voters who made up their minds in the last two days mostly chose Carter. In addition, as in so many other states outside New York and Connecticut, voters leaving the polling booths expressed serious doubts about Kennedy's character and truthfulness. Kennedy lost to Carter 56% to 30% in Wisconsin and 57% to 32% in Kansas, and now has pinned what hope he has left on an all-out campaign in Pennsylvania.

Many Wisconsin independents and Democrats, dissatisfied with both Carter and Kennedy, turned to the Republicans; they made up more than half of the huge G.O.P. primary vote. Reagan, as he had in Illinois, appealed to them with unexpected effectiveness. Like Kennedy, he campaigned for only two days in Wisconsin, but his advancemen turned out big crowds. He became the first G.O.P. presidential candidate in memory to appear at Serb Hall in Milwaukee, a hallowed rallying place for ethnic Democrats, and wowed a beer-drinking, blue-collar crowd with simplistic conservative appeals. He pledged to "whack away at the fat, extravagant Government in Washington." Listeners cried, "Give 'em hell, Ronnie!"

Reagan won 40% of the Wisconsin Republican vote, an impressive share considering the size of the turnout, the state's liberal traditions and his limited campaign time. George Bush, his leading foe, invested a full week's campaigning but won only 31% and no delegates; in conservative Kansas, Reagan as expected walloped Bush 63% to 13% (Anderson got 18% there).

The delegate count is even more discouraging to the also-rans than the outcome of the popular vote. After the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries, Carter had 918 delegates, well over half the 1,666 needed to nominate, vs. Kennedy's 452; Reagan had 345 to Bush's 72 and Anderson's 57 (988 are needed to win). Leads of that size can be overcome only by landslide victories in almost all the primaries from now on. If any of Carter's or Reagan's rivals are capable of such triumphs, they did not show it last week.

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