Trump's Nebraska Win Was Actually Kinda Sad

It is perhaps no surprise that Donald Trump won both the West Virginia and Nebraska primaries on Tuesday. Not only has the Republican frontrunner enjoyed an uninterrupted sweep of wins as the primary season enters the final stretch, but he's the only candidate on the ballot that is still actively running in the race. He's the presumptive Republican nominee, and will almost certainly secure enough delegates for an automatic nomination at the convention in July. Not everyone in the Republican Party is so thrilled about that; though he can add the state to his victory pile, Trump's Nebraska win was rather unimpressive.

Trump barely got more than 60 percent of the vote during Tuesday's Republican primary in the state. For being the only active candidate, that's pretty underwhelming. Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich, who both suspended their campaigns following the May 3 Indiana primary, were still on the ballot. They didn't perform well, of course — Cruz got about 18 percent of votes in Nebraska and Kasich about 11 percent, according to The Guardian — but the fact that almost 40 percent of people who voted in the primary didn't choose the only candidate still running suggests that the "Stop Trump" movement still has some life to it.

Nebraska is generally hostile territory for Trump. One of his most outspoken critics is Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse; Sasse is not only refusing to back Trump, but, according to the Los Angeles Times, pushing for a third-party option to run against Trump. The former Douglas County Republican Party chairman Bryan Baumgart actually decided to leave the party "to send a message that the Republicans of Douglas County and Nebraska aren't all united in that endorsement of Donald Trump," KETV reported. And Cruz loyalists comprised many of the delegates chosen at local conventions in the state in April.

It's impossible to know how the primary would have turned out had Cruz remained in the race. There haven't been any polls coming out of Nebraska to indicate where the general public's loyalties lie. But the fact that only about 61 percent of the state's Republican primary voters chose Trump even with nobody else running indicates that it probably would have been a good night for Cruz, or at least better than he'd seen toward the end of his campaign.

For all The Donald's talk about winning big and making things great (again), his Nebraska victory was neither big nor great.