This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," March 10, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We started off with 17. We're down to four. Of the four, they're pretty much all gone. There's only one person who did well tonight, Donald Trump. I will tell you that.
SEN. TED CRUZ, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At this point I've got 361 delegates. Donald has about 100 more. And nobody else is close in the delegate count.
GOV. JOHN KASICH, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: With those states that have not yet selected a delegate, basically the three, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and I are dead even.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you come out and vote, we are going to win Florida. We are going to take 99 delegates, and I'm going to be the nominee of the Republican Party.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Sights and sounds from the trail today as some new FOX polls out, first in Florida. Donald Trump with a big lead now in Florida, 43 percent over Rubio at 20 percent. There you see Kasich at 16. Interesting questioning here, do you feel betrayed by politicians from your own political party? Yes, 63 percent, no, 32 percent.
Now to Ohio. When you look at this, a slight lead for John Kasich, but Donald Trump within striking distance there with the plus or minus 3.5. You see there Cruz, 19. And there you see Governor Kasich's job performance in Ohio in this latest poll. This as the delegate count is counting up. After last night and Michigan, Donald Trump with 458, Cruz 359, Rubio 151, and John Kasich 54.
Let's bring in our panel, syndicated columnist George Will, Mara Liasson, National Political Correspondent of National Public Radio, and Jason Riley, columnist with the "Wall Street Journal." OK, Mara, what about this? You look at these numbers, and, boy, it doesn't seem like the stop Trump movement is stopping much.
MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I don't think it's stopping much at all. There was a glimmer of hope over the weekend when Cruz did better than expected and we saw late deciders break by even bigger margins against Trump than they had in the earlier contests. But that didn't happen last night. He looks very well set up for Florida. John Kasich is an extremely popular governor of Ohio. He won 84 of 88 counties, and you see that reflected in that poll that you just put up. But I think it is going to be very, very hard. When you see John Kasich talking about the states who still haven't voted, we're up in there. He hasn't won anything yet. Marco Rubio has won in two places.
BAIER: He is pointing to that NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll that polled and separated the states that hadn't voted and he's essentially tied.
LIASSON: But the thing about proportional allocation of delegates, it is hard to catch up with someone if they're ahead because they keep on getting farther and farther ahead. But Ted Cruz has legitimate bragging rights. He is 99 delegates behind. It's a two-man race.
BAIER: Jason?
JASON RILEY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Trump had a good night. It is still his nomination to lose. I think Ted Cruz didn't have as good a night as he needed to have. And that's a problem for Ted Cruz. The deep south was supposed to be his strength, but yet he's regularly been whipped down there by be Donald Trump. And the math isn't going to get easier for Ted Cruz as you leave that region of the country.
But Trump still does have a big problem here, which is that half the Republican Party doesn't like him. And that is what we saw again last night. And that number has been growing in recent weeks. And that is going to be a problem. He has got a solid third of the party behind him, but two-thirds regularly vote against him. And he loses badly to Hillary Clinton. He also loses in one-on-one contests with Rubio and Cruz. So Trump has got some work to do.
BAIER: And by the way, Rubio tells Megyn Kelly in this town hall tonight that he has not had any conversations with anyone, including Ted Cruz, about dropping out. He says this talk about a Cruz-Rubio ticket and all of this formulation that's out there and about he says is 100 percent false. George?
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: His problem is illustrated by two states, Mississippi and Michigan, very different, similar, very dismal results for him. He didn't even get in double digits in Michigan.
There is some people, Howard Baker, the senator, was like this. People said of Howard, great guy, funny, intelligent, bright, public-spirited, glad he's in public life -- not president they said when he tried in 1980.
John Kasich's problem is this. In order to win before Cleveland to get to 1,237, he has to win 83 percent of the remaining delegates. Not going to happen.
My third takeaway is this. The theory of the race that Ted Cruz formulated a year ago was absolutely right, that the key to winning this nomination was down scale, disaffected voters, non-college educated. Absence the presence of Trump, which he did not factor in to his theory, I think it is reasonable to say if Trump had never entered, Cruz would seal up the nomination this Tuesday.
LIASSON: I agree with that.
BAIER: Here's another stat, and it's important to look at Michigan exit polls as we get ready for Ohio, neighboring state, similar demographics as far as how it breaks out. Michigan in this question on the GOP side, trade takes away U.S. jobs. Trump, 45 percent. Now let's turn to the Democratic side. Trade takes away U.S. jobs. And you see Bernie Sanders, 56 percent. They are striking the same chord, Mara.
LIASSON: Yes. And Sanders says, look, I'm winning in the states that are actually battleground states in the fall. She's winning in all these red states that don't really matter in the general election. So that was a huge, huge thing that happened last night. That was not expected. It wasn't even expected by Bernie Sanders. He looked as stunned as everybody else did. But he won in a state where the Democratic primary electorate resembles the national electorate much more than in South Carolina or Mississippi. African-Americans have a big chunk of the Michigan primary electorate, but not a big one. And the question is, if she can get beat by a Democratic populist in Michigan in March, why can't she get beat by a Republican populist in Michigan in November?
BAIER: Not just a Democratic populist but a democratic socialist.
(LAUGHTER)
BAIER: That was a big win in Michigan. I think it might have been the town hall, but who knows?
(LAUGHTER)
BAIER: That might have been it. The thing about Bernie Sanders, though, is when you look at the delegate math, it is just not there.
RILEY: Right. The win was impressive but in no way a game changer. But I do think the significance of that victory is what Mara said. The trade issue is probably what did it for him. And there is not a lot of daylight between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on free trade.
BAIER: George?
WILL: Hillary Clinton's best surrogate, the Clinton people actually like, is her husband, and she couldn't use him very much in Michigan because his finest achievement in some of our view was NAFTA which he passed over the strenuous objections of his own party with Republican majorities. But that is not popular in Michigan. Who was supposed to be a man of the glittering, unfolding socialist future ran a retrospective campaign, saying if only Michigan were the way it were in the 1950s, we're going to bring back automobile jobs, which is of course nonsense.
LIASSON: Another thing he has in common with Trump, looking backwards.
RILEY: And it's not just Michigan. We could be talking about Ohio, Pennsylvania. Sanders exposed some real vulnerabilities in Clinton's general election --
BAIER: And the Clinton attack on the auto bailout never stuck. It just didn't stick. Because it was about Senate votes and it was convoluted.
LIASSON: It was too political. And Sanders is authentic, and everybody knows that he is against these trade deals and he is for the unions.
BAIER: I want to turn back to the Republicans really quickly. Ted Cruz got an endorsement today, Carly Fiorina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLY FIORINA, FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now, you know, there are people in our party that are actually kind of horrified by Donald Trump. I'm one of them. But here's the thing. We're not going to beat Donald Trump by have leaders in our party tsk-tsk over our voters. We're going to have beat Donald Trump at the ballot box. And the only guy who can beat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: Do you think, George, that there is a coalescing that's happening just by looking at the numbers, that Ted Cruz is the guy that is going to end up being the one man standing?
WILL: I think so. I think so. But coalescing is not a rapid process, in turns out, and time is running out. She gave the best speech I have heard in the entire political season.
LIASSON: I was going to say, she found her calling. She is one heck of a surrogate. This is a great role for her.
RILEY: And she wasn't faking it. I think she really does believe that Ted Cruz is the person who can further what she was running to do. Her point about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump being two sides of the same coin, Trump is not going to change the system. He is the system. He sells influence, he buys it. It was very, very powerful stuff.
BAIER: OK.
WILL: One on one, if Cruz gets Trump one-on-one, he still might not get enough delegates to be a majority, but he can win almost all the remaining primaries which will have an effect on the delegates in July.
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