Whom do Kasich voters like the least?

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both made it clear they think John Kasich is costing them Republican votes, and both seem to think they’d inherit Kasich’s support if the Ohio governor were gone from the GOP race.

It’s hard to see how both could be right.

In some ways, the Kasich vote here looks more like the Trump vote than the Cruz vote. For example, both Kasich and Trump do better with moderates than conservatives (Kasich especially). By contrast, Cruz does a lot better with the most conservative voters. In that sense, you can imagine Trump and Kasich competing for some of the same people.

But that doesn’t tell you how Kasich voters actually feel about the other two Republican candidates in the race.

At our request, pollster Charles Franklin of the Marquette Law School looked at the attitudes of Kasich voters toward both Trump and Cruz in his last Wisconsin survey, taken March 24-28.

He found that Kasich voters were clearly more negative toward Trump than Cruz.

For example, 45% of Kasich primary voters in Wisconsin had a negative view of both Cruz and Trump; 25% had a negative view of Trump but a positive view of Cruz; and 4% had a negative view of Cruz but a positive view of Trump.

Franklin also looked at the “comfort” levels of Kasich voters toward a Cruz or Trump presidency.

The pattern was similar: 45% of Kasich voters are more comfortable (or less uncomfortable) with Cruz than Trump, only 4% are more comfortable with Trump than Cruz.

Those numbers don’t seem to support Trump’s claim Sunday about Kasich that “he’s taking my votes.” And they help explain why Cruz is airing ads against Kasich in Wisconsin to try to shrink his support. (Kasich is running third in the Wisconsin polling.)

At least in Wisconsin, the data seem pretty clear, says Franklin.

“I would say that based on either favorability or comfort with the person as president, it’s clear that substantially more Kasich voters would lean to Cruz rather than to Trump,” he said.