More primary commentary:

A well-known, perhaps notorious, yet, of late at least, generally reliable, anchor on one of the cable stations was tonight providing updates about the returns from one state:

“(A certain senator) trails far behind.”

(Funny thing was, a producer or graphics guy must have thought this was pretty good stuff — within two minutes of the utterance, the quotation was in the crawl.)

Acceptable alternatives: “. . . is far behind.” Or, “. . .trails by a lot.”

I’d be surprised if a candidate could trail far ahead.