Before Donald Trump, has there ever been a presidential candidate in such a commanding position in primary polls whose chances of winning his party's nomination were so widely dismissed? Trump's candidacy has been unique in many ways, and one of the most significant is the incredulity with which political analysts have approached it.
Political prediction always arises from a mix of concrete evidence and gut feeling — after all, the inherent unpredictability of politics is a big part of what makes it interesting. But when it comes to Trump, no matter what the evidence says, those analysts' guts have grumbled "This can't be happening." And if that's what your gut is telling you, the most logical way to approach Trump's continuing lead is to say that he's in front now, but he has a "ceiling," a level of support that he can't possibly exceed.
That's what people have been saying all along. Back in July, when Trump criticized John McCain for getting captured in Vietnam, a writer in US News suggested that Trump "may be bumping up on his ceiling of support." At the time he stood at 24 percent in national polls (for our purposes, I'm going to refer to the Huffpost Pollster poll average). A few days before, The New York Times' data-driven Upshot blog predicted that the McCain controversy "will probably mark the moment when Trump's candidacy went from boom to bust." The pattern continued — every downward blip in the polls was greeted with the conclusion that now this weirdness was finally going to end. "Trump momentum shows signs of stalling," said Politico in September. Trump "is very likely to find his upside limited as other candidates start to drop out," wrote an analyst in the National Review. "Is Donald Trump losing steam in early states?" asked CBS in October. The only thing that has changed is where Trump's ceiling is supposed to be: At first it was 30 percent, then maybe 35, and now that he's polling in the high-30s, it's supposed to be 40 percent or so.
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To be clear, all along there have been good reasons to be skeptical of Trump's staying power. Those who focus on Trump's "ceiling" often point to his high unfavorable ratings among Republican voters. Even as he has led the field by a comfortable margin, there have always been many Republicans who dislike him. That seems like good evidence for the ceiling. For instance, in a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, though Trump led the race with 33 percent support and Ted Cruz was in second with 20 percent, more Republicans said they could see themselves supporting Cruz — 71 percent — than said the same about Trump, at 65 percent.
But that poll also shows something absolutely critical to understand: These opinions change. Disliking Trump (or Cruz, or anyone else) today is no guarantee that you'll feel the same way tomorrow. Looking back through that NBC/WSJ data, it's clear that in June, 22 percent of Republicans said they could not see themselves supporting Jeb Bush. The figure is now 55 percent. In the June poll, 66 percent said they couldn't see themselves supporting Trump. Now that number is down to 34 percent.
For political junkies, results like these are puzzling. They've seen plenty of Trump (and the other candidates), and they know what they think of them. While there may be some new development or revelation that alters opinions a bit, it's really unlikely that a focused political observer will go all the way from "I'll never vote for that guy!" to "He's my guy!", or vice-versa. But voters do just that, all the time. They jump on bandwagons, they abandon sinking candidates, and they're affected by what happens in the campaign.
It's also important to keep in mind that in the early stages of the voting — including contests at which a large portion of the delegates are selected — a politician can be disliked by most of the party's voters and nevertheless keep winning. In 2012, Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus with 25 percent of the vote, meaning that three of every four Republicans chose someone else. A week later, Mitt Romney won New Hampshire with an emphatic 39 percent, easily outdistancing his rivals — but that meant six out of 10 voters rejected him. Then Newt Gingrich won South Carolina with 40 percent and Romney won Florida with 46 percent. Finally, in the Nevada caucus, Romney cracked 50 percent. He sealed the nomination on Super Tuesday, winning six of the ten states voting that day, and passing 50 percent in three of them.
Those results are a reminder that a candidate can all but secure the nomination even while most people are voting against him. The ability to win with a plurality but not a majority declines over time as candidates drop out and the choices get narrowed, but by the time it's down to two or three, it may not matter anymore.
None of this means that any particular outcome is guaranteed. But it's time to discard the idea that Trump can't be the nominee because there's some portion of the Republican electorate that will never, ever support him. That may even be true of the "establishment" figures who have been racking their brains trying to figure out how to stop him. If the race really does come down to a choice between Trump and Ted Cruz, more than a few will conclude that for all his weaknesses, Trump has a better chance of winning the general election than an ideological warrior who would probably do as well as Barry Goldwater did in 1964; at least Trump might stand a chance of pulling over some Democrats. Then you'll hear them making that case, and lots of Republicans could conclude that Trump's nomination is their best option.
Is that what's going to happen? I have no idea. This election has been brutal on the prediction business. Trump may lose. But given everything that's happened, we can't say now that there's a limit on his support within the GOP. Who knows how high it'll go.
