That IS the postion advanced by the folks over at Five Thirty Eight by going back and working the numbers from the past…..
That track record suggests Trump has a good chance of winning the nomination. We can use a logistic regression model to estimate a presidential candidate’s chances of winning their party’s nod given their off-year August polling numbers. Based on that model, a generic presidential candidate polling at Trump’s level today would have about a 78 percent chance of winning their party’s nomination. Those are good odds, but not a sure thing. (For reference, an 80 percent chance is just a little better than Clinton had in the final weeks of the 2016 general election.)
But there’s still an opening for someone else
Of course, in part due to small sample size, primaries are notoriously hard to predict. The method I used to run the model3 itself produces a wide range of possible outcomes — the probability of Trump winning could reasonably range4 from 54 percent to 93 percent — just based on the uncertainty in past polling! Moreover, forecasting the primary is likely to be especially difficult this year, since the events of this nomination are far removed from the events of history, meaning our models are less reliable.5 For instance, Trump is effectively running in the primary as an incumbent president, a rare event in general, but especially considering the circumstances under which he left office. Not to mention, no other leading presidential candidate has been under four criminal indictments while running for office. Betting markets — which have the advantage of looking at data other than polling — put Trump’s chances closer to 66 percent….
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There is a big difference, however, between a likely event and a sure thing. Trump’s odds of winning today are close to what we would call “likely” or “probable” rather than “certain” or “highly likely.” Believe it or not, there’s still a decent shot one of his rivals could win.
Based on where they’re polling today, my crude model says DeSantis and Ramaswamy have a 13 percent6 and 8 percent7 chance, respectively, of winning the nomination as of today. The other of Trump’s competitors currently polling above 1 percent in our national average — former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Scott— have around a 4-5 percent chance each.
If one of Trump’s competitors takes the lead, it’s likely they’ll do so by scoring some key upsets in the early-voting states. They may look at Trump’s numbers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina somewhat optimistically; Trump is somewhat weaker in those states than he is nationally. DeSantis is a natural candidate for an upset; last week, a FiveThirtyEight/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Republicans said they are still considering voting for him. Moreover, among Republicans, the Florida governor is viewed just about as favorably as Trump, if you adjust for the share of Republicans who don’t have an opinion of him.8 The cases for Ramswamy and Scott also revolve around those ratings; both men have strong net favorability ratings despite a majority of Republicans having yet to form an opinion of them. Still, this goodwill only provides the foundation for a bump in the polls, not the catalyst for one.
Make no mistake: Trump will be hard for his Republican opponents to beat. He has a broad base of support and a smaller but intensely devoted group of followers who think he can do no wrong.
But he is not inevitable…
Note….
The above piece does NOT address the 800 pound problem hanging over Donald Trump’s abortive effort to keep his first and only government job….Even if it deals with only with Republican primary voters…