AS SURELY as the sun rises in the east,a major American political party could never nominate Donald Trump for president. Such was the certainty of “data” and “explanatory” journalists at sites like Vox (“Here’s Why [Trump] Won’t Win”), FiveThirtyEight (“Dear Media, or Stop Freaking Out About Donald Trump’s Polls”),the New York Times’s “Upshot” (“Donald Trump…will most likely follow the classic pattern of a party-backed decline”), and even The Economist (“[Mr Trump’s] failure to impress GOP elders…all but precludes [him] from fitting the party’s flag-bearer”). Such prognosticators will have a tough time explaining Mr Trump's formidable delegate lead. He is now given about a two-in-three chance by betting markets of giving an acceptance speech at the Republican conference in Cleveland in the summer. To anyone who glanced at a poll final summer, or Mr Trump’s romp towards the nomination looks unsurprising: he has consistently led polls since final July. Why were these supposedly forward-thinking,empirically-driven media outlets so dismissive of Mr Trump’s chances, and what did they secure...
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Source: economist.com