A candidate who consistently fills stadiums with supporters, not school rooms has a 10% chance of winning the nomination.
Lets look back at history and make projections when the paradigm has probably shifted significantly to render those projections useless.
Nate Silver is concentrating on what he calls the “modern era” in reference to how Presidential candidates are chosen. Perhaps we have moved beyond the “modern era” into what may be called a “post-modern era”, in which the actual machinations by formal political parties are being bypassed, making these institutions irrelevant.
The Donald does not appeal to those huge crowds simply because he is running as a “Republican”. The phenomenon goes far beyond that. He has found his parade, gotten around in front of it, and he is calling to a MUCH broader segment of the public than just some 30%-40% of the Republican electorate. It appears that The Donald has achieved something the Republican Establishment has always claimed was their objective, broaden the appeal to the “uncommitted middle”, but in a way the Republican Establishment has never attempted. Their method was to become more like the Democrats, “Democrat-lite”, and the “middle” was never fooled by this ruse. If they were stuck to vote only for that brand of snake oil, then the Democrats were offering the real thing, contrary to the bland and generic version the Republican Establishment was merchandising. But just a whole lot of them were not interested in voting for ANY version of that snake oil, so either they did not vote at all, or did an undervote on the Presidential candidates, choosing, by default, “None of the above”.
The Donald offers several things that apparently have not been on the table for years, namely security on our southern border, the weeding out and identification of the illegal immigrants and their movement back to their country of origin, repeal of the onerous “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010”, a broad rollback of the questionable Executive Actions, the proper operation of foreign trade, not as “free trade” but as “fair trade”, and some much needed update on the manner in which we treat our veterans. Also, restoring the concept of “the United States of America” as a nation with superpower status. That, probably, was the biggest casualty of the past seven years.
The Donald with only “10% chance” of nomination? Within what parallel universe does this Nate Silver now dwell?