What I Got Wrong About Donald Trump
By Nate Cohn

We will never know just how wrong we were about Donald Trump.

Did he have a 1 percent chance to win when he descended the escalator of Trump Tower last June? Twenty percent? Or should we have known all along?

Was Mr. Trump’s victory a black swan, the electoral equivalent of World War I or the Depression: an unlikely event with complex causes, some understood at the time but others overlooked, that came together in unexpected ways to produce a result that no one could have reasonably anticipated?

Or did we simply underestimate Mr. Trump from the start? Did we discount him because we assumed that voters would never nominate a reality-TV star for president, let alone a provocateur with iconoclastic policy views like his? Did we put too much stock in “the party decides,” a theory about the role of party elites in influencing the outcome of the primary process?

The answer, as best I can tell, is all of the above.

I do think we — and specifically, I — underestimated Mr. Trump. There were bad assumptions, misinterpretations of the data, and missed connections all along the way.

But I also think Mr. Trump was a tremendous long shot when he entered the race, and even for months thereafter. Victory wasn’t inevitable — and it took a lot to go his way.

The number 17

If there was anything that should have signaled that “this time would be different” from the very start, it was 17: the number of Republican candidates who entered the race.

The sheer number kept many donors and officials on the sidelines, waiting to see who would emerge as a strong contender. It diffused whatever power the “party elite” had to influence the outcome.

It created a huge collective action problem, in which none of the Republican candidates had a clear incentive to attack Mr. Trump — just their rivals for their niche of the Republican Party. The effect was to legitimize Mr. Trump as an ordinary candidate and to damage the others.

And at just about every stage, there were too many candidates to mount a truly effective anti-Trump effort. By New Hampshire, there were still nine. In South Carolina, there were six. On Super Tuesday, there were five. The race narrowed to three candidates only after two-thirds of all of the delegates to the Republican convention had been awarded. It became a one-on-one race only after Mr. Trump had effectively secured the nomination.

Maybe Mr. Trump really did have a “ceiling” at various stages. There was evidence for it in public polling and in the actual results. We’ll never know.

Another result of the large field was that Mr. Trump’s opposition was always far less organized and underfunded than it would otherwise have been. A candidate like Marco Rubio never had a chance to take advantage of the benefits that usually accompany elite support; he didn’t have time.

Weak and factional opponents

It was clear from the start that Jeb Bush was a weak establishment front-runner. I never thought much of Mr. Rubio’s chances. And Scott Walker, on paper the best of the bunch, quickly raised doubts about his preparedness.

It was also obvious that the “mainstream” candidates could face serious challenges on their flanks: from John Kasich on the left and Ted Cruz on the right. The notion that successful factional candidates could prevent a mainstream candidate from building a broad coalition was also discussed at several times, even in the specific context of Mr. Kasich. It’s basically what happened to Mitt Romney in 2008.

But what wasn’t really discussed was what ultimately happened with Mr. Kasich. He was strong enough to prevent Mr. Rubio from consolidating the center-right of the Republican Party, costing him states like Virginia on Super Tuesday. But he wasn’t strong enough to become a plausible contender in his own right, like Mr. McCain in 2008.

In the end, Mr. Kasich was strong enough only to block a viable mainstream candidate, leaving Mr. Cruz as the sole remaining candidate to defeat Mr. Trump. This, to me, is a “World War I” black swan advantage for Mr. Trump — parts of it were foreseeable, but not the totality of what ultimately happened.

The failure of a broadly appealing candidate to break out left Mr. Trump with one rival: Mr. Cruz.

I think we got a lot wrong about Mr. Trump, but I think we nailed Mr. Cruz. He was strongly opposed by party elites and had so little appeal to voters who didn’t consider themselves “very conservative” that he couldn’t win the nomination. It was a lucky break for Mr. Trump.

Who knows what would have happened if Mr. Rubio hadn’t stumbled in that debate ahead of New Hampshire, and come in second instead of Mr. Kasich. Perhaps Mr. Kasich and Mr. Bush would have left the race, allowing Mr. Rubio to consolidate the center-right of the party — and maybe even win it all? We’ll never know.

Misunderstanding the moderate blue-state Republicans

The first big article I wrote on the Republican race wasn’t about the importance of endorsements or party elites. It was about blue-state Republicans.

In recent cycles, they had backed the establishment against conservative candidates. They were a big reason I believed that an establishment-backed candidate had an advantage against a conservative outsider, despite the turn toward Tea Party conservatives in Congress. Polling data showed they were well educated and moderate — natural allies for the establishment.

To some extent, this view has been vindicated. Mr. Cruz, this year’s conservative outsider, was pummeled in the blue states.

But it was completely wrong in a far more important sense: The Republicans in these states were no allies of the establishment, at least not against Mr. Trump. The blue-state Republicans gave him his first win in New Hampshire, and later, they put him over the top.

This could just be the result of a simple analytical error: conflating opposition to ideologically consistent conservatives with an affinity for establishment-backed candidates.

Or perhaps they would have voted against Mr. Trump if someone other than Mr. Cruz had been the principal opponent to Mr. Trump.

Either way, I thought the party’s establishment could count on these voters, and instead they were among Mr. Trump’s strongest backers in the end.

There’s an important lesson here: These aren’t liberal or moderate Rockefeller Republicans. These are voters who showed a surprising tolerance for Mr. Trump’s extreme comments on immigration, women and other issues.

Overestimating the resolve of the G.O.P. elite

I didn’t consider myself that much of a “party decides” disciple at the beginning of the race, but I was sure of one thing: It would be extraordinarily hard to win if a candidate were deemed unacceptable by the party’s elected officials, donors and operatives.

Such a candidate would lack the resources and staff to run an effective campaign. He or she would face both a chorus of vocal opposition from credible leaders and a well-financed fight to the end.

In the end, Mr. Trump didn’t face many of the challenges that outsiders usually do.

His limited resources were irrelevant — he had unlimited free media. His weakness at delegate selection conventions could have cost him the nomination, but he ultimately won enough contests to ensure victory.

An even bigger surprise was the complete failure of Republican elites to firmly and consistently denounce Mr. Trump. It’s why I thought he was done after his comments dismissing John McCain’s status as a war hero; I thought a “chorus of Republican criticism of his most outrageous comments and the more liberal elements of his record” would follow, but it simply didn’t.

It never did.

The Republican elite treated Mr. Trump as it would have treated a fairly ordinary candidate, even as he said extraordinary things. That’s a big part of why he won.

I did not expect that the party would cede its biggest prize to an outsider who had so many dissenting policy views and who faced so many questions about his fitness for the presidency.

Missing the importance of celebrity coverage

Maybe because I never cared much about pop culture and don’t watch much television, I never would have guessed that Mr. Trump would be able to sustain nonstop dominance of television media for the entire campaign season.

The tremendous news media coverage of Mr. Trump was a big reason he looked like a “boom, bust” candidate, like Herman Cain in 2012. But Mr. Trump’s media coverage never faded.

If you had told me about the persistence of the coverage, I wouldn’t have dismissed his chances. After all, the media was the fuel of his rise from the start.

The rules

Mr. Trump benefited from party rules and a calendar that made it far easier for him to win the nomination.

If the Republicans had delegate rules like those of the Democrats, Mr. Trump would not yet be the nominee. He would be counting on superdelegates.

He was also helped by this year’s calendar. Two-thirds of all of the delegates were awarded in the 45 days after Iowa, making it important for the party to narrow the field quickly in a year when it was not positioned to do so.

Even when it looked as if Mr. Rubio might benefit from unified Republican support, he had only a week for fund-raising and to try to build a strong organization ahead of Super Tuesday. With the calendar from 2012, he would have had five weeks.

But perhaps above all else ...

We were just overconfident. There haven’t been very many presidential elections in the modern era of primaries. There certainly haven’t been enough to rule out the possibility that a true outsider could win the nomination, even if it seemed very incongruent with what had happened in the post-reform era.

That’s a lesson to keep in mind heading into the general election

川普殺出重圍 紐時認了「看走眼」

「我們永遠不會知道自己對川普看得有多走眼。」五日出刊的紐約時報三版，有篇長文標題是What I Got Wrong About Donald Trump（我對川普哪些地方看走眼了），作者是紐時的資料新聞學大將柯恩（Nate Cohn）。

川普成為共和黨總統候選人，讓一路看笑話的專家瞬間自己變笑話，包括柯恩和紐時，率先對讀者給個交代。

去年六月川普從企業總部電梯下樓宣布投入共和黨初選時，他出線的機率是百分之一，或百分之廿？柯恩說，各界究竟是一開始低估了川普的能耐？認為選民絕對不會讓實境節目（誰是接班人）主持人獲得黨提名，更別說他的煽動言論，還是高估了政黨菁英對黨內初選的影響力？

或者川普的出線好比「黑天鵝事件」，宛如第一次世界大戰或大蕭條，看似不可能，一發生就驚天動地；但成因複雜，難窺其全貌？

柯恩說，在絞盡腦汁後，他認為以上答案都成立。各界，尤其是他本人，低估了川普。低估有時候是因為設想不適當、誤判資料。但柯恩坦承川普宣布參選時，甚至參選幾個月後，他始終認為川普出線機率極低。

對手各懷鬼胎 都小看他

總結經驗，柯恩將川普成功歸因於六大要素。首先是一開始投入共和黨初選者高達十七人，各懷鬼胎，都沒有把川普放在眼裡，而是忙著相互攻訐。等到剩下川普、克魯茲與凱西克三人時，共和黨全代會三分之二的黨代表票已經揭曉，川普勢不可擋。

傑布布希崩盤 其他更弱

對手太弱又分崩離析是另一要素。傑布布希是黨內菁英最屬意的人選，其次是盧比歐，柯恩認為都太弱。凱西克攔下盧比歐，自己卻成不了氣候，最後只剩下不為黨內菁英所喜的克魯茲面對川普。

藍州容忍度高 靠攏川普

再則是傳統上比較支持民主黨的「藍州」，被歸類於共和黨溫和派，不會投給克魯茲這樣的保守派。事實也是如此，但不代表他們會投票給主流派。對於川普在性別與移民的極端言論，這群人容忍度極高，已非傳統的共和黨溫和派。

共和黨反川普決心不足

另外三個要素分別是共和黨主流派反川普的決心不足、媒體曝光度以及初選規則的改變。川普批評馬侃不是戰爭英雄時，柯恩認為他已經出局，黨內菁英卻沒有把握機會鳴鼓而攻，整個初選對川普的批評砲火其實都很零星。

媒體曝光度高、初選規則改變

免費的媒體曝光是川普崛起的另一利器，熱度迄今不減。為了讓提名人儘早出線，共和黨壓縮初選時程，在愛荷華州初選後四十五天就選出三分之二的全代會黨代表，讓盧比歐在「超級星期二」秣馬厲兵的時間從五周縮短為一周，對抗川普的組織和金脈無法及時到位。

柯恩的結論是，觀察家錯在太過自信，畢竟總統黨內初選尚未多到足以排除素人出線的機率，即使走勢嚴重違背經驗法則。這是預測總統大選時，必須謹記在心的教訓。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/upshot/what-i-got-wrong-about-donald-trump.html

2016-05-06．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯張佑生