I think a truly brokered convention where the nominee is in complete doubt and actually decided in the smoke filled rooms -- that remains a longshot as you say.

But I think this formulation is probably correct:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/r...-of-the-party/

I frankly think 10% for an actual brokered convention is on the high side but I think 25%+ for an 'ugly' scenario like the three laid out above is a good price.

As for why, I've already stated my reasons:

1. decent chance GOP nominee can become President; important motivating factor to continue pursuit
2. circumstances led to being no clear front-runner or heir apparent in the GOP, leading to a large field -- which has a lot of diluted and splintered support among many candidates
3. related, then, affiliated candidate Super PACs have plausible arguments which can be used to raise unlimited monies from a few people. This can keep candidates afloat for a very long time.
4. just having delegates, even without a real chance to win, can give these candidates leverage in the future

What you have then is an environment where dropping out and rallying around one candidate looks increasingly unlikely, and reasonable-ish arguments and a source of funding exist to justify sticking around. The result may not be a truly brokered convention but scenarios where doubt about who will win lingers long into the voting process.

Obviously if Trump crushes NH, Iowa, SC, etc. things will look different. Similarly, if Trump flames out and Bush wins NH and then Cruz or some clown wins Iowa, it's probably more like 2008 and 2012 where there's a slow death march for everyone until Bush wraps it up in Florida ala McCain and Romney.

But I think a more likely scenario is Trump keeps his whatever, 25-35% of the party up until the early nominating states, Walker and Cruz and Trump do well in Iowa, Bush and Kasich and Rubio do well in NH, Huckabee has a 'surprise comeback' in South Carolina, and Trump does well there too, Bush and Rubio both perform reasonably well in Florida, etc. etc. I'm spitballing some random bull**** results here, but you catch my drift. Then you get to March/April/May without a clear nominee and lots of delegates being spread 2 or more candidates. I think THAT scenario where 3-6 candidates all remain plausible and well-funded deep into the process is looking more likely.

I'd even argue there are scenarios where this isn't 'ugly' but a net benefit. Certainly the long battle between Obama versus Clinton in 2008 helped Obama in a lot more ways than it hurt him. For instance, the money that got dumped into finding potential Obama voters in the competitive North Carolina primary made victory in the general election in North Carolina cheaper/easier. If the GOP had a good product to sell, and wasn't trying to outdo each other in super racist nativism and anti-abortion sentiment, they could capitalize on all the attention.

Good luck getting pd if that's sportsbook.com

Shocked that liberals think they have intelligence cornered. Next I am going to work on the angry republican stereotype. Hint: It's the other way.

I don't really know the nuts and bolts of how conventions work - for these scenarios:

How would you not know who the nominee is after the primaries and what would then happen at the convention?

The group of folks with education "bachelor's degree or higher" votes more Dem than R

The 41st REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION will have a total of 2,470 delegates, with 1,236 (a majority) necessary in order for a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate to be nominated.

If no candidate has 1236 delegates after the primaries then somebody has to use delegates pledged to another candidate to get to 1236. This is done in the back rooms.

Super PACs change the game a bit, especially with so many horses. As long as everyone agrees we're just making up numbers, I think that's fine, but arguing that it's "twice as likely as historically" is sort of incoherent.

It's fun to think about because it seems possible this cycle and it is so unusual. (And if it happens, and the nominee loses, expect the rules to be changed to make it less possible the next time.)

Personally, I think the estimate DVaut1 quoted Nate as giving -- 50% chance that the nomination is not clinched by the final primary -- quite high but maybe the mechanics of the nominating process are less majoritarian than I'm remembering, and maybe regional differences are more pronounced among the candidates than I'm assuming.

Even if your obviously incorrect numbers were accurate, that's less than 50%, so no, the average Republucan voter does not have a degree. Dems don't either though.

1. Education is a crap measure of intelligence.

2. Intelligence is more highly correlated with wealth than either of those.

I think it has been widely studied that low intelligence correlates with socially conservative opinions (and homophobia, racism...). So, the Republican party must have large contingent of stupid voters.

They might or might not be offset by smart rich Republicans who just want to pay less taxes, I have no idea.

TRUMP's polling numbers might be a good measure of Republican stupidity.

This is true of the traditional Reagan/Bush Republicans who mostly want lower taxes. I don't think it's the case for the Trumperite insurgency of disillusioned voters who've been left out. Also, a lot of the people who own stock in their 401ks don't really follow the markets at all. You tell them that the market has boomed under Obama, and they'll say "That's great for the Wall St. fatcats, but not regular Joes like me."

Luntz is going All in on Trump:

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf...epage-featured

i sensed something was different this year. before trump got in, and it was the first thing i posted in this forum this year.

i thought it would simply manifest in Jeb having trouble in the general motivating his base with redstate.com types who really are sick of "RINOs", sick of losing, and are fired up about one issue, immigration. like i argued Hillary would have tons of college girls and tech types but nobody would be energized by Jeb, largely because the base is just wacked out on this immigration anti-establishment kick. Now, Hill has her own troubles, and Trump got in the race, so neither is as sure thing to even get the nod.

Trump clearly saw this too and made immigration his fulcrum or whatever to launch and pivot and attack.

Alex my friend I believe my statement is mathematically correct but maybe a little confusing. 47 percent of voters have a college degree. 47 percent of Democrats have a college degree. 47 percent of Republicans have a college degree. Better?

One widely reported paper written by a controversial (at best) evolutionary psychologist found that liberals are atheists are more intelligent. Alternet has a good discussion (of all places not to get a bias confirmed.) http://www.alternet.org/story/145903...s_are_smarter/

Since I refuse to click that headline, can someone tell me exactly how egregiously wrong CNN's representation of Jeb's statement is?

oh, and nice touch with the equals sign, cuz asians like math so much

It's surprisingly fair. Bush's clarification about his use of "anchor babies" is that he was referring to birth tourism, which is somewhat popular among rich Chinese people, to the tune of on the order of thousands per year.

And then everyone else pointed out that the ANCHOR BABY! crowd wasn't worried about a relative handful of rich Asian tourists as much as the literally millions of babies born to Latinos living here full time.

One thing no one has pointed out:

Interpreting the 14th that it never conferred citizenship on the children of illegals (as TRUMP prefers) would stretch back multiple generations, so the great-grandchildren of illegal aliens would be themselves illegal.

ok. and lets see what mr trump has to say about this...

That makes a lot of sense - I was only thinking in terms of the first one. Thanks.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump

In a clumsy move to get out of his "anchor babies" dilemma, where he signed that he would not use the term and now uses it, he blamed ASIANS

and

Asians are very offended that JEB said that anchor babies applies to them as a way to be more politically correct to hispanics. A mess!

and then trump like a drunk SE FAQer trolled Jeb! all night long on twitter...

Donald J. TrumpVerified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
Jeb Bush never uses his last name on advertising, signage, materials etc. Is he ashamed of the name BUSH? A pretty sad situation. Go Jeb!


Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
Jeb Bush just talked about my border proposal to build a "fence." It's not a fence, Jeb, it's a WALL, and there's a BIG difference!

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
"@YoungYoung54: @JeriHyatt @megynkelly @JebBush So true. Jeb Bush is crazy, who cares that he speaks Mexican, this is America, English !!

Amazing. And here I thought we might go through this election cycle without a candidate who knew how to use the Internet