Poll after poll finds Donald Trump the least qualified Republican to beat Hillary Clinton in November. And yet, he keeps winning GOP primary contests. Is this because Republican primary voters believe Trump CAN win in November (despite polls showing otherwise)? Or is it that they don’t value the issue of electability in the first place? It looks like a combination of both. Earlier this cycle, I argued that as the primary process wore on, GOP voters would eventually prize “electability” over other issues like ideology or personal style. This wasn’t a baseless theory. In the the last election, for example, GOP voters prized “beating Obama” more in January of 2012 than they did in October of 2011. In October, just 20 percent said “beating Obama" was critical to their vote. By January of 2012, it was 32 percent. Moreover, with the GOP now out of the White House for eight years, I also thought that the desire to win was going to be even more pronounced than the desire to make a statement. Yet, here we are more than 60
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