Over the long course of the Republican presidential nomination process in 2015 and 2016, we frequently featured a diagram called “The Republicans’ Five-Ring Circus.” The chart was based on the idea that the GOP essentially consisted of five different constituencies: the establishment wing, the moderate wing, the tea party, libertarians and Christian conservatives. Each presidential candidate’s goal was to dominate his or her constituency or “lane” (for example, Rand Paul would have been looking to win libertarians, or Jeb Bush to win establishment voters), and then unify with the other constituencies to claim the Republican nomination.
Except it didn’t exactly work out that way. Donald Trump, a candidate who didn’t fit neatly into any of the lanes, won instead. …
But we nonetheless think that (despite its mixed success in 2016) the coalition-building model is also a useful tool, especially if we make a few tweaks to how we applied it four years ago. CONT.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight