A number of scholars successfully modeled and predicted presidential nomination outcomes from 1996–2008. However, dramatic changes occurred in subsequent years that would seem to make replicating these results challenging at best. Building on those earlier studies, we utilize a series of OLS models that included measures of preprimary resources and early campaign successes or failures to forecast that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations in 2016. This outcome suggests that some fundamental factors governing nomination outcomes have not changed despite the conventional wisdom.

The 2016 Republican Party presidential primary debates were unprecedented in the amount of media and public interest they generated. Substantially driven by curiosity about reality television celebrity Donald Trump, the initial debates hosted by FOX News and CNN both reflected and validated interest in his candidacy while proffering attention to a full slate of more traditional presidential contenders in front of boisterous audiences. This study considers these audiences’ response. Whether applause, laughter, booing, or combinations thereof, these group utterances provide a reliable metric by which insights may be derived concerning partisan attitudes towards Trump and the other candidates, as well as the unity of the Republican Party. Findings suggest that the debate setting in concert with the demographics of the in-person audience may well have influenced initial response to the candidates and as a result have subtle yet lingering consequences for the 2016 presidential election.

Political scientists have devoted vastly more attention to general presidential elections than to party nominations for president. This emphasis might be reasonable if parties could be counted on to nominate generic representatives of their traditions. But it is clear that they cannot. Since the party reforms of the 1970s, regulars like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Al Gore have sometimes won fairly easy nominations, but outsider candidates like Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean have made strong runs or even won. 2016 has produced extremes of both types: ultimate regular Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and far outsider Donald Trump on the Republican side. It seems, moreover, that party regulars are having more difficulty in recent cycles than they did in the 1980s and 1990s. There is therefore some urgency to the question: when and why do party regulars tend to win nominations?

We examine this question from the point of view of two well-known studies, Nelson Polsby’s Consequences of Party Reform and our own, The Party Decides. The former explains why incentives built into the reformed system of presidential nominations make outsider and factional candidates like Trump likely. The latter argues that, following the factional nominations of the 1970s, party leaders learned to steer nominations to insider favorites. This article uses the logic of these studies to argue that major trends over the past two decades – the rise of new political media, the flood of early money into presidential nominations, and the conflict among party factions – have made it easier for factional candidates and outsiders to challenge elite control of nominations.

The 2016 Republican presidential nomination challenges arguments about political party insiders’ influence on the outcome. This article argues, first, that party insider influence is conditional on the participation, coalescence, and timing of party stakeholders behind a front-runner during the invisible primary, and second, that party insider influence has probably declined since the 2000 presidential election. Data on endorsements by elite elected officials in open presidential nominations from 1984 to 2016 show that party insiders’ participation and convergence of support behind the front-runner is less extensive than what was found by Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller (2008), though the data sets differ. Party insiders participate and unify more readily when the party coalition is stable and there is a candidate in the race who has demonstrable national support. Party elites remain on the sidelines when the party coalition is divided or when there is uncertainty about the appeal of candidates (Ryan 2011; Whitby 2014). The potency of insider endorsements likely has declined with the rise of social media, the changing campaign finance landscape, and the reemergence of populism in each party.

While the party decides theory explains the outcomes of past nomination battles for president, this year in the Republican presidential contest party insiders failed to anoint a standard bearer. Who decides when the party elites don’t? In 2016, it was America’s authoritarian voters. And their candidate of choice, Donald Trump, is anathema to party leaders. I argue that Trump’s rise is in part the result of authoritarian voters’ response to his unvarnished, us-versus-them rhetoric. The failure of Republican Party insiders to coalesce behind one candidate opened the door for Trump. Authoritarian-driven partisan polarization (Hetherington and Weiler 2009), increasing fear of real and imagined threats, and terrorist incidents abroad and at home provided the fuel for Trump’s campaign. And Trump’s message and manner ignited that fuel, propelling him to the Republican nomination for president.

Few empirical studies suggest that fictional stories can influence political opinions. Nonetheless, in this study I demonstrate the relevance of Harry Potter consumption to oppositional attitudes toward Donald Trump and his worldview. Using multivariate observational models and panel data from 2014 to 2016, results suggest that the lessons of the Harry Potter series have influenced levels of opposition to punitive policies and support for tolerance of groups considered outside the American mainstream. Further, they predict public reactions to Donald Trump above and beyond their influence on policies consistent with his views.

An emerging consensus suggests that women are underrepresented in government because of biases in the recruitment process instead of biases at the ballot box. These results, however, are largely for legislative offices, and research suggests that “male” characteristics are generally associated with executive positions like the presidency. At the same time, some research demonstrates social desirability masks gender biases against women who seek the highest office in the land. We use the historic candidacy of Hillary Clinton to examine if she faces hidden biases in either the primaries or the general election. Two different methods for uncovering hidden biases embedded in national surveys demonstrate small hidden biases that are likely electorally inconsequential.

Candidate gender has become a major theme in the 2016 presidential campaign. Secretary Clinton appears to be emphasizing her gender to a greater degree than she did in 2008, even invoking gender in primary debates as something that separates her from the political establishment. Her opponent in the general election, Donald Trump, claimed that Clinton was playing the “woman card” and that Clinton has little to offer as a candidate beyond her sex. However, scholars have little sense of the effectiveness of playing the woman card by emphasizing the historic first associated with a candidacy, a strategy with inherent risks. This project examines the effect of playing the woman card by emphasizing the historic nature of a female executive candidate, and demonstrates that playing the woman card may actually benefit female candidates among certain subsets of voters. Playing the gender card appeals to voters traditionally underrepresented in politics and to weak Democrats and independents. These findings suggest that playing the gender card may benefit female candidates, especially Democrats, in elections.

This study analyzes the important role state political culture played in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Donald Trump appealed to demographically distinct types of voters in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and caucuses that varied considerably from previous Republican presidential nominees. Relative to the demographics of the primary electorates, however, this study finds that state political culture played an outsized role in determining Donald Trump’s relative level of support in a particular state. When state demographics are utilized in ordinary least squares regression models as independent variables with state partisanship and Daniel Elazar’s state political culture typology, political culture proves to be a significant determinant of the level of support given to Trump in a state. States that are characterized by a more moralistic political culture are considerably more likely to have given Trump a lower share of the vote while voters in states that are characterized by a more traditionalistic or individualistic culture were more likely to support Trump.