All The Ways To Be Wrong

Everyone did a face plant:

The one consistently correct prediction about the Republican primaries this year was that your best guess as to what happens next was probably wrong.

While the Democratic race largely fell into line with early expectations – Hillary Clinton fending off a challenge from the left – the Republican primary has been chaos from its first moments. It feels like every time polls, fundraising, and news coverage start to point one direction, things swerve in another: Front-runners turn into underdogs and then disappear entirely; candidates branded as novelties turn into political powerhouses; and broad theories of how modern American politics work are tested to their limits.

We compiled a sampling of once-popular assumptions about the GOP race that have been overtaken by events in 2015. As you might expect, one candidate in particular tends to dominate the list.