The 2016 map if Kasich was the nominee?

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Does anyone making predictions for this abusrd scenario want to clarify under what plausible sequence of events the GOP nominates the single most loathed candidate among Republican primary voters and elite party actors alike?

This is a massively underrated post. ANY hypothetical election matchup must describe the scenario in which the alternative nominee became the nominee. If Kasich became the nominee, that would suggest events and fundamentals different from those that made 2016, 2016.

HagridOfTheDeep is also spouting the actual and the factual in this thread, kudos to him.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Does anyone making predictions for this absurd scenario want to clarify under what plausible sequence of events the GOP nominates the single most loathed candidate among Republican primary voters and elite party actors alike?

Kasich was at 69/24 at the end in favorability among Registered Republicans, compared to 58/37 for Cruz and 74/24 for Trump. How is that “the most loathed candidate”??

Take issue with my description if you like although an unsourced polling snapshot from the end of the campaign is hardly much to go on. This NPR article provides enough of an overview of Kasich's polling at the height of the campaigns for you to see what I mean.

In any case, he was never a plausible nominee. It would be like John Hickenlooper holding on and consolidating 10-20% of Democrats by virtue of being the sole "moderate" option in a tightly contested Harris-Sanders race or something.

Not to mention that said favorability is a product of not being taken nearly as seriously as Trump or Cruz. Were Kasich to become a real contender, he'd have faced far more pressure than he actually got in real life, which would have harmed his favorabilities. I don't think he has it in him to withstand it like Trump did.