You really think Rubio has a better than 1 in 2 chance of being the nominee? The guy hasn't led in a single poll yet. He's not even close! Nor is he really showing any momentum at all, unlike arguably Cruz and Christie.
I think that Dave Weigel had it right in his editorial a couple of days ago when he said that polling is an interesting and important part of the nomination story, and therefore dumb to ignore or dismiss altogether. That said, I don't put a lot of predictive stock in them, with some exceptions, e.g. Jeb's persistent decline to low single-digits in both national and early state polls even though he has high name recognition and is running a well-funded campaign coupled with worsening favorability ratings within his own party.
Anyway, the most important question in this contest is whether the normal "party decides" rules apply. I think that the odds that those rules still accurately describe how the primary campaign works are pretty high compared to the odds they do not.
If those rules still explain Republican nominations, Rubio is the most likely nominee - I can't imagine who else would be - and Christie is the most plausible alternative. (I imagine a Christie victory would look something like Clinton's 1992 primary campaign.) Jeb is probably next most likely, although I'm not sure whether the "dirty tricks" scenario that I outlined in my previous post is one in which the rules that political scientists swear by still apply.
That said, maybe those rules don't apply. So let's assume that the laws really have changed. Since I'm trying to put numbers on things, I'll guess that the odds of this are 1:4. This is how we get either a Cruz or Trump nomination, and I expect that Cruz is much more likely to take advantage of this situation once votes are being cast.
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