Shortly before Donald Trump took his famous escalator ride to his presidential announcement speech, he was polling as low as 1 percent of the vote among Republicans nationally. “Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another ‘Home Alone’ movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA finals — than winning the Republican nomination,” wrote election analyst Harry Enten.

Enten’s post on Trump’s implausibility was headlined, “Why Donald Trump isn’t a real candidate, in one chart.” Within a year, Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee for president, defeating 16 other well-known GOP candidates in less time than it took for Hillary Clinton to beat Bernie Sanders.