The more entertaining candidate wins.
Bush was more entertaining than Gore and Kerry. Obama was more entertaining than McCain and Romney. Trump was more entertaining than Clinton.
My prediction is that Trump will win again this year. I personally don't want that to happen, but I feel that it will. I'd love for Sanders to win.
The other major factor I see is how Trump handles scandal: brag about getting away with it, and accuse everybody else of doing the same thing. It's certainly dramatic -- I'm loath to call it entertaining... but it's hard to tear oneself away from this news cycle
Exactly the same, for (probably—also Midwestern) similar reasons. As soon as he Wile-E-Coyote'd over the cliff of his first couple big scandals in the primary and made it clear that the secret to being scandal-impervious was simply never to look down, that plus his message meant I started telling people he'd probably win the nomination. He sounded like a mash-up of every Republican I'd ever talked to, and even kinda like a lot of older-school Union Strong sorts of Dems—not like a Republican politician or "intellectual" or media figure, mind you, but a voter, which is entirely different. Not even Palin had a message that close to what you might overhear at the local coffee, beer, & bait shop. It was uncanny.
Then Hillary became his opponent and while everyone else was laughing about the whole thing I was like, "Uh oh. Shit. Trump's probably gonna win. Doesn't matter if it's fair or not, fact is she's widely hated and, hate to break it to you, it's not just die-hard Republicans or irredeemable misogynists who feel that way. Should they hate her? Doesn't matter. They do."
And here we are. Sigh.
There is a reason republicans are falling all over themselves to lick his boots. He controls the power now.