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Originally Posted by dobbles
I guess it really depends on how many other candidates there are and how they play it. In 2016, Republicans didn't take Trump seriously and he was able to pick them off 1 at a time. Contrast that with how the Democrats treated 2020; Bien wasn't particularly strong, so the other candidates were willing to bow out early so the party could coalesce around Biden. (of course that had the Bernie supporters screaming 'conspiracy' but that's a whole different discussion.)
If the moderates/anyone but Trump folks bicker and stay divided, I could see Trump with a path again based on his devoted core. But I think if the party can rally around someone else early and make it a 2 candidate fight, he would probably lose.
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Good points. It sort of depends on how many voters you get as well. A lot of conservative parties in Canada have issues where in their leadership races - the membership skews way to the right of the population - so they end up picking the more extreme/less electable leader over the person who could actual win an election.
US parties have tended to favour electability (i.e. Biden over Bernie) but is the Republican party sliding down that slope where they pick based on a purity test vs electability. They lost a bunch of races in this recent election because they picked awful candidates over more moderate ones.