Who did you think would win the Republican Nomination as of July 1st, 2015?

[Mr. Morden]

Here is the Atlas forum poll from early July 2015:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=215385.0

July 1st was the peak of Jeb-mania on the Atlas forum, because Walker had already faded, and people weren't yet on the Trump train.  Bush didn't peak in the betting markets until early August though, though he was already fading in the Atlas forum CW by then (albeit still in the lead: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=216812.0 ).

[BlueSwan]

I don't remember exactly, but I do remember that I for a long time thought that Chris Christie would somehow be able to pull it off. Not sure whether I still believed that july 2015 though. For a time I also thought Rand Paul had a really good shot. And John Kasich. I was never sold on Walker, as far as I remember.

[jaichind]

Scott Walker or Marco Rubio.

[i4indyguy]

I thought Cruz.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Jeb!

[Maxwell]

I guess at that point I voted for Rubio. huh.

[AN63093]

Unfortunately there's no "proof" of this, since I hadn't started posting here yet (though I did occasionally lurk, going back to 2008ish actually).

However, this was my opinion at the time.  I tend to dislike making predictions so far in advance, but my "gut feeling" was Bush.  I thought Walker was living on borrowed time since he didn't have any particular advantages over Bush.  I was completely convinced that Rubio was a paper tiger, since although he had a fair amount of support, I thought he was a lightweight that would eventually have his "moment."  I wasn't sure what that moment would be, but I knew it was going to happen sooner or later (it ended up being his ghastly debate performance).

Although Trump had announced by this point, I didn't think he'd win.  I did think, however, he was a much stronger force than people were giving him credit for.  At this time, most people thought his campaign was a joke or a promotional scheme, but I was unconvinced.  I saw, even from his announcement speech, that Trump was hitting all the right notes on issues that there was considerable angst about in the base, but no one else was effectively addressing.  Additionally, it was quite obvious from early on that Trump was much better/comfortable being on TV than any other candidate (this is way more important than people seem to understand) and had significantly more salesmanship, marketing savvy, etc.  Trump was the only one generating positive memes online from the base at the time as well (Bush generated a lot of memes too, but they were mostly ones making fun of him).

That being said though, I thought that Bush's institutional support would be too much to overcome at the end of the day, though Trump was going to make it interesting.

That changed as soon as the debates got going.  It was patently obvious at that point that Trump was sucking up all the oxygen in the room and absolutely eviscerating Bush (love him or hate him, Trump's destruction of Bush was one of the most wondrous things I've ever seen in politics, and I've been following elections since the early 90s).  I probably knew for sure around New Years that it was Trump.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Walker