There's a terminal case of Trump denial syndrome around here.

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538 needs to have him immediately crash and burn to reclaim any credibility they once had.

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Why do you classify "leading in the polls" at this early stage as being synonymous with "frontrunner"?  Gotta go with Nate Silver on this one:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/donald-trump-is-winning-the-polls-and-losing-the-nomination/

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Also:

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LOL at the endorsement point system. Trump probably had fewer endorsement points in the general election than Hillary had in the primary.

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It is a unique political event in American history that in 2016, Donald Trump won in the face of so many Republicans who said they would not endorse him.  And my standard of an "endorsement" is pretty low.  It's the Bob Sikes test.  In 1968, Rep. Bob Sikes (D-FL) of the FL Panhandle, told a reporter, "I'm voting for the national ticket (Humphrey-Muskie) but I'm not asking anyone else to."  The Republicans I'm talking about are folks who wouldn't even admit that they would vote for Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

That's a big group.  A Democrats for Nixon-sized group.  Yet Trump won.

Well yes, I know that.  Yes, it was a new thing that Trump won despite having so many of the party elite not supporting him.  My takeaway is that the opinion of the party elite doesn't really matter anymore (to the extent that it ever did...see below).  That's why I also think that a 2020 primary challenger who gets Buchanan '92-esque #s (more than 20% of the national popular vote, and more than a third of the vote in at least certain states) wouldn't really hurt Trump.  In fact, it might *help* both Trump and the GOP for them to keep their brands somewhat separate, by showing that they don't all agree on everything, and he's his own man.

But re: the party elite's opinions not mattering anymore, even looking back at McGovern's loss in 1972: Was it really the case that party figures not endorsing him contributed to his loss?  Or was it just a case of his existing unpopularity leading them to flee, rather than the latter causing the former?  In Trump's case, GOP politicians weren't endorsing him both for reasons of his unpopularity and for "respectability" reasons.  But the voters don't care about "respectability", and also many of them were willing to vote for him despite having an unfavorable opinion of him, so that was also unusual.

They had a less favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton.  At best, an equally unfavorable opinion.

On top of that, Hillary had the endorsement of just about EVERY media outlet, including newspapers who normally didn't make endorsements (most notably USA Today).

True, all the media ignoring how terrible Hillary was made it clear that she was the greater evil.