“I keep whining and whining until I win,” Trump said in August. His opponents have been accusing him of whining about the Republican nominating process in response to some setbacks he has experienced. But his complaints may be working for him.
Nate Silver says that his polling has been rising a bit lately, and suggests that those complaints — he’s saying that as the winner of a plurality of votes and delegates he should get the nomination, and the party is running a “rigged” and “crooked” process to steal it from him — are winning him new supporters. Silver adds:
Trump has a big advantage: The media is mostly echoing and validating his side of the argument. . . .
It also helps that Trump’s system-is-rigged message is relatively simple and plays into the media’s master narrative of the Republican race as a conflict between the Republican base and the GOP “establishment.” The Republicans’ delegate selection rules, by contrast, require an attention to detail that narrative-driven stories about the Republican race can misconstrue.
The Cruz–Kasich pact, announced after Silver’s article, will reinforce Trump’s story.