From Richard Barry at The Moderate Voice:
Nate Silver as well Kyle Cheney and Ben Schreckinger at Politico made basically the same argument this past week that Donald Trump is so unpopular with the Republican Party establishment that he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot or will lose on a subsequent ballot when state-level rules allow delegates to vote for whomever they like.
As Silver puts it, “delegates are people” and “most of the 2,472 delegates with a vote in Cleveland probably aren’t going to like Trump.”
This is the issue: The decision about who goes to the GOP national convention as a delegate is made at state caucuses and conventions in May and June, and the people who attend these are “party elites.” These elites don’t like Donald Trump and will, in large measure, probably choose delegates who don’t like Trump.