You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

I recently spent an evening, as I bet you have to, a lot of evenings, talking about the presidential campaign. Because what else? The evening I'm talking about was a little over a week ago, and I spent it with three of the best political thinkers I know. Amy Davidson is a columnist for the New Yorker, where she watches like a hawk pretty much every move the candidates make.

Kellefasana has profiled a number of the Republicans who are or were in the race,

and the guest of honor was Nate Silver, who runs the blog 538.

Silver isn't a journalist exactly, but a statistics guru,

and he's got the best track record for predicting elections of anyone.

But this campaign is putting even his powers of prediction to the test.

We met in front of a small audience at a place called the Noia House in Manhattan.

I'd like to start with Nate Silver.

I don't know how to ask this question any better. And I'd be remiss in failing to

start this conversation with anything other than Donald Trump. I had a feeling that would be

that. Yeah. Good guess. Good guess. Why? That's my question. In other words, in other words, we have been hearing for years about social dislocation, economic problems, demographic shifts in the country, radicalism within the Republican Party.

And yet, at the end of the day, the Republican Party, sooner or later, came around to putting forward John McCain, Romney.

And now we have somebody who's been a figure of bizarre fun and ego and, you know, sort of gold-plated craziness since the late 70s.

And if I had told you a couple of years ago that Donald Trump would be leading the way,

you'd laugh at me.

That's true.

I mean, we would have laughed at ourselves, I suppose, too.

But look, I think there are three essential elements to the Trump story

and that any kind of accurate tale of Trump has to tell from these three perspectives.

One is from the perspective of the voter.

...