I realize that much of the political press is currently dissecting the continuing division amongst the Democratic base, at least those who aren't caught up in the he said/she said fight over who has treated women worse on a personal basis (Donald Trump or Bill Clinton?). But I'm putting all that aside for today (I'll address some of it tomorrow, never fear...), because I think it's about time to take a look back at the Republican nomination race -- specifically, the polls of GOP voters.

Ever since Trump essentially secured the Republican nomination, many famous professional pundits have been apologizing for getting the Trump phenomenon so very wrong. I haven't had to do this myself, since I not only looked at the polling which was happening at the time, but also actually believed it -- something even folks like Nate Silver are now admitting they couldn't bring themselves to do.

So I thought it would be worth it to take a close look at that polling, charted over time. Take a look at the Real Clear Politics poll aggregation page for the 2016 GOP nomination race, to see exactly what I'm looking at as I write this (I would embed it, but that sometimes slows down downloading the page too much).

Before Trump announced, the battle for frontrunner status was very tightly waged between three candidates: Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio. Walker would later become the second candidate in the field of 17 to drop out (only Rick Perry beat him to the exit door). Bush and Rubio fought on a lot longer, of course, but it is interesting to see that polls almost a year and a half from the general election (but in most cases, less than a year before the primary voting) aren't all that indicative.

That was all pre-Trump, though. Post-Trump, it's pretty easy to see that nobody else really ever had a chance. Trump quickly dominated the standings, and was only ever beaten for first place once -- only for a three-day period (November 3-5), and only by 0.2 percent in the rolling average of polling (24.8 percent to 24.6 percent).

Only four candidates even could be said to have seriously challenged Trump at all (which I'm arbitrarily defining as "topped 20 percent support at any time"). Ben Carson did so the earliest, and was the only one to ever beat Trump in polling (for three days, but still...). Carson collapsed almost immediately thereafter, when it became painfully obvious even to Republican base voters that the man knew next to nothing about the Middle East, or terrorism, or foreign policy in general. But even while Carson was riding high in the polls, the third- and fourth-place candidates were barely topping 10 percent.

Those two candidates became the only real challenges Trump faced, once the voting began. Ted Cruz picked up most of Carson's support, which propelled him to hover around 20 percent during January and February, while the first contests began. By this time, though, Trump was regularly topping 35 percent (which is , incidentally, the number I chose back in early September as being the threshold for a Republican candidate to become unstoppable -- which turned out to be accurate).

As the debates wore on, Marco Rubio had one shining moment in the sunlight. Right when Trump's numbers took a dive of roughly six points, Rubio rose a whopping 10 points -- essentially doubling his support in a very short time. This was while many of the minor candidates were dropping out, so Rubio (who had just had a good debate performance) was picking up former supporters of Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Rand Paul. Unfortunately, for Rubio, this would be his high point of the entire race, hitting a Valentine's Day ceiling of only 20.3 percent.

The was around the same time that John Kasich began playing his own game of "last man standing." Kasich benefited enormously by the other establishment candidates all dropping out. First to go were Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina, and Kasich's support jumped up to almost 10 percent (higher than it had ever been, up to that point). But the real surge in support for Kasich wouldn't come until first Jeb Bush and then Ben Carson also finally hung up their spurs. Kasich hit 17.5 percent in mid-March, challenging Rubio for third place in the race (Rubio was down to 18-19 percent by this point).

Kasich's big problem, though, was that he wasn't the only one picking up support as the rest of the field collapsed. Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump also rose sharply in the polls at this point, with Cruz topping 30 percent for the first time while Trump hit his own new high of over 40 percent. In the midst of this shifting scenario, Rubio dropped out after badly losing his home state of Florida. Kasich's fatal flaw was that he utterly failed to pick up any of Rubio's support, and his numbers (even with only three men left in the race) stagnated and never even hit the 25-percent level. Cruz topped out at around 33 percent, while Trump remained comfortably dominant.

Take an overall look at that graph again. Trump's meteoric rise in the polls began last July. He only slipped from first place once -- by 0.2 points, for a grand total of 3 days. If he were anyone other than Donald Trump, by December (at the latest) every pundit worth their salt would have been assuming he was going to win. The data existed, and that's what it plainly showed. Trump only ever had four challengers manage to get above 20 percent, and two of them (Rubio, and Kasich at the end) only did so in the barest fashion. Rubio's high point was 20.3, while Kasich managed 22.5. Trump, during the same period, rose from 29 to 41 percent, for comparison. Trump only ever had to really worry about Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Carson flamed out extremely early, meaning Cruz was the only one who ever even had a slim chance of winning. That list is especially notable for who isn't on it. Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Jeb Bush all got a whole lot of media attention (at various points during the race), but none of them even got within a stone's throw of Trump in the polling. Ever.

Now compare this to the graph for the 2012 nomination (I wrote a humorous article about an enhanced version of this graph four years ago, in case anyone's interested). Mitt Romney started with fewer than half the number of competitors Trump had to face. And yet four of them beat him in the polling, at various points during the race. Both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich beat him (during their respective spikes) by 12 points or better. Counting Gingrich twice (he had two spikes), Romney was in second place five times, sometimes for periods of over a full month. In chronological order, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich (twice), and Rick Santorum all bested Romney, and all topped out at over 25 percent. Perry's high point was over 30 percent, and Newt managed to hit 35 percent (Santorum also almost reached this level, too).

That was an unpredictable race. Nobody knew if all the upstarts would have staying power and actually beat Romney. In other words, there was a lot of excitement and confusion in the 2012 race that simply did not exist in the 2016 race. Now, however, the pundits are all comfortably patting themselves on the back, telling each other "well, everyone got it wrong" and "it was a 'black swan' event nobody could have seen coming" and other such weak excuses. What all of this ignores is that it really wasn't. The 2016 Republican nomination cycle was fully conventional -- there were no big upsets along the way, as there had been in 2012. Only one single competitor ever got within five points of Trump -- and most of the time the gap between Trump and second place was ten points or better.

Now, if Trump's rocketing up in the polls had happened in December (as Newt Gingrich's first surge did) or in February (as Rick Santorum's did, after playing the same "last man standing" game as Kasich attempted), then the excuse that "nobody saw it coming" might hold water. If some external event had given Trump his big boost (an undocumented immigrant attempting to assassinate him or something, just to toss out one wild example of what I'm talking about), then the "black swan" theory might have been the tiniest bit believable. Neither of those things are true, however. Trump started his climb last July. It never ended. No other candidate really came close to him at any point, except for Ben Carson. This was about as standard a campaign graph of one strong candidate versus a very weak field as could be imagined, in fact.

The data existed. All you had to do was believe the numbers. The pundits refused to do so -- for far longer than they should have. That, and not ebon-hued waterfowl, was what happened. It's actually pretty plain to see, looking back at that chart.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant