In 1980, Reagan was again said to be unelectable by his GOP opponents. Nonetheless, he swept most of the primaries. He defeated President Jimmy Carter by 10 percentage points in the general election, though Carter’s aides initially regarded Reagan as a certain loser.

In 2012, the calling card of Utah governor Jon Huntsman was his supposed electability. It was tested in New Hampshire. He finished third with 16.9 percent and soon dropped out of the race.

Later in 2012, Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republican candidates were pressured to lay off tough criticism of Mitt Romney because he was electable against President Obama and they weren’t. They refused to muffle their criticism. Though their attacks may have hurt Romney slightly, they weren’t a major reason for his loss to Obama.

This year, Marco Rubio invoked electability in the waning weeks of his campaign. Indeed, polls showed he would be the strongest Republican candidate against Clinton. “That’s just not the way most voters vote,” at least in the primary phase of a presidential contest, Rubio’s pollster Whit Ayres says. Rubio dropped out on March 15 after losing in his home state of Florida to Donald Trump.