Things Change

Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who blogs at Bloomberg News. Just over a year ago, on November 24, 2014, in a post titled "Here's the 2016 Republican Nominee," he said the next GOP nominee for president would probably come from this list of 12:

Jeb Bush
Chris Christie
Paul Ryan
Rick Perry
John Kasich
Mike Pence
Marco Rubio
Bobby Jindal
Scott Walker
Rob Portman
Mike Huckabee
Rick Santorum

A year later, what's the status of each of these candidates? Three stayed out of the race (Ryan, who's now the Speaker of the House, Pence and Portman,) three declared themselves in, didn't do well and have now declared themselves out (Perry, Jindal and Walker,) and six are still official candidates (Bush, Christie, Kasich, Rubio, Huckabee and Santorum.) 

In the article, Bernstein name-checks everyone from Rand Paul and Ted Cruz to John Thune to Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, with various reason why they're not "viable" nominees. 

Best sentence in the whole article: "Donald Trump won't be running either..." 

Things sure have changed in a year, haven't they? For reference, here's my list of who's currently in and out of the race: 

Declared (and still in the race) GOP Candidates, in order of their official announcement

1. Ted Cruz (March 23) 
2. Rand Paul (April 7)
3. Marco Rubio (April 14)
4. Dr. Ben Carson (May 3) 
5. Carly Fiorina (May 4) 
6. Mike Huckabee (May 5) 
7. Rick Santorum (May 27)
8. George Pataki (May 28)
9. Lindsey Graham (June 1) 
10. Jeb Bush (June 15)
11. Donald Trump (June 16) 
12. Chris Christie (June 30)
13. John Kasich (July 21) 
14. Jim Gilmore (July 30) 

Officially Not Running
Rob Portman (Dec 2)
Paul Ryan (Jan 12)
Mitt Romney (Jan 30)
Rick Snyder (May 7)
John Bolton (May 14) 

Mike Pence (May 20) 

Bob Ehrlich (August 4)

You're Fired!: Candidates Who Have Dropped Out
Rick Perry (June 4 - Sept. 11)
Scott Walker (July 13 - Sept. 21)
Bobby Jindal (June 24-November 17)

Read the entire Bernstein post here, just remember it's from November of last year.