The most important asset a candidate can have is the idea of inevitability. People want to vote for a winner, so if they believe you will win, people will find excuses in their own minds to vote for you.
True. As plain and ordinary a fact as breathing in and exhaling.
People cluster behind a leader.
The relevant questions are whether in that clustering they have chosen of their own free will or have been coerced or forced, whether they were properly informed, misinformed, whether they are able to withstand in significant numbers the forces that engage in subverting the information.